Which 3D app works best with Unity? $10 PRIZE

About to invest in time, training and money, I was curious what others thought of the 3D apps and how well they work with Unity?

Make comments on the features and how they import and how good animation imports?

Please state good and bad points,

Prize of $10 for the best 'full critique' of the software your using, I'll PM winner via forum system and announce in 2 weeks. Also not bothered if the winning review is overly negative or not. As it helps me to decide and probably many others.

Thanks in advance.

 

I have played with Cinema 4D, Cheetah and Blender while learning modeling over the last year. The first major benefit of Blender (besides being free) is the wealth of free books, tutorials and forums. I would highly suggest doing a search for tutorials for all the modeling programs. You will see very quickly that Blender tutorials and information is available in vast quantities with quite a few very good ones. Online courses are available free as well.

The Blender/Unity pipeline couldn't be easier either. The first time I ever tried to import a skinned, animated model into Unity it worked flawlessly with all the animations separated automatically. Some other modeling programs require you to model all your animations in one timeline then separate them manually at import by giving them ranges of frames. It isn't fun when you have to make changes.

I have no real negatives for the Blender integration. The one very minor annoyance is if you want to export IPO animations (not armature/bone animations) you have to manually export to FBX. It isn't much of an issue though because Unity has an animation editor now.

 

I've had no problems with Maya and Unity. It's also great for most other game engines. Max is a better poly modeler but Maya has fewer limitations and is more customizable.

Having said that, if I was starting from scratch and had to actually BUY the software again I'd probably learn Blender.

 

Thanks for the posts and votes, so far.
It seems Blender is the popular by vote and in the comments.
Has anyone had any issues, with Blender?
Is there anyone with comments on the other 3D applications (which seem to be getting some votes)?

Maya seems very expensive, so if it was between the 2 then blender is on my list.

 

One that people maybe doesnt consider often , because even free it doesnt't allow for commercial work is XSI ModTools,

It provide almost all feature you need as it big brother who cost some $$$ (same as maya or max in term of price )

Modeling tool are fast and really good , but most of it is the animation tools it provide, really robust and flexible.

I know they provide a 100$ version for XNA users that allows them then to publish with the work done under XSI free version.

Crosswalk also offer a good communication between max and maya which allow you to transfer your work with other major app if you need to.

 

I bought Maya 2009 and it works great with Unity.
I never got a problem when importing character, animation, background or props.

As said jbuck, to customize his Maya is a very good way to save time in your production as well :wink:

:idea: Maybe do not think about only the price of the program and the time you will save to work with.

Remember that ; once you buy it,. you do not need to buy it a 2nd time before 3 or 4 years...
I personally do not need to upgrade because I always use simple tools or create mine.

Maya is expensive, but if for example you lost your time in blender for exporting every time your character manually (=to delete the rig, extra bones, etc...) you will quickly understand where your money and time will be spent everyday of you life...

In Maya I click on one button for exporting my 3D and it will detect if this is a simple object, skinned character, animation, etc... And do not browse any directory, everything is automatically done and clean, ready to import in Unity.

And I really like to work with lot of multi-objects in Maya. For example in 3dsmax you cannot work with 2 object at the same time...

 

The Blender to Unity pipeline is just the best out there. The fbx exporter for Blender was developed specially to work with Unity, and it shows. No need to export, just use the blend file.

Stay with Blender, it is worth every minute you use it.

 

It depends on whether you're already familiar with any 3D software or are completely new to the subject.

If you already know some basic 3d workflows in one program stick to that and figure out the quirks of bringing your models to unity. For most programs it works pretty painless.

If you learn a completely new program and want to start QUICK - go for Cinema 4D as it's one of the easiest to learn out there.

If you are willing to figure out a more or less half-documented program and are willing to separate the bad tutorials out from the good ones: go for Blender. It's free and it's got one of the best modelers for realtime art assets, IMO. You'll need to learn lots of shortcuts, though.

At the end of the day, there simply is no best program for unity. Even if I'd say Blender has the fastest and stable way of getting models over to unity: It won't help you anything if you can't get the program to do what you want because some other software suits you best. I know the question always arises from beginners and I've asked it myself countless times. Truth is: you'll see that there simply is NO best software. It depends on your preferences, the project and the team size which one you'll use.

In small teams and for begining 3D art I'd recommend Cinema4D.

And I would have told you the same thing without that 10$ proce nonsense. look through the various topics on the very same subject

 

Cheetah is very good with Unity, Back in the day when I was using Maya I had issues like deleted history still appearing and Maya is quite crap at handling mocap. Its a bit hit and miss there I found. (But hey if you buy a second 4$figure application- Motionbuilder- you can get around that) Maya also crashed a great deal in the education environment I was working in.
Maya takes ages to boot up compared to Cheetah and its licensing terms regarding on-selling licenses is restrictive. Cheetah on the other hand you can onsell at will if you choose. Obviously Cheetah doesnt have all the bells and whistles that Maya has but other than a handful of missing tools it does exactly what Maya does in the Unity development pipeline. Its sort of "Poor mans Maya" and as the controls can be set up very similar, going to cheetah is quite nice if you have Maya training but just want a cleaner interface. Martin as one person exceeds Autodesk as a company for quality of support too. Hes amazing.

Cheetah can import and save as in more formats than Maya. You can have more than one cheetah scene open at once (and can copy-paste stuff between scenes) but last time I checked in Maya, you can have only one scene at a time open. When baking lightmaps in cheetah you can see them getting made, whereas in Maya you just see a percentage number, so you have to wait until the bakings completely finished before you know if its a disaster. In cheetah you can stop it as soon as you see you messed up the first section of rendered lightmap.

Autodesk<=Martin. Martin just seems to care more about his customers. I somehow grew to loathe Autodesk. A big chunk of that was due to their extortionate prices, and being given Maya 7 by a client that I could never install because licences cannot be transferred.

/2c
AC

 

Cheetah3D is the poor man's cinema4D, not the poor man's maya. I don't think it is anything like maya, except maybe the node materials. Cinema4D appears to be Martin's biggest source of inspiration, they have so much in common.

 

Cheetah3D has really captured my eye, I like the fact that it is designed for Mac. It seems to be a great user friendly tool. However, it has no polygon reduction tools (as of yet) and can not import .obj files correctly. I notice from the forums the animation tools also need some improvement. Having said this, for the money, it does seem like the perfect tool. I also see it has javascript API support, which links in well with Unity. It's just some of the missing features are important and are slightly putting me off.

There seems to be more on offer with Blender, even though it seems to have an over-complicated work-flow. I think this is partly due to the old idiom of 'too many cooks spoil the broth.' when it comes to the interface programming and design.

Maya is off my list, as it seems to have more questions in this forum than any other 3D package, the fact it's very expensive and I keep hearing a lot of moaning about it.

 

There is a script for poly reduction that you can add to Cheetah, I'm finding it pretty good, considering decimation is often not pretty. You can define which edges or points to retain.

Dig around on the scripting section of the Cheetah forum.

There was also a script for importing obj+mtl, but it broke with the newer version. It too is linked to in the scripting forum, perhaps give its origonal thread a nudge and its author may update it.

The latest animation tools are still young.

It will probably always lack some feature, but is definitely value for money.

Good luck
AC

 

Cinema4D FBX exporter is no good. You cannot export a models normal data with the FBX exporter in C4D. Even in 11.5 with newest updates.

This means it is impossible to get a model into unity from cinema4d that has both animation and normals.

I think c4d is the best 3D app right now. But with the broken FBX exporter, it's not suitable for use with the unity engine.

I am using Maya right now.

 

I was considering purchasing c4d. So c4d animations won't run in Unity?

I was also looking at Blender, but can't stand the user interface. It doesn't look like there are too many import problems with Blender to Unity as I searched the forums for common issues.

 

Maya works PERFECTLY with Unity. Everything comes in totally correct. If you have the money, it is the clear choice.

Again, all materials, vertex normals, vertex colors, animations, UV sets... everything comes in correct with no fuss. There might be a lot questions about maya simply because people do not know what they are doing. It may be expensive, but it happens to be a standard in game development for a reason. Chances are maya was involved in the production of many of your favorite games. Half of the pro studios use it. Yeah, I have issues with autodesk too, but maya is a very powerful package that I turn to when all the others let me down.

 

I think part of the Maya challenge is also that Maya is so powerful and there are a several different ways that you could use to do the same things. Two people could create the same thing, but with different work flows and methods sometimes.

Also, people who are familiar with Maya for non-game animation sometimes feel limited when they have to work with game animation. There is a lot of functionality and "magic" that really doesn't apply to games. So there's an adjustment that has to be made by animators. They have to tone things down.

 

The Cheetahs best, you can save in it's native format which will work seamlessly in Unity and Cheetah

 

Cheetah doesn't support Vertex Colors or Vertex Alpha so is a no go for iphone games unless you don't need shadows.

 

or surface normals...

which maya is simply the best at.

 

I personally think, for iphone development at least, that Blender is the best solution if you don't need to be able to import Animated models from 3dstudio or Maya for editing in blender (Ie purchased content that is animated). If your doing all your own models the only reason to not use blender is because it's not a game industry standard application. Even if your using some purchased models your fine as long as their all static and don't have animations.

Blender can do everything you want and need very well and extremely fast, is cross platform, and free.

Blender starts up in 1 second flat when launching from unity to open a model while programs like Maya can take over 30 seconds to start and be ready to model (on same machine I ran blender on).

Every 3d applications interface is incredibly hard to learn if you've never done modeling before. If you have then whatever you learned is likely to be the "best" in your opinion and anything else is not. Blender is the first modeling program I've used and I think it's interface is very intuitive once you get the basics down (like 1 day to learn basics) and extremely efficient.

I've been using blender and love it, the only downside I've found to it importing animations as stated above.

 

Well if you use lightmapping to a second UVset its awesome and really I cant see any visible difference to Mental Ray-except as I said you cant see your lightmap getting made, which is a time saver and advantage over Maya. Prelighting for iPhone has been a significant part of my paid work over the last few months.
Martins aware or the need for Vertex coloring-or at least conscious of our requests.

Try getting most of Autodesk to acknowledge your needs.

Its a price thing, you want free? Blender or Wings, you want under $200? Cheetah. You won the lottery? Maya.

AC

 

Can you explain the technique your using in more detail? I evaluated cheetah because it supports import of FBX but tossed it out because I currently paint my shadows on my environmental mesh using vertex colors and can't think of an efficient method of shadows (both performance and labor light) for iphone environmental effects. Doesn't that require a secondary texture for everything you want to shade? I use a single 1024x1024 texture atlas (1 material) for my entire environmental mesh. How would I use a lightmap given that I have one material for the entire environments mesh?

I'm not aware of an effective means of using lightmaps for the iphone, but then again I'm a relative newbie to baked lighting.

 

So you have one atlas for an array of objects, yes?

You can either have one lightmap for each object- thats one texture, or if its easy to combine-seperate objects in your scene, you could have a single lightmap thats shared by all objects=1 material total. Im using seperate lightmaps for each section of level art. It does have a memory cost (you can always reduce texture size), but I'm building some quite large worlds that are running great on iPhone, and also with animated characters.

You could also atlas your lightmaps and move all the 2nd UV's to appropriate places- trade secret//You will need the UVStepper script to switch the UV's back and forth and this script allows you to combine and atlas multiple models into one//trade secret

I've found a "construction kit" approach works well, where I make tiles that interlock smoothly works well and then where required I build triggers to cull stuff offscreen, but I just hack that stuff, I'm not the programmer on my current team. I make night-time, sunny day, and overcast day lighting with ease with cheetah. Its one of its most fabulous features, although you cannot select multiple objects and hit bake, at this point at least.

I really enjoy prelighting, its one of those abracadabra tasks in the pipeline.

FWIW also when Cheetahs lightmaps are being baked, or images getting rendered, you can go back to the scene or tab to another scene and carry on working. You cannot do that in Maya. You have to go and have a cup of tea and a lie down.

I mean you have to find your own workflow which takes time and makes skills valuable, but I do agree, vertex coloring and baking would be great, and I think I was the first to bring it up on the C3d forum over a year ago. Wings can do vertex painting but I havent figured out the workflow.

AC

 

I (legally) own Maya, 3ds Max, Cheetah 3D and I'm currently switching to C4D.

Been using Max since version 2.5, but there are no plans to port it to Mac, so it's kind-of out the door for me (personal preference... it's been real).

Maya I just never got the hang of. Same with Blender. The interface of both just bugged me a little bit (also personal preference).

Cheetah is nice, but coming from a Max background it felt a little like a 'Milkshape but good' to me so I let that go also (hey, personal preference).

Right now I'm totally in love with Cinema 4D (well... just personal preference), but I haven't done much Unity integration with it yet.

So... I don't think I'm winning the 10 bucks with my personal preference (sob), but hey... I'll get over it.

 

Sounds cool I might look into it later, vertex color painting works great for me and I use vertex alpha for some really nice textureless effects also. I don' t want to spend the time to learn a new tool right now but will likely look into prototyping it later.

 

For the original question:

I've used Cheetah for a long time, for simple stuff it's ok.

I'm now trying Cinema 4D and so far I like it a lot. Except - the R11 doesn't play nice with Unity, the FBX importer can't install. I've heard the R10 works fine, though. Hope this gets fixed soon.

I've worked with Max many years ago, liked that also, but it's windos only, so that's the part of my past I don't talk about.

I've tried Maya as well, but never got beyond the "hm, this is weird" stage. Guess the interface just isn't my kind.

Same goes for Blender. I tried real hard, even bought a book just to learn how to use it, but it appears to be very picky about its friends.

 

Same here. I was used to Max, but after switching to the Mac it wasn't an option anymore having open a Virtual Machine just for the 3d app.

Bought also Cheetah - nice, but not more. Dumped it.

I downloaded the trial of Maya, but never came across the (ugly) interface and usage of Maya. Not my cup of tea.

Tried then Cinema 4D because my buddy Thomas Pasieka is an expert with it (check out the C4D forum at http://3dattack.us) and I'm amazed how nice C4d is. Native for the Mac, plays fine with Unity (and even better once Unity updates their pipeline for C4D), super easy to use even for a programmer like me. Price tag: 800 Euros is totally ok for the standard version that I need. Waaay cheaper than Max or Maya (heaps cheaper!)

So, finally I stick now to C4D after I got used to it. Really love it.

Any (!) check out the great video tutorials that Thomas Pasieka made for Unity <-> C4D:

http://3dattack.us/3DAttack/Shop.html

 

Animations will run, but you can't bring in an animated mesh with normal data (aka hard edges, smoothing groups, edge breaks) from Cinema4d.

I guess some people get by just fine without being able to import normal data on their animated meshes but... I would never embark on a serious project without that functionality.

Personally I am just waiting until this is fixed, then I will be switching to C4D myself from Maya. But until then, I'll use Maya. Which from what I understand, it might be a while until this is fixed, C4D has supposedly had this problem for a number of versions and Maxon is not fixing it.

 

If you're a student you can get Maya for about $200. If you aren't, you might want to consider signing up for a class at your local community college just so you can qualify for the educational discount.

 

Thats ok if you're just a hobbyist, but if you think this is a career probability, its kind of a trap I reckon, as its a major jump to buying a commercial license, and your skills are specific to that software. You can always make the sidestep to another more affordable app, and transfer a subset of learned skills but that begs the question why not start out with the other software to begin with.

Thats my personal opinion, I just think educational licenses are totally bogus.

AC

 

I use a combinaton of 3DS Max and Zbrush. Rough outlines in 3ds Max and I put the finishing touches on in Zbrush (animations in 3ds max). I like the controll that Zbrush gives alot more than anything I've seen in other 3d modeling programs.

As always, personal preference and intended use play a huge factor.

 

I've been reading through this topic, I recently started going through one of the tutorials (122 pages of PDF!), and I was planning to get a 3D programming tool anyway. At the moment I use cheetah 3D's demo, but I'm not sure whether I should get the full version. I love the interface, and apparently a lot of others agree with this view.

What other programs match or come close to it's interface while offering more features and better unity integration? I saw a lot of Cinema 4D being mentioned as the better version of Cheetah, but is it worth the extra money?

Thanks

 

I'd say yes. I own cheetah, but never really found "into" it. There were (for me) fundamental things like changing the pivot point that were so user-unfriendly that I quickly dropped it. Because I'm friend with Thomas Pasika (3dattack.us) I was pointed at Cinema, tried it and found it super easy to use. Offers to me all I need from the more expensive packs like 3DS Max and Maya, but without the price tag of those, hence I'm sold now to Cinema and am _very_ happy with it. Here in Germany it's a 800 euro solution (net 600 if you buy it as company) and that is very affordable to me compared to 3DS Max or Maya (both as far as I saw over 2000 Euros). Also, Cinema 4D is also native on the Mac and I don't need Parallels to run the 3D app on the Mac. If you're on windows, it doesn't really matter, but as Mac user I hated it to run a VM just for the 3d app.

Btw, Thomas offers on 3dattack.us a set of video trainings and projects for Unity developers to get into cinema4d. Very useful stuff!

 

Thanks, you've convinced me rather quickly! Only problem is that I'm a student so it's quite a big cost. There are student and education licenses (not sure the difference), but it's unclear whether they can be used for commercial use or not. I doubt it, but I emailed them anyway to check.

I'm presuming there are fundamental differences in functionality between cheetah 3d and cinema 4d that make it worth the extra money?

Thanks for your help

 

Yeah, there's a new student licensing in place since the last version. I saw it's way cheaper, but don't know the exact details.

Oh yes. You're seeing it once you started using it you notice the difference. I would call Cheetah more like a "basic" tool whereas Cinema is a full-fledged 3d solution. Way better modeling and texturing tools, renderers, workflow etc.

 

Yeah, it's only £100 which is obviously a quality price. But I'm guessing that it's commercial use only. I've mailed them anyway.

Fair enough, I'm willing to pay for better tools, in the long run I'm sure they'll come in handy. Thanks for the advice

 

It works great for me.. Never had an issue. Double click from the project window and it is open in C4D instantly. Brought animations across with no problem. Hit save and if I had it on stage it updates as the app is switched back to.. Seamless in my opinion. C4D 11 on OS X 10.5.x. When I reopen the fbx files I export from C4D I do indeed have a normals tag on them.

Best
Bluster T

 

But does the normal information come into Unity? I didn't say it didn't work, or you couldn't export animations. I said you can't export a models normal data with FBX.

Cinema4D internally refers to them as 'phong edge breaks'. Can you export a model, with FBX, that has some edges broken and others still smooth, and have those edge breaks come into unity?

I found no way to do this, in any combination of methods, with any plugin, even using cinema4d 11.5 with the newest update and FBX update. The cinema4d FBX exporter does not export phong edge breaks. You can only get into Unity a model with all edges smoothed, or no edges smoothed. This is a serious issue for any game development pipeline, especially low poly modelling work, as low poly model rely on edge breaks to make them look properly.

And if you did find a way to get it to export phong edge breaks, would you please go here and explain how to do it
http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=37241&highlight=cinema4d+normal

 

Silo 2 is the best for me.

 

I model so that I use a standard phong break at 35 degrees. It gives me sharp bevelled edges where I put them and rounds out organic surfaces as I wish them to be. I have never had a use for phong breaks due to the manner in which I create my meshes. However I will reiterate that a full set of normal tags comes in with every fbx export to Unity. Ergo I am correct on the main issue of normals going over but not sure about your subset. A good forum to ask would be at CGTalk where the folks from Maxon have people sitting day and night to support the more elusive parts of the app. They are well open to requests. Per-Anders in particular is one who knows C4D, SI, Maya, Max and other 3D apps inside out. Used to be a plugin programmer but I guess Maxon saw what king hell knowledge he has and hired him to code their app and provide support.

Not wanting an app pissing contest..just simply stating my experience and your original post said normals do not come in and that is incorrect. FBX import works just fine if you know how to mesh your object.

HTH
Bluster T

 

It's actually not that difficult to achieve, if you don't need manually defined smooth grpoups as in 3DS Max. I wrote an explanation inn the other thread.

Cinema 4D certainly has it's fair share of flaws (just like any other 3D programm hast, probably) but it's not unusable. I never saw any program that worked so flawlessly that there was no need for workarounds (in any given situation).

The answer to this thread probably still would be "Blender". That's a different story, though. I guess this topic's dead anyways as the starter of it hasn't replied in a long time.

 

Bluster, I don't want to diss cinema4d at all, I would in all honesty be using c4d for my work if this normal issue were fixed as I do think c4d is the best option. Aside from this one little thing.

But are you sure c4d exports normals properly?

I did ask on cgtalk forum before
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=47&t=827539

The jist of the answer I got was that not only is the FBX normal export broken, but the function in the entire autodesk FBX sdk is broken and no application outside of autodesk lineup can properly export FBX with normals.

And if you can get the edge breaks into unity from cinema4d. How? Hitting the 'calculate normals' checkbox in unity is not the same thing. In maya for example, you break the shading on an edge, then put that .mb file into unity, the edge is broken in unity without having to turn on 'calculate normals' at all. That is what I mean by cinema4d can't export normal data on fbx. It either exports all the edges as hard, or exports all the edges as smooth, and to change that you have to turn on calculate normals and do autosmoothing inside of unity. But it will not carry over manually placed edge breaks into unity. Unless you know how to do this? I would really like to know because I would be using c4d if it could.


motionblur, c4d does have specific smoothing groups, it is implemented as 'break/unbreak phong shading'. And having to make your models to smooth all angles at a preset angle is not a viable workaround. This is a very basic function in making games. You could be ok if your doing like level geometry. But in higher poly organic meshes, you need manual control. Putting properly placed hard edges on a model is an art as important as actual placement of vertices and UV's.


And don't misunderstand me making a big deal about this. I don't bring this up simply to bring down c4d, or even steer people away from c4d in general. I bring this up because I want it fixed, so I can use c4d myself. Being unable to manually place hard edges won't work for what Im doing.

And I do think until this is fixed the Unity team should make this missing function very clear on the features page. Unity does not mention this at all anywhere in the docs, I feel like it is misleading adveristing, Unity does not fully support C4D if you cannot export manually placed edge breaks to it on animated models. I came into Unity development with c4D all ready to go, but had to jump ship on it at the last minute because of this and I am a little perturbed over that.