Help with Modeling Applications

#1 In regards to professional 3D graphics applications for Mac OSX your choices are Lightwave and Maya. Lightwave is the cheaper of the two possible programs and "Lightwave Dave" has written a nice DTS exporter for it too. Maya is a bit pricier and has no DTS exporter at this time.

If you buy either application they come with an extensive set of documentation that will teach you all that you need to know about the program and how to work with it, from there its just practice, practice, practice.

Logan

#2 I've used both a little and picked up Maya much quicker than Lightwave, but it's down to personal preference

#3 Cinema 4D is your next step up is my recommendation. It has excellent mac support. Game development on the Mac side is limited. Even Maya and Lightwave, most of their game development modules are PC only. You'll spend years and years and years before you go pro more then likely, especially in today's soft economy. Maya and Lightwave are excellent programs to know (you should know both of them). But that's a long road, and I do recommend Cinema 4D as well. Cinema 4D's learning curve is a bit easier, and you'll be able to jump into Maya and Lightwave from there relatively easily.

#4 I did some further research and found that i can get a upgrade from strata 3d plus (which is what I have) to strata 3d pro for $250. Since this would run on mac OS X, it would solve the issue of slow performance and annoying chrashes. And it would be more powerful on the modeling end of things. This still does not solve my problem with getting my models onto other people harddrives. I found a cinmea 4D for $300. I am a student and i can get academic pricing.
I can afford either of them. Would cinmea 4D help me much more than strata pro would. Help from someone who knows strata 3d would be greatly appreciated. Also will knowing the industry standards be worth something a few years down the road.
Marcus Yoder

PS I take back what i said about strata 3d plus being a peice of crap. I was rather frusturated with it at the time and i have recently realized that for the price it was rather good. I found some really elegant solutions to the problems i was having.

#5 Oh i forgot to mention. Do a lot of programs lack support for DTS and Max file formats or is that just something strata has a problem with. Is there anything that can convert files into DTS or Max format.

#6 The .max file format is only supported in 3DS Max, you won't find it anywhere else since its a proprietary format whose inner workings are not public knowledge.

Support for .dts file format is limited to whatever people have made an exporter plugin for (ie. people in the community). To date only 3DS Max, Lightwave, Milkshape and Truespace support an export the DTS format.

#7 Just so you know, if you buy something with academic pricing it usually means that you are getting an academic license. That means you can't create anything commercial with it. If your not doing commercial work but just messing around, Maya PLE is free. So that's a pretty good price. You can grab that here.

GF

#8 Is realmwars considered commercial? is that Law acctually enforced?