[appledude83]

I belive I was watching Steve Job's keynote from Paris where another guy came up on stage and showed off some 3D programs. He made like palm trees on one and showed off 3 or 4 cool looking programs. What programs are out there that are like those? In other words does anyone know a pretty simple 3D program that would let me mess around making environments or something. I have no experience with anything like this so I don't mean some complicated and expensive program like Maya or something. Plus it would be nice if it didn't take a dual 1.25 Ghz Powermac to run it. Just curious, thanks guys.

[dannyn]

A relatively simple program for creating 3D environments is Bryce. It's been around for a while, and the render quality is very nice. It's also fairly easy to get some nice results without spending a lot of time learning the program.

If you feel like you need more power than Bryce, you can try Maya for free by downloading the Personal Learning Edition from Alias|Wavefront's website. It'll take some time to learn the basics (the tutorials that come with it are very good), and there's a pretty nasty watermark in the interface, but with a bit of practice, you'll be able to create some really nice stuff. The stuff that was shown at one of the Macworlds -- the really neat plants and trees -- is Maya's Paint Effects.

[appledude83]

Thanks alot dude. I've got both programs downloading right now and I'm gonna try them out. Sadly I have to try them on my PC since I won't have my new Mac for about 2 months. Anybody else feel free to fire off some more suggestions. Maybe some 3D program that could be used to make a 3D cartoon or comic or something.

[dampeoples]

he was demonstrating Vue D'Esprit.
http://www.e-onsoftware.com/Home/AppleExpoKeynotes.php