Just a precision about my first post :)
I gave Realsoft 3D because seems its render works with "Nurbs" directly and that very few renders can make that :)

SketchUp - Make circle, copy and drag circle, rotate circle 90`, use follow me tool (that is if you don't end up making a donut).

MoI - draw sphere... finished


Yeah, which one is easier again? I have a hard time with the rotate tool in SketchUp, MoI wins this by a long shot! ... then again, G-SketchUp is FREE (license even allows for commercial use) and MoI is going to be in the $200+ range when v1.0 hits. *sigh* In that price range very few people are going to turn down something like SU (even if its harder to use). Seems MoI is a niche product. I was hoping for the viral approach like ArtRage. Just sell a lot of the product instead a few at a much higher price, but this is irrelevant.

I don't know how to post images on this forum, but I rendered a simple "primitive scene" in Kerkythea last night and it turned out wonderful. I exported the scene as a 3DS and was very happy to see the model "objects" show up in Kerkythea for material applying. Kerkythea allows you to add a physical sky and/or lights. Including other primitives :)

Another "renderer" is Pepakura: http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/
You can export the model then unfold it to make a paper model of your design or product. This really helps with rapid prototyping. The handy reduction of polygons when saving makes it a lot easier for Pepakura to process the model. There is a free version with everything enabled to learn on (no save), and I think the full version is $38.

Thanks for that link to Pepakura! I think it would be cool to 3D model something then make it as a paper model...

:) Gsketchup :menu window/component/shape/sphere :) (i have it but don't know if it's by default maybe I have add it I don't remember)

For post an image on the forum just use the "Attachment" button for link your image
and then you can (you are not obliged)
copy past the adress image and write
"<img src="adresse image">" without the ""external for see the image in the post it self
it's the same if you have an image from another host

Wow, thank you Frenchy! :)

I'll have to try that out when I get home. Cheers!

You're very welcome Joe :)
I know Rhino has an unfolding feature that many paper-model designers use. Though they have to add their own gluing tabs. There are a ton of Rhino-to-Paper tutorials on Cardmodels.net : http://www.cardmodels.net/

Form-Z also has a built in rapid-prototype unfolder (includes tabs) but I have never tried it out.
http://www.formz.com/products/formz/unfolding.html

> I was hoping for the viral approach like ArtRage. Just sell a lot of the
> product instead a few at a much higher price, but this is irrelevant.

Well I guess it depends a lot on your perspective, but I can tell you that a lot of people are completely blown away by how inexpensive $200 is compared to other professional CAD programs.

If you're doing professional work, $200 is a viral level type price. I can understand that from your perspective it doesn't seem like it though.

Google is a special case, I guess if I had a billion dollars worth of stock market money I could probably get away with giving out a free version. But I don't...

- Michael

Very true and I fully understand where you are coming from :)

$200 for a professional product IS amazing. But for the curious hobbyist tinkerer, not so much ;)
Kerkythea did a poll on their site regarding professionals vs. hobbyist (3/19-4/6) 303 votes counted.

Hobbyist: 40.6%
Professional: 30.7%
Teacher/Student: 23.8%
I use it very rarely: 5%

They are really neck-and-neck, but in the end we need to pay the bills.
I understand :)

> Kerkythea did a poll on their site regarding professionals vs. hobbyist

Since Kerkythea is free, that certainly helps to attract more hobbyists. If it wasn't free you would probably see different numbers in that polls.

I really like the idea of having my software easily accessible and helpful to a wide range of people, so there are a lot of aspects of free software that I like. In fact it is this same spirit of trying to be accessible that was one big motivator for me to have my price so low as it is (relative to other CAD programs).

But I just don't see how I could sustain a business with a free product, or even something in the $20 or $40 range.

To give you another perspective, I have been working on MoI for 3 1/2 years so far...

- Michael

No worries Michael, I know how you feel. My uncle has been trying to start up his own game company for the past 3 years. He is just now getting to the point of distributing his product. As an "army of one" its not easy, especially with his wife supporting his dream. If he offered it for free he would be really screwed.

So yes, I understand the situation.

Michael G.

Stick to your guns lad! Go forward with things the way you need to. I plan on supporting you & MoI all the way!

Be not affraid!

Michael T.

Thanks Michael!

- Other Michael

Okay so summer is coming up and I may not have daily access to Maya since I do not plan to take any college courses so I chose Blender for my home use since it is free and I can only work part-time with school and portfolio development, etc. I got it installed tonight and I like it a lot, especially since it imported my Doric Column ngon .obj file without any problems. I tried a quick render in its ray-tracer then downloaded Indigo to try.

All I did was import my column, scale the default cube for use as my ground, switched the default Spotlight to a Sun light, saved out the indigo .xml file then closed Blender without even setting up materials and started the render. When I came back from dinner I got this...



Pretty simple. I see a lot of potential with this renderer. Next I will try Kerkythea, which can do both biased and unbiased renders. In the meantime I'm getting tired of waiting for renders and Quicktime encoding to complete on my main machine so I am setting up Ubuntu Linux on a spare 2.4Ghz machine with Blender, Indigo and Kerkythea for rendering as well as Cinelerra for video editing and Gimp for image editing. I want to see how far I can take this free software thing :)

Hi Joe, that's a great result for not much fussing around.

After you mess with Kerkythea, it would be cool to hear what your impressions are of how they compare.

- Michael

Joe,

It looks pretty good!

Jesse

Thanks Jesse, that was all indigo because I didn't add any custom materials. Very nice free alternative to Maxwell Render.

I did make some time last week to try out Kerkythea. On Linux the UI was a bit buggy, but I got some decent renders out of in in Windows XP. Definitely worth looking more into next week. I also plan to try out Yafray and hope to post some comparisons soon.