3-Modeling & Photoshop

The Maya 3-D modeling website contains a 'fake or foto' hyperlink that invites viewers to pick out images that are real or computer generated . The latter are really impressive; most of them fooled me. Wanting to try something new, I downloaded trial versions of the Maya and Rhino 3-D programs. After playing with the former with help from a beginners' book, it's quite hard going at the early part of the learning curve. Comparing the two programs, Maya is the more expensive but has more features. Has anyone on OPF interchanged aspects of images from such programs with Photoshop for montaging or other purposes? I'd appreciate advice and information about your experiences.

Mike,

I spent 15+ years during the 80/90's using AutoCAD, 3DS, Maya, Lightwave, Rhino etc as a development engineer, modelling mechanical / plastic components for various engineering companies.
Nurbs based application like Rhino are superb value for money for static designs and can also be used for cadcam applications, whereas Lightwave, Maya and 3DS are more useful for animated designs and walkthroughs.
If your considering getting into mix'n'match graphic art / modelling, I would also look at lightwave.
Check out their galleries for some superb composite images, renderings and animations.

Hi Mike,

My day job is actually doing 3D modeling - in my case mainly for real-time flight simulators, but we do spend some of our time doing photo-realistic renders and montaging them in photoshop.

I'd agree with John's concise summary in his post. If you want an OpenSource program to look at then you could do a lot worse than have a look at Blender http://www.blender.org. The interface is what you might call 'unique', and does have a steep learning curve, but once you get used to it it is very very quick.

In terms of montaging, one of the key features of programs such as lightwave, blender and 3ds is that you can render out separate aspects of the scene as individual images, such as specular passes, diffuse passes and depth passes. These can then be loaded into photoshop as different layers and adjusted to your hearts content without having to re-render the 3d scene (which can take a long time). The depth pass is really useful to try match fogging with a photograph. They also let you match your camera to the realife camera if known (focal-length, f-stop, even number of diaphragm blades in some instance).

The Extended edition of CS3 has some useful new features on the 3d side. You can load 3d objects into photoshop as smart objects, which you can then rotate and move in 3d to match with your scene. You can also edit textures on the 3d model straight from photoshop, and get a realtime update.

Feel free to ask more questions, it can be a complex field as I'm sure you realise, but happy to help!


Cheers,

Andrew,

Blender has come on considerably since the early days.

Being a little out of touch with the current crop of 3D apps, I immediately downloaded a copy and had a play. It looks a great app for free and with dual platform support (Win / Linux), the learning curve starts to diminish. Thanks for the link!

Many thanks for your advice John & Andy and sorry for the delayed response. I was away this last week but just downloaded Blender & also manual from Wilkipedia. Could either of you comment on the advantages/disadvantages of lightwave versus 3ds max versus rhino given the huge price differences. Thanks
Mike