I wanted to get Lightwave 3D for forever, but then realized for someone not going into that field as a career, the 2500 dollar program seamed a little mundane

-Ben

Whoa. this is a whole new language. i know COMPOOTER and i go on the INTRAWEB sometimes. thats about it.

Lightwave is alright..... version 6 has a badass render engine... but I've always preferred 3DS Max... even to Maya... I just like Maya because of Paint Effects and the fact that if I want to use 3DS Max I have to buy an upgrade for 4.2 or else my copy won't work on XP because I only have the liscense for Windows 9x or 2000.... damn Discreet... hehe... but Maya is pretty kewl... once you get all the plugins and shit... altho it learning curve is MUCH steeper than the one for 3DS Max...

But I know people that swear by Lightwave and people that swear by Canoma, Maya, FormZ, TrueSpace.... It all depends on your preference... they all do basically the same thing in mostly the same way... just depends on which interface you like best... and I like 3DS Max's interface.... much better than any other... lol...

But ya... ALL of them are VERY expensive... I think Truespace (which is basically a dumbed down version of Lightwave) is the cheapest and its like $500... Most others will run you anywhere from $1500 (for a student's liscense) up to the cost of Maya which is $16,000.... But of course the software company I used to work for paid for both 3DS Max and Maya and Truespace and Lightwave when I used them... I would NEVER have that much money to spend on computer software... LOL...

-Gor

that sort of reminds me of another drafting program called catia the program is so huge and indepth they rent out computer solely for that single program they're "catia computers"

I saw a feature on the production of Final Fantasy, that CGI movie based on the game. OMG, they had a friggin wharehouse's worth of towers compressing and decompressing frames, pretty badass

-Ben

Ya.... that movie was wicked crazy...damn near all of it was photo-realistic... every strand of hair on their characters' bodies were individually modeled by hand....

But ya... a lot of those HUGE mainframes are used for rendering.... if they didnt use those it'd literally take years to render those movies... even with all the cutting and spicing of every frame they do.... interesting stuff... all I did was create the models... other peeps did all the animation and rendering and texturing and all that other shit... hehe...

texturing takes some hardcore skill with photoshop or something of the like...

But now I set up networks and shit... pays well... whenever i'm hired... altho i get called a lot whenever some complete IDIOT screws up the network... stupid people are so annoying...

-Gor

I hear ya dude, trust me, I know

-Ben