What's the best 2d or 3d animation software for macs? Some of the good ones I know of work only on PCs!
Maya seems to be a bit popular on the Mac. There's a free educational version available. Check out http://www.alias.com/
electric image. i think this was used for star wars 1 & 2, terminator 2, austin powers goldmember. it has a very efficient rendering engine and can translate a number of files. it also supports nurbs. http://www.eitechnologygroup.com/products/eias.html
wow electric image, havent heard of that in ages.. but was able to try it out during its earlier days. i've used ANIMO for pc before. its an ok 2d digital ink/paint package from cambridge animation system. Hash is another NURB modeling tool for pc/mac.. the animation feature was limited. but they do have excellent NURB and can be exported to other animation softwares. Lightwave 3D also got mac version i believe. Maya, by the way, does not have a full unlimited version for osX yet. but you can try out its "personal learning edition" on osX.
Yup. Maya Unlimited 6 for Mac OS X won't be available until "Late Summer 2004". $6,999! ~Henjie
---------------------------------------------------------- Just wanna provide some updates here, Electric Image just trashed their old modeler due to a licensing issue with the engine developer... now the new package of EI 5.5 onwards will have Silo mac version bundled instead. Silo is a polygonal/sub-d modeler and therefore EI has no NURBS support anymore. EI never really supported NURBS anyways, the modeler did use NURBS for modeling being a hybrid modeler, too bad though that by exporting the model as FACT format to the animator module actually tesstellated it into polygons in the final version... so there was no actual advantage with the NURBS modeling in the first place. I'm actually still thinking if I should upgrade my copy of EI. The new version lacks in character tools as well as no UV mapping built-in. I've been an EI user since 8 years ago, am also one of the founders of the EIAS Platter through the Hotline platform, so you can drop me an message if you need help and I can hook you up with the EI community online. On the other hand, great renderer, very efficient and can take as much polys as you can give it... best for non-character projects! ---------------------------------------------------------- Maya on the other hand is a very full-featured package if you're ready to pay an arm and a leg for it as well as the yearly maintenance subscription which is similar to that of Form*Z's. You won't go wrong with this one, sub-pixel displacements, Mental Ray, hair, fur, dynamics (hard and soft bodies), cloth, UVs, great character tools, MEL scripts, paint FX, etc. You got these via plug-ins even without the unlimited version already! Again, if you can afford it... and have the time to cope with the steep learning curve. ---------------------------------------------------------- HASH Animation Master is a patch/spline package (not NURBS sorry). Cheap package... again, got two copies which I refuse to upgrade... total waste of money. ---------------------------------------------------------- Lightwave on the other hand, if you don't mind the interface would be the next best bet on the list to Maya. Full featured through plug-ins, lots of resources, decent modeler and great animation tools... as well as reasonably priced. I heard v8 is much better on the mac than 7.5 although still nowhere near the PC version's performance. ---------------------------------------------------------- Personally, I use EI and Maya now... they both suit my needs and production. For Maya I got Shave to do hair simulations. Hope all that helps, sorry for the long post... hehe
