First, I would like to thank you for visiting my Renderosity homepage. I hate doing bio's, so I am just going to write about the programs I use and what I've learned in the process. I tend to be very opionated, but will refrain from pulling out my soapbox for the most part.
3D animation is mostly a hobby for me. In the real world, I am a production manager in the construction industry. I am in my mid forties, married and have a dog. My first computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80. I have a degree in Computer Aided Drafting and Mechanical Engineering (1986).
Background: Normally, I worked with CAD creating mechanical drawings. When AutoCad introduced material texturing in the early 90's, I was very intrigued. Although CAD's abilities were limited in this area, I could see the possibilities of applying this technology to 3D sculpture. When TrueSpace for Win3.1 came out with UV mapping in '95 I quickly bought it. And was quickly disappointed. It was very difficult to create anything with TrueSpace. Later Blender and Metasequia Beta were released and I was finally able to create complex mesh models.
First works using the Metasequia to TrueSpace then to Blender and finally to Animator process (1999).
I would create the meshes in Metasequia and import them to TrueSpace for texturing. Then import them into Blender for rigging. Working with Blender was a nightmare and was constantly having to update plugins that only worked half the time. Eventually Anim8tor came out and I could do the rigging there, but it took a looong time.
-> -> ->
I bought Poser 4 in 2000 but found the models to be ungainly and pretty ugly. The models I created looked far better. Even after spending over $600 in add-ons, I eventually uninstalled Poser and went back to Metasequia. I figured after a few years of development, Poser would be a good program. With the introduction of Vicky 1 and 2, things started looking up. But my focus had turned to webpage design during the dot com craze.
The industry went through a lot of changes in that next few years. I was building my own computers since the beginning and was writing much of my own software in C and Basic. Through those times, I developed a serious resentment (maybe hatred is a better word) toward Micro$oft. To this day I will continue to use my free copy of Win98se. Call me old fashioned but I refuse to buy WinXP and give Gate$ any of my money. Apple/Mac never appealed to me and Linux seems to still be in the development stage.
Needless to say, Daz|Studio 2 won't run on my computer. I have now been using Daz Studio (V1.0) since March 2008 and really enjoying it.
Update May 2009- I upgraded!! Got a XP pro copy with 10 licenses. So now I also have Daz|Studio 2.33.
This 3D modeling program by Japanese author Osamu Mizuno is easy to use and great for creating meshes. There is a shareware English version but does not export .obj files unless registered.
Quick humanoid mesh forms. Although version 9.1 was a rushed beta, it's still useful for creating a large variety of people. I am looking forward to the next version which should be out soon.