Currently I am working on a g4 500mhz 1gig ram, 16 mb ATI Rage card. Recently I began using Carrara to create quick 3d renderings for presentations. I traditionaly perfer Soft Image but unfrotunatley my employer's did not have it in their budget to purchase this software. Carrara was the program that fell in their price range, and i am stuck with it for a while.

Unfortantely I have been experiencing frequent crashes with this software. Overal the preformance of the software is sluggish (from the interface and pulldown windows to working in the files themselves). The files I have been creating are not memory intensive and use verly little textures and bmps. My companies tech support recommended upgrading video cards to resolve these issues. My 2 choices are the Ati 32 Radeon and the 3dfx voodo 64. I have heard good and bad about both.
After reading the article about Voodoo 5500 on macledge.com I think that ATI Radeon might be a better choice. Radeon card is designed to communicate via Accelerated Graphic Port which gives it better throughput that's why it equals or betters the performance of Voodoo 5500 with 64 MB RAM which uses Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus, additionally Voodoo does not support Apple DVD. Do you agree with this or is better to go with the Voodo 64?

Finally I would appreciate any comments on recommended 3d software on a mac. I know Maya is coming soon for osX but its pri ce is still to steep. What do you recomend for a price range between $1000.00-$3000.00. Thank you for your time, I look forward to your response.

[Misha]

Transferring to the Peripherals forum.

Hello,

Found this review on the video card issue. I'd probably get the Radeon.
http://www.barefeats.com/graphic2b.htm

As for the 3D software, in your price range, there are basically 3 options:
LightWave, ElectricImage, and Cinema4D.

They all have strong and weak points, and all fit the price range. I'm partial to ElectricImage, mostly because that's what we use and I believe best fits what we do.

Which one is right for you...you'll have to decide, but I'll give you a few pointers on selecting.

First you have to know what you intend to mainly do. We are a industrial design firm, so we mainly do mechanical and architectural stills and animations. Some folks want to do special fx for TV and video, others want to do character animation for video games. Your needs will narrow down the selection quite a bit.

LightWave is known for rendering quality and more recently their character animation tools. It is also the most widely used package, so for building resume' skills, you can't go wrong here. There are lots of 3rd party plug-ins for it..I mean LOTS. I'd say the downsides are slower render speeds and poor user interface (nearly DOS like in some ways.)

ElectricImage is know for render speed and a Mac like interface more like AfterEffects or Photoshop than its competitors. It also has one of the best looking renderers in the industry.
(At the moment its a phong only renderer, so you'd have to fake reflection and refraction when needed...not as bad as it sounds, unless you make wine glass scenes all day. Expected in December is the long awaited upgrade EI Universe which will add selective adaptive Raytracing along with better character animation tools.) It can also handle very large complex scenes with ease. (I often create scenes with 3 million plus polygons).
It's downsides are no-raytracing (for now) and slow interface in the character animation area (might be better on new version with OpenGL), great plug-ins, but less of them as it isn't as mainstream of a program.

Cinema4D is a bit of an odd duck here, but well worth looking into. It doesn't have the long history of EI or LightWave, but has quite a following in its short life. It has a really fast Raytracer and many options found in more expensive 'Maya' like packages. I think it has an odd interface, but many people like it. There is also quite a bit of 3rd party stuff for it already, and the developers seem very agressive compared to the others. It can also handle very large complex scenes.

Also, they all run deals, and cross upgrade deals. Right now ElectricImage (till they release EIU) will sell you the current version with the modeler for under $1000. That is a real deal considering I spent $2300 a couple years back and a couple years before it was a $7500+ app.

Hope this helps a bit, please e-mail me if you have any questions about EI.

-Steve
stevew@pdg-inc.com
Web CG stuff: http://www.pdg-inc.com/~stevew/cg/

I use strata 3d which can be downloaded from www.strata3d.com. A pro version is also available for purchase.