What 3d Programs To They Use In The Movies?

[mojo2185]

I already have 3d studio max, but was looking for some other programs. Does anyone know which 3d programs are used in movie productions? I know that Jurassic Park (1,2,3) used some animated dinosaurs, anyone know which program created them?
Any info is appreciated!

[Patriot]

Maya Software was used in Hollow Man, Perfect Storm. Final Fantasy.Tomb Raider, and Spider Man etc....

http://www.alias.com/eng/index.shtml

[harrycary]

Yeah Maya is about the best you can get. Quite difficult to use though there is a decent trial version available.

Others(such as Pixar and ILM) use proprietary software that consumers will never have access to.

[BritishICE]

Adobe After Effects is also very powerful and easier to learn than Maya. Try it out.

[justin89]

after effects doesn't do 3d modeling.

[chalkmongoose]

Originally posted by harrycary@21 July 2003 - 17:13
Yeah Maya is about the best you can get. Quite difficult to use though there is a decent trial version available.

Others(such as Pixar and ILM) use proprietary software that consumers will never have access to.

Does anyone remember, a couple of years back, when some disgruntled employees released pirated versions of some animation company's software onto the web, and used the company's own OC something or other network to share it? I wish I could remember the specifics, it was funny as hell. If anyone can remember anything on this... I do know that the group also later on sucessfully fired off a lawsuit at the company after they were fired and almost arrested for "misapropriation of company property" or something like that...
They claimed that they had been asked by marketing (true) to send them a copy of the latest version so that documentation could be written, and then they said a couple of other things, but I can't remember them. I know that they were able to prove that the "security leak" was not caused by them, but by marketing...

[DarthInsinuate]

i hate those damn 3d artists with their amazing modeling skills

i couldn't even make a cube with Milkshape3D

[MetroStars]

i hate those damn 3d artists with their amazing modeling skills 

i couldn't even make a cube with Milkshape3D

LOL

don't they have 2 go 2 college for like 15 years or sumthing....,

[scott_hedrick]

There are currently lots of programs being used in movies - most of them are for completely different purposes, for instance the main ones being used now are:

Maya - for almost any kind of effect to do with character animation and also with dynamics, like particles, and fluids and cloth etc. - used in very high profile movies like X2, and Hulk, and in PIXARs movies, ever since A bugs life, even now till finding nemo and many many more. This is most widely used, and for good reason. It also has absolutely amazing plugin support, not to mention the fact that it runs happily on Macs, PCs, Linux/UNIXes and SGIs Irix boxes. It also comes bundled with a production quality render as of version 5.0 (Mental Ray 3.2)

3DSMAX - for many kinds of character animation, not used by many CG film studios anymore, but still used most widely in games. Has a poor dynamics engine, but great particle effects. Unfortunately only runs on windows, but nevertheless has great plugin support.

XSI - also used in high profile movies, similar to maya in terms of capability, does not have a very good dynamics engine. But has fantastic modelling tools and also a great renderer built in (A highly modified version of Mental Ray).

Lightwave - A good program, with a very unconventional interface.. you either love it or hate it, I happen to hate it, so I cant say much about it - It does have great modelling tools, but the interface annoyed me too much to consider using it any further than simple modelling and some animation setup.

Cinema 4D - A program used mainly by beginners, but very capable nonetheless. Has some good tools, but generally speaking, it is mediocre at best.

And some less popular ones:

In addition to those, there are some very good but relatively new ones:

Houdini - This is an excellent program which is likely to supercede some of the others, it excels in all respects from modelling to rendering, but unfortunately its quite slow.

Blender 3D - A free (YES ALSO FREE&#33 program which support a LOT of professional features - if you are new to 3d, GET THIS NOW, its simply amazing to see such a great product for free. It has great tool, and is very easy to use, and produces professional looking output.

Also, there are some programs which are highly specialised:

Wings 3D - A free (YES FREE) polygon modelling program. It is only for polygon modelling, and it is very good at it. The interface is unconventional, but usable, and the outcome is great it will export to many formats used by various other 3d programs.

Motionbuilder - A program for realtime animation, especially for character animation, which has fantastic animation tools, and supports layered animation... A MUST for good character animation.

Matchbox - A program for camera tracking and motion path creation. This is used to track movements of cameras in real footage so that the same motion can be used with CG footage and the two can then be composited together in postproduction.

^^ There are literally dozens of specialised programs like that, I will no go through them right now, but if you need more info let me know ^^

Also, for almost all movies, at least some 3rd party plugins are used, for example, for Hair simulation, Cloth simulation, and bodies of water etc. Some of these plugins are as big (and as expensive) as complete programs, and there are hundreds of them.

Some movies with large budgets have plugins and even complete software written for them, for instance, the plugins used in the movie X2 for animating the scales on Mystiques body were custom written for that purpose, and more recently in Hulk, the motion capture system was custom written since they didnt have someone with the same size or proportions of the Hulk, they had to scale all the motion-capture data in a non-linear manner.


Hope that was the info you were looking for, if you need more, let me know.

Scott

[MetroStars]

scott_hedrick, thats was sum gr8 info...