LightWave 7.5 & Cinema 4D XL

[Scott Gammans]

I have decided to move up in the world from POV-Ray to a professional 3D software package and have been doing a lot of research over the past month. I've narrowed the field down to these two, and need some advice. Without starting a flamewar, can anyone who is familiar with both LightWave 7.5 and Cinema 4D XL 7.3 elucidate on the perceived pros & cons of these packages?

So far I have compiled the following comparative perceptions about these products: With the recent price reduction, LW 7.5 is significantly less expensive than C4D, when you take into account that LW includes many faetures that you must pay extra to get in C4D. C4D seems to have the more intuitive UI, especially with regard to working with layers and UV editing (but that seems to only be the case if you use BodyPaint). Animation workflow appears to be easier in LW than C4D. LW has the larger user base, which to me translates into greater support in the community on boards like this one.

I would appreciate any and all input.

[phish]

I use C4D SE for rendering only, as I find it is much easier to make my meshes in Truespace.

[Commodore-SirJohn]

Personally, I use Lightwave for most of my stuff. For reasons I won't go into, I'm currently stuck at version 7.0a, but I find it much more useful than the other packages I've tried.

Especially in that it splits the modeller and layout apps into two programs. Back when I first got into 3D, I used 3D Studio Max, which has both in the same program, which confused the heck out of me...

[Kakaze]

My school uses C4D, and I have to say it is very unintuitive. Modeling sucks, because you have to go through extra steps to do anything. An advantage of C4D, and this is from my own observations, so it could be wrong, is it looks like primitives and booleans are all mathematically generated, which means you don't have to worry about polygon resolution, but that's ONLY if you're not going to be doing anything else to the object you can't do in it's base form. Then you have to make the object "editable" and it reduces it to polygons.

The interface is cluttered and it seems like there is no logic behind it, also, because of the clutter your modeling/layout area is greatly minimised. Modeling is not very straight forward. It takes a lot of memory.

Lightwave is the way to go, IMO.

[Scott Gammans]

I really appreciate the feedback--thanks guys! Are there no defenders of the faith in the Cinema 4D XL camp?

Also, I wanted to ask another question: I was researching places to buy LightWave 7.5 and Safe Harbor Computers (http://www.sharbor.com) seems to have the lowest price right now at $1,250.00. I noticed, however, that at Bizrate.com there are some alarming negative comments about Safe Harbor that mention getting zapped with excessive shipping and brokerage fees:

http://www.bizrate.com/ratings_guide/cust_reviews.xpml?mid=911

Can anyone who has done business with Safe Harbor comment, please? There are other places selling 7.5 for up to and beyond the MSRP--if these stories are true, should I even bother buying from SH if add-ons are going to put the final sales price above the MSRP?

[Darrell Lawrence]

Write them and get quotes on TOTAL costs (shipping, handling, etc etc).

[Scott Gammans]

Originally posted by Warrior
Write them and get quotes on TOTAL costs (shipping, handling, etc etc). An excellent suggestion. Thanks!

[Scott Gammans]

Update: I spoke to Dennis at SH today and he was able to answer all of my concerns to my satisfaction. I placed my order and should be getting LW sometime in mid-June (they're backordered at the moment). Thanks to everyone for their advice.

[Aldiwahn Teerod]

maybe it helps you to have a look here:
http://66.197.241.3/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=318

[Scott Gammans]

Thanks, man... interesting article. I hope you won't look down on me for crossing over to the Dark Side and buying LightWave! :D

[Aldiwahn Teerod]

why should i :)
i recently buyed truespace 5 (cause thats all i can afford for a professional program) so i think my days as povray'er are counted.
btw. you seem to be very very very good with pov, would you mind writing sume tuts for beginners or so and maybe joining SF-3D (http://sf-3d.animatedpictures.org) (the site is almost up, i've been recoding it but temporary forums are up)?

[Scott Gammans]

My time is going to be VERY limited this summer. I'm taking a graphic design course (one of the reasons I bought LW), doing a consulting gig on the side, AND still working my regular 45 hr/week job... If I can find time somewhere, perhaps...

[Aldiwahn Teerod]

i wish you good luck then :)

[ToEJaM-AndroidMemory]

LW is best.

[spudmonkey]

Scott, check this out - might be useful

http://www.3dgladiators.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15704

[Scott Gammans]

Thanks; I had already heard about that. With all of the restrictions, though, I'd rather invest the time (and yes, the money) in a fully-functional product. Over the next six months I am going to be taking some graphic arts classes at the local college, trying to decide whether a change in career path might be in the cards. The courses I'm taking later this year use LightWave, so that kind of decided things for me.

[phish]

Has anybody heard of a CAD program called PROdesktop? My school uses it and it doesn't seem that great.