I am no expert by any measure. I just dabble. I would love to work in this
field, but I waited too long and at my age im sure no animation house
would
hire me. Anyway, this is what I have to say.
I downloaded several tryout and demo programs. Without manuals I was able
to
do the most with C4D just from intuition. I was unable to do anything with
LW without do***entation. I never tried XSI or Maya (because I am still
using Win98SE). I had an old version of Max for a while, or at least
thought I did. Bought it off ebay. Bought the original box, disks,
manuals,
etc. To make a long story short, I could not register it. Its not that it
was previously owned or registered. The problem was that I bought it
outside
of an official dealer, they refused to let me register it and give me a
permanent activation code. Had I not waited 4 months before trying it out
I
probably could have returned it to the seller. In short, Discreet has a
mean
spirited marketing system. I hear that they go after anyone trying to sell
Max on ebay. That was $300 lost down the drain.
I lucked into an academic version of C4D R8 over a year ago when I taught
Photoshop and Bryce at a communty college. The R8 price was really good,
like $239. Now Maxon has raised the price, especially for non-design
students & faculty to around $450. The community college has downsized
most
of their departments and there are no more cl***** for me to teach. Oh,
well.
Anyway, I found C4D to be much easier than other software to start making
things happen. If I had a choice of software to teach for 3D it would be
C4D. Its not the most powerful, but for a non-career path single course in
3D, I think it would be an ideal choice. Especially if Maxon dropped the
academic price down again to what it was a couple years ago.
Just my humble input.
Henry
|
