Continue to Site

Welcome to MCAD Central

Join our MCAD Central community forums, the largest resource for MCAD (Mechanical Computer-Aided Design) professionals, including files, forums, jobs, articles, calendar, and more.

Animation Packages/Transferability

bmw481

New member
My company is looking to purchase an animation package that we can import our Pro/E models into and create realistic animations. I am leaningtoward getting 3D Studio Max because I am familiar with working in it and the software has the features we need. I know that there will be some data transferability issues when moving files between Pro/E and Max. I have been looking at NuGraf softwarefrom the site www.okino.com and it looks very impressive. It appears that this software transfers Pro/E parts into 3D Studio Maxvery well. It also has a nice renderer.


What kind of software do you guys recommend for animation? Has anyone used the NuGraf Software for transfering data between Pro/E and Max? If so, what kind of results did you get in Max?


I am just curious to see what your opinions are on both types of software and whether or not you think there is something better out there.


Thanks,


-bmw481
 
When the models are saved as objects or whatever and imported into the desired package (Max / Maya),am I right in assuming that all the place and connect constraints are lost?
smiley5.gif



So if a complex animation within an assembly is required ( say an egine for example) do you need to reassemble or rig the components to move in the desiredway?


I have successfully imported models in to many 3rd party packages and managed to create very nice images, but not so many animations of moving parts within an assembly.
 
No sense getting into a x vs y since Max can produce a render as capable as Maya.



Consider the strengths of the apps.



Max

-----

The Good: was an Autodesk product so it has some good strenghts if
you're more tuned to "engineering" applications. So measuring tools and
snaps are decent. Max now has Mental Ray integration but I've heard it
can use work.



The Bad: Clunky interface, and in my opinion very prone to crashing



Maya

------

The Good: has a wide array of tools, fairly good nurbs, mental ray
integration (albeit not very good). PaintFX neat, probably not useful
for engineering renders.



The Bad: being an amalgamation of two products, the renderer took a hit
and isn't that great. Even with the integration of mental ray, its
integration was weak and is still troublesome



XSI

-----

The Good: best mental ray integration. nurbs tools are good and poly
manipulation is very good toolset. Foundation offers all the tools you
need to produce a good render



The Bad: very deep menus so hotkeys are essential. the render tree can very intimidating to novice users



Lightwave

----------

the Good: very fast and able program to get the job done quickly. If
you're dealing with small models and you need a fast render, then LW
works great. One of the best render engines out of the box



the Bad: its been out of development for a while due to settlements
with the original code group but its back on its way now with new
developers. the opengl isn't its strongest in modeler.
 
Hi all,


I'm trying out Maya personal Learning edition 6. Can i import my wildfire models into it? I've tried saving my models as *.obj and *.igs but maya is not recognizing them. Do i need extra plugin to import? Is the import disabled in this learning edition or i'm just not doing it right? I've never used any rendering software before, so please excuse me for these newbie questions!


Thanks!


Gwen
 
Speling,


Thanks for your help.


Obj is not one of the plug in. there's igs though. i selected that, and when i import my igs file, it no longer gives me an error msg butit still doesn'tload anything.
 
Maya will open obj.



In wildfire, be sure you are exporting something! The most common
mistake is that when you do save-as and wavefront, you must first
selcect the part, then the coordinate system.



For iges, I don't believed Maya supports trimmed NURBS so you may have
to edit your IGES config to export 128 and not 144 (or vice versa, read
up on the int3d options in WF) subset... *I think* I don't have maya so
I can't comment with authority.
 
I've tried to open the obj file in wildfire itself and it's working. But when i try to open it in maya's learning edition, it says "unrecognized file type". Does anyone has the learning edition and is able to import *.obj?


Thanks!
 
Thanks Speling,


Yeah it's the student edition (personal learning edition). I've also done some search and i'm not the only one that has this problem. However, this is not one of the limitations stated in maya's help file, they did mention that obj export is disabled though.


Gwen
smiley1.gif
 
the proe animation modul works well as long as you want an engineering looking animation if you want a photorealistic CDRS or prodesigner did as good as 3d max. and it was intuitive un like isdx. but thats life. if you want both forget trying to do it inbetween jobs or as a last minute thing for a presentation, if you want it good, it takes time and a half longer than you have and it certainly not in the budget. its a job in its own right and opus is the best ive seen.maya after that,


bring back CDRS all is forgiven.
 
CDRS doesn't do as good as 3D MAX or the like. That's a bad sales ploy
from the PTC group and they're still shoveling that line with ARX and
Photolux.

Edited by: provan
 
I use 3D Studio Max for all my rendering and animation work. I export
my models out of Pro as STEP and import them with a Max plugin called Power
Translator by N-Power Software.
 

Sponsor

Articles From 3DCAD World

Back
Top