Does Anyone Here use MODO or MARI, UE4 or Unity5?

[jeffglobal]

The deeper I get into trying to create what I want, for FO4, I've noticed various tools as I've studied the problem space.

 

Right now I kinda know 3ds Max, Photoshop and Substance Painter. I am learning zbrush (it's fk'ing fun man), substance designer and Maya (for animations later). Starting to look at UE4 and Unity5, but one place says Unity is ubiquitous but, idc about Crazy Birds kinda stuff. I'm considering graphic, fashion and architectural design too, depending on how this develops.

 

My problem is, is, I want to use the industry standard software for games/movies, but it's very difficult to acquire the real info about what the studios/production houses are using, and some ppl say it's the person not the program, they will always teach the person the appropriate program...

 

...well, I'm not here to learn to get a job.

 

Does anyone know, what the game/movie industry uses to create their best products? Idc what they use to make crap. Though some ppl say, it's the player not the equip, I KNOW for certain, marginal increases in advantage of equip cause catastrophic results, at least on the battlefield, and in sports the right equip means you can stay close or are overrun for certain.

 

So if I'm gonna bust my butt learning stuff, it might as well be on the best equipment, even if it's software.

 

Thank you for any feedback.

Edited February 7, 2016 by jeffglobal

[nekollx]

Depends what you want to develop for, I'm a xbone/wiiU developer myself and use Unity 5 because unless your doing Java Unity is the Wii developer platform bot for XBONE anything works since XBONE is a windows derivative

[jeffglobal]

I didn't know that the Xbox was universally described the way I thought of it. It's awesome for what it was designed to do: surveillance; between the eyes, ears and wifi, it can see, hear and map the local area...I thought wifi mapping your home or apartment was going too far, as well as reporting the number of ppl in the area. Got to appreciate the tech though.

 

I don't want to develop for the xbox, or ps4, or phones, since they are dead tech or trivial ways to make money, sometimes LOTS of money. I just can not relate to the average person, so there's no way for me to design for that.

 

I want as realistic as possible, but in situations that are totally implausible. I want to make female "armor," or costuming, so when she moves, the movement and flow of the costume exposes her intentions. My latest thing to do is try to lay bear a woman's intention symbolically thru costuming. Strange, but I think it's possible and I think it's unique, cause man, I've been searching for stuff and it's no where. A plaid shirt and jeans is a costume for a type of woman, but it means by itself, absolutely nothing. The same as with the way some ppl try to relate their orientation, they are all wearing masks. I want to expose meaning.

 

The sum total of costuming for women actually is a lot less varied than I thought, from Red Carpet, to Haute Couture to Scifi movies, given men are restricted to so few things...Women have more, but not really a lot more, or the designers are restricted in what they are allowed to produce, or it's just their restricted imaginations. In the first Hunger Games, the men wore SUITS, like wtf, and the women wore high contrast shawls over something simple. The hair was varied, but except for a pastel color palette, some ruffles and flowers in the hair, even the women had low variation.

 

But even this is just a means to an end for learning the tools. Just like as a classical guitarist, playing the notes aren't as important as playing the composer's intention. It's funny, when women at work heard me play, they thought I was awesome sauce, but before that, I was just jeff. I said, I still am, just jeff. They said, no, now we know you're talented. I said, you didn't notice before? I've always been playing the guitar even when I'm not!

 

So I want tools in this situation to do the same thing as the guitar. It's not the image, but what it produces in the observer.

Edited February 7, 2016 by jeffglobal

[Nimboss]

Hi!

 

All engines have a steep learning curve at first, but if I mostly (I'm not native in English) get what you aiming at I would recommend UE4, but I have my doubts because of MODO and MARI you talk about in the same sentence.

 

I had to google the details, MODO seems sort of animation and render engine (no games involved) do you want to make games or movies? MARI seems like another high end tool specific made for movie FX not games?

 

 

UE4 is a top AAA engine that has been evolved from UE and up to current version and been used in loads of AAA games. The funny thing last year was that Epic Games made it available for almost anyone to play with and create games. There is, and that you have to consider, that for all game engines a legal part exist and if you get very successful they all want a part of the gold in one or the other way. There are other game engines that probably are superior in some parts regarding speed or heavy graphics but almost all of them are bundled with a NDA and a hefty fee before you even can play with them. And not forget those specific engines are only usable by a very closed set of people to make a certain kind of genre of games.

 

To get a picture what UE4 can achieve if not still knowing, google about upcoming Paragon MOBA game, not my bag of game type, but the graphics in most of the trailers you can find are made in game not separately cheating movie rendered stuff.

UE4 is also released with source code if you are a programmer and needs to modify or create plugins to achieve what you need!

 

 

The second and it actually shall be the first most prioritized question when deciding about game engines: Are there an existing big evolving and kindly sharing of knowledge and advices community around the engine you decide to start working with? Or do you have friends that already uses it and can support you? If not you will get grey haired quickly if not insane. :smile:

 

 

Unity5 is not bad, if I had been convinced I could create what I want to achieve I would consider our fellows in Denmark. It has a devoted community and some nice easy web online deploy solutions.

 

 

 

So am I just another fan boy? (Most people cant read nowadays on Internet, so if I get some stupid responses on this post despite my long general explanation below, you are the type of dudes I read about many times over the years claiming you will create the most awesome MMORG ever, and in the next sentence ask what normal maps is needed for? Prepare yourself to be ridiculed :devil:)

 

I reed about Unity engine years ago and was almost convinced, but not seen any top big AAA titles used with it, they have something but not for me, like the WWW tool to create web games, or the create once and deploy to all supported platforms like Android or iOS and more.

 

I have a licence of an older game engine (paid for) that I dabbled with but it nowadays don't keep up with modern standards, still competent (and have a detailed forum, but many seems to have moved on to engines that is more modern, still lot of these guys pop in to give advice, that's nice).

 

I have a license (paid for also) for another game engine with full source code (If I ever will be more clever than the totally maths genius developer, laugh!) that I believe is close to AAA standard and have some real revolutional implementations like voxel based terrains (with a hight map based game engine you can never create tunnels or natural bridges over canyons without using separate meshes, like in Bethesda games, just saying.) Currently (when this post was made) the development has partly stalled, since they want to create a game that can show of the possibilities of this engine because, well there has not yet been created any block busters with this engine yet! The community is strong but they presume you actually can code at some level with C++ before you ask obviously basic ANSI C++ questions you should have learned long before.

 

O.G.R.E. Been there, it's a render engine, nothing less nothing more. But what it is supposed to do, it will. For a full fledge game engine you have to be some of a hard core programmer and avid LEGO builder since you have to create the game engine yourself using this part for the graphics and bring in other blocks for Sound, AI, Physics, GUI and so on. If you are interested in core system development and want to make everything yourself this is the thing. Some actually have done and if you google O.G.R.E. you will find some of them.

 

Irrlicht anyone? Tested and followed for some years, needs hardcore programming skills to get anywhere beyond demos, at least the last time I checked.

 

I did not mention CryEngine and that's because I freaking not understand what stand point they have around all this currently nowadays, it has been stormy the last years for them. It's a good engine but who can use it and what would it cost and how rabid will the NDA be?

 

 

 

Personally I'm more interested into create content for a game like quests, storylines, put in assets needed and NPCs to interact with, and huge open worlds to explore, than to dive head long into core programming, that's why I hanged around Bethesda games for so long time. And now I hope at last for FO4 the real owner of this game namely ZeniMax Media Inc. realise they cant run around the plate of hot porridge like some insane cats anymore and instead truly give us fully supported tools that works both for game logics (CK,GECK or whatever they will call it for FO4) and for including new meshes (fully supported importers), just for less than one or so % of their annually income. If not, well I hate to use plethora of tools developed by lovely enthusiasts and still need detailed binary hacks to get where I want, just because some filthy rich people don't understand the best for them. For creative people that like to use a top notch game engine fully supported with importers for content and a close fit with the developers to suggest innovations and a great community for help and knowledge I would try UE4 instead.

 

[jeffglobal]

ok, cause when I looked for games made on Unity's engine, it was like Crazy Birds, and nothing else special, but UE4 had big nasty games that I knew. Oh well then, UE4 for now. It does look horrifying though. After 5 separate UIs that are completely different from each other being learned in 2 months, the feeling of OH SH!T, this is gonna suck doesn't feel as bad as before.

 

Thanks for the input.

[xxdeathknight72xx]

For starting out I would suggest
Max for modeling
Zbrush for sculpting
Maya for animating
Photoshop for Texturing
Xnormal for baking
Unity as engine of choice

Those are the most user friendly weapons of choice for those uses in my opinion. Yes, max can rig and animate but it is a pain in the ass compared to maya believe me. Another reason I suggest you start with those is because you more than likely arent going to break into a large studio that will have the money for Substance Painter/Designer, DDO, Knald . . .
I suggest starting out in unity because it is such a user friendly engine and there are years upon years of documentation and there are a s#*! load of people that are willing to help. Though Unreal has technically been out for a while it has made a huge shift from 3 to 4 and though it has a lot of technical doccumentation it honestly is very artist friendly in my eyes.
The only thing Unreal has over unity is that it has node based scripting built in but you can download packages for unity that do the same thing in a much friendlier way.
I started with UDK years ago and moved into 4 once it came out but lately Ive been fiding myself using unity more and more
get Unity and get your hands on Shader forge and Playmaker once you are ready to start implementing
start making games :D

[Aikospacerogue]

Its is the person and not the tools they'll look at, teaching someone a new program isn't that much of a roadblock and thers even studio's that might buy the app . Used Zbrush for years, took me less than 2 hours to get up n running in Mudbox.

 

 

Deathknight is correct on their list, the only thing I wanted to add is unless you have ideas of going into the movie industry, don't bother with Mari. Just don't, its too expencive for what it is.

Stay with Sub Painter or Quixel or ,hell even 3DCoat (no bad feels 3DC is my favorite texture program but its only slowly wining ground) , whatever works, but add Photoshop to your list, because its downright crippeling if you don't know your way in PS.

[jeffglobal]

@xxdeathknight72xx

Hey, to me Photoshop is like assumed knowledge. It's where I go after Photoshop...and it ain't Photoshop 3d, holy crap that sucks. There's only so many times "you can see" someone make a picture of your union rep at the station, with a gun on the table getting kissed by lady gaga and having CVS print it out, put it on the refrigerator and just wait...I've heard of ppl doing stuff like that, idk how to do that. I've aged my bro's daughters and put them in teen fashion clothes, and I gave my bro a diet (he actually want's a fashion shoot fix for his face, he does online dating crazy bastard)...and put back my muscles in my late 20s and 30s. My color matching could be better and my selections of hair could be better, but I don't necessarily care to learn more. I suffered thru a few hours of just blending modes and almost jumped out my one story window. I'll learn more PS as I need it.

 

Hmm, the more I use ZBrush 4r7 PE (think it's PE, idr) The more I think I can do the 3ds poly modeling in ZBrush by itself. The Zmodeler tool sure looks like all I'd use to model in 3ds max. If I use the ZBrush workflow where I model a low poly in zmodeler, sculpt in Zremesher, then decimate and project down to the decimated mesh and finish with a subdivided mesh for detailing and polypainting and fk man think, lightbox? the thing where you can use pictures to texture your model, I dont think I need 3ds max tools for modeling at all...and even ZBrush can uv unwrap that low poly mesh for me. I apologize, I learned almost a semester of "college" in a couple days this week and I had a family court date today, that went well (for me and my sons) thank god.

 

I'm also concerned I did a better texture on my Grumbly Cat mod in Zbrush than Substance Painter, [my avatar and mod] but I assume designer would do better since it's more mature...idk. But SP as it currently works can't bake textures of different elements onto one map, I have to go to SD to merge them with a color id map and spit. To make generators and all that good stuff, you need to work in SD, so why work in SP at all really?

 

On the other hand, SP does a great job with baking normals all the way to thickness maps. I have to admit, they're great.

 

I did mess around with Quixel for a while, but at the time, they had virtually no videos to watch and that pissed me off. The idea of running in PS, was ok, Idc, I just care: does it do what I need to do. I have 3dCoat but I haven't played with it at all... Now I may fk around with Mari, cause SP seems good at only one thing: making hard surface models look worn. On the other hand, I'm only beginner-intermediate in SP, so it could be me, not the program itself. There's only so much a person can learn in 8 weeks total with all these programs btw...it's my way of avoidance and substitution, and it works!

 

Now, Maya's polygon tools for 2016 are supposibly close to 3ds' too, and I've been learning Maya because of eventually making short animations, or VR thingies later, but holy crap, VR stuff brings back UE4 or Unity5 again...now I also got bogged down with rigging, cause now I see 3ds rigs, Zbrush kinda rigs with those balls, hmm, I didn't get to Maya's rigs yet, but I have the courses to watch...and the animation courses to watch...my concern is the real power of Maya will be it's scripting language and procedural riggin and animation stuff...which may be unavailable for me to learn because that is private knowledge of each movie house or animation studio.

 

Ok, I got Shader forge and Playmaker.

 

Now, I did like beta over VHS. So my desire for UE4 over Unity5 maybe just that all over again. I have a series of tutorials for UE4 for environments. I also have a Unity5 series too but, it comes down to show me the projects that are using each engine.

 

For example, I have XCOM2 it's UE3 (maybe, I was told not UE4. I have UE4.10.2 [why I remember that...idk]), and I'm gonna start playing and modding for that game soon. What has Unity done other than Angry Birds? I'm not trying to make games for the ppl's computer: their phone. Phones now are all the average person needs to be happy. Those ppl are the first ones automated, wait for it...wait for it...it's already happening...it's so quiet...ahhh, like grad school during summer break, so peaceful.

 

May I have an example to use to mod for using the Unity engine?

 

@Aikospacerogue

 

I agree it's not the software it's the person, but the best tools allow the most possibilities. It's hard to explain without analogies.

 

I noticed as I got stronger, I could do more skills in my martial arts. It became effortless to do what I wanted to do and destroy my opponent and deny him touching me.

 

When I had the best ping pong racket (they hated me calling it ping pong) I was devastating. There's only so far a professional person can make crap equipment go. Eventually, it's your tools too. I have at times hit my imagination limit with the tools I have now but, it has been rare. That's where I want to be. Yelling at myself, "You fk'ing talking monkey! That's all you've got!" Can you understand that?

 

I don't know how else to describe it, but when I was younger and in ridiculous shape, the mechanical part of the act of humping was effortless. Since it was effortless, I could concentrate on my partner, and because of that I became so "good" at providing a excellent experience I scared the living crap out of the women I dated and tended to not see them again...or they'd complain, "I'm losing myself to you." "I have to leave. It's like I'm dissolving" I'd be thinking, well, fk, that's what I get for providing an experience they didn't think possible. Life sucks. At the time, I didn't realize, sex was a weapon, and it was used by women to control men, without that, it's over.

 

I want the same thing to happen with my creative process. [Not make women run away...] The fading of the tools into just the expression of the art itself. That's my only purpose for using all these tools and alternatives now.

 

 

Thank you for your guys input.

[Aikospacerogue]

Good to hear you're already familiar with PS :) Though, trust me, I encounter plenty of people wanting to do 3D or just visual arts who have never opened an Adobe app, I got Adobe in school 15 years ago so I have no idea what they teach kids these days, but imo PS should be a thing in any highschool regardless what they follow. Or Gimp, just you know, something that manipulates images while not being on a phone, or instagram.

 

Zmodeler is a very bare bones pseudo solution, there is more about Max than just that. I'v found myself to be capable of much more knowing an app like Max than I was by only knowing Zbrush.

I'd say if you can, look into Pluralsight (or digital tutors) they have courses that'll teach you everything you could possibly need and it takes, eh, maybe a week. Yeah thats not a few hours type of fast, but its well worth the investment.

[xxdeathknight72xx]

yeah, I've tried to use the ZModeler in zbrush but I just dont think its worth learning. I was super excited but not being able to easily add modifiers like the ffd or a proper bend deformer was a killer for me. I absolutely LOVE learning new software and new methods but that was just way too time consuming for something that I should be able to do in seconds.

As for texturing, I would suggest only using photoshop for the first few months. I say this not so much as a texturing exercise but as a UV exercise. (what do you mean?) - forcing yourself to texture 2D will make you think of the projects future. as you model you will think of proper edge flow and where the best place to cut your seams will be to get the most out of your UV space. it will also teach you proper UVing. instead of just doing an auto map and being able to just paint right over your seams you'll be forced to, again, make more technical minded decisions and fill your uv space properly rather than having fractured uv islands just splatted in your 0-1 space.

 

maybe that's just me, learn the hard way first so you have a better understanding and if I go to a studio that doesnt have substance or zbrush they will almost always at least have photoshop or another photo editor like it.

as for substance designer, that is more for tiling textures and its a lot more technical. its just a shiiiiit load of nodes strewn together. Im into that but idk how you feel about node based scripting and editing