Hexagon replacement
Cross22
Posts: 66
Are there any good replacements available for Hexagon?
I have tried Cheetah3D for Mac which is reasonably priced but its poly modeling features fall short.
Blender & Wings3D have an extremely cumbersome user interface and are out of the question.
Anything else?
Right now I am leaning towards ZBrush but hard surface and low-poly modeling seems painful there.
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It's not for me, but many do good work with Blender. The community has been improving the user interface. And there are those in here who also use Blender so some of the D/S and Blender specific questions can be answered. Blender is free.
Depending on what you are looking for, you can try Sculptris. It's free from Pixologic, the people the make ZBrush.
Silo got a 30 day trial so perhaps worth having a look at that one :) The interface is rather easy to get into from my point of view and I use it on my Mac :) I got it for a quite low price in one of those Mac software bundles. Not sure if it is on sale like that at the moment.
Other than that I also use 3D-Coat, but e.g. not for hard surface models really and it is a different price category.
Greetings,
I second Silo; it's often on sale, and it's very much worth trying out seriously. There are a number of tutorials and such out there which are really clean, and a thread on it IIRC in the Art Studio.
-- Morgan
...the major advantage that Blender (and as I understand with the latest release, Wings3D) has over Hexagon and Silo is that it has a 64 bit version while the latter two are only 32 bit. Personally "I have thrown in the towel" on Blender after several attempts due of the overly cumbersome UI. and way the programme operates.
I tested Silo and easily crashed it within 20 minutes by creating too heavy of a mesh. Meanwhile, Hexagon simply freezes up on me ten to fifteen minutes into a session even on my 64 bit workstation. I believe this is due to in part to the memory restrictions the applications are required to operate under (maximum 2GB, 3GB if made large address aware and have the memory "overhead").
Both Silo and Hexagon also appear they are on the track to becoming "abandonware" as neither has been seriously updated in years.
If you have the financial resources ZBrush (single user licence is 795$) would be a good option and a number of PA's here use it. The student version, while the full application with no feature "hamstrings", unfortunately will not allow you to create meshes for commercial purposes. However, if you just want to take the time to learn it first, it could be a financially easier route as you can always upgrade to the full commercial licence later.
I believe Stonemason uses 3DS MAX for all his modelling work.
Modo is another good modeller with a nice UI, but like 3DS MAX, it too is expensive (about 1,500$).
Sculptris looks interesting; but before I install it I'm wondering what (if any) import and export options there are?
Thanks,
Charlie
I just got Modo a couple months ago and haven't gotten to play with it yet. I'm finishing up projects that are on my system that are already modeled.
Sculptris looks interesting; but before I install it I'm wondering what (if any) import and export options there are?
Thanks,
Charlie
I believe it can only import/export models as obj. Sculptris is a great little program, but it really isn't suitable on its own for any serious work: it lacks the basic modeling tools and only offers sculpting.
From what I have read in a different forum, Silo is in the same boat as Hexagon, i.e. development has basically stopped. :(
I have not tried Mudbox yet which is available as a monthly subscription for $10. I would imagine it has the same limitation as ZBrush in that hard surface modeling and low-poly stuff will be hard to achieve.
Silo just did an update to their software. I'm not sure if they plan on a new version or not but they did just update the software. I've been using it since 2004. I just got Modo cause I've outgrown and wanted more ability with my stuff. Mudbox is a great program for texturing. I use it all the time
...Modo would be my modelling app of choice, good UI, stable, 64 bit. Just need to hit the lotto to afford it.
As long as Silo is stuck in the past (32 bit) the potential for crash issues (as I discovered) due to memory limitations doesn't justify the price anymore.
That's my biggest complaint about Silo is its only 32Bit. I do very big stuff and once I get so big it majorly lags. It is a very good and mostly stable product. It's great for the starter and even the experienced. But as I said it's limited to some extent. I will still be using it to do some stuff cause I do love it. I very RARELY ever get a crash so in my eyes its pretty damn stable. Poser crashes more than it does. I just got Modo cause I outgrew Silo and I have more options in Mod to do even more detailed work. It will speed up the process on a lot of things.
...I was working on a 50s style rocket ship when it crashed. Didn't seem to like very "clean" sleek high poly meshes.
Fortunately I was just using the 30 trial, which BTW is the full application, no "hamstrings" (until the trial period ended) so no money out of pocket.
This type of issue tends to be discouraging and why I've made little headway in 3D modelling. Hexagon has such a nice UI, I just wish Daz would either do something with it or let an open source development team take it over (who would bring it into the 21st century).
They use it for morphs and things like surface displacement and so forth. I don't i have heard any of them say they model in it start to finish.
ZBrush will be getting allot of new tools in an update that's pretty eminent at this point including traditional modeling tools which will make hard surface modeling a breeze!
I still sort of use Hexagon. It clicked with me.
There's a student version of Modo that's fairly affordable (under $200). But it's only good for a year, and you need to send them proof that you're enrolled in a school. (every year apparantly)
There's always Carrara - it may not have quite the degree of sophistication of a ZBrush or Modo, but then it isn't $800 either (it's $65 right now for PC members), but it's still a pretty solid modeller. And tree maker. And terrain maker. and 64-bit. and works great on both Mac & PC. and uses your existing Studio & Poser content (including Genesis and G2). And comes with M5 & V5 Pro bundles thrown in. And it's a very good animator and renderer in it's own right. And you don't have to leave the Daz store or Daz forums.
Sometimes we're too concerned with looking elsewhere that we don't see what's right under our nose. :)
...that is what I am working with for the time being.. Nice and stable, though you have to save any models as untextrured, unrigged .objs to import that into into Daz.
I would use Hexagon, because I got it for free and the video tutorials make it seem delightfully like Google Sketch Up, but there are too many horror stories of how it frequently fails under Windows 8 for me to attempt making anything with it.
Ironically, I'm not looking to make lots of smooth and organic shapes. I'd actually wanting it to create original angular-looking military vehicles. Some kind of simplistic rigging ability would be nice, so that I can make hinging doors, landing gear, wings and so on, but not essential.
There are a couple of very nice tutorials for Blender, which I found yesterday, detailing how to create a spaceship and, more advanced, jumbo jet, but... They do seem a little too complicated at around the half-way mark. Also, looking at the Blender site, it only mentions exporting to .obj file format (don't think Daz Studio can import any of the others), but I've never seen a rigged/articulated model in .obj format. Only static.
Google Sketch Up would be perfect if it saved files in a way I could import directly into Daz Studio without using any third-party stuff. To the best of my knowledge, it doesn't, though. I just want to be able to save something and instantly use it in a Daz Studio scene - no messing about.
On the other hand, I've been wondering if I could simply make something like this directly within Daz Studio, using primitive shapes and parenting them together. I've got zero familiarity with UV mapping, which would mean applying shaders (and possibly diffuse images) to relevant surfaces. I was fairly good at being able to do that kind of stuff in Second Life and adding surface detail, like piping, should be relatively easy if it's done in the same way as Second Life does. My frustration with SL was that surfaces and angles rarely matched up exactly, because it was apparently bugged in that way.
I'm using Hexagon on an 8.0 machine, and it does crash, regularly. The reasons is most of the time that I am progressing too fast. Hexagon is a bit like a donkey or mule, in that it has its own pace and will balk when things don't go the way it wants.
That said, I found that regular saving after important or work intensive steps (and changing the file name, I usually add a number at the end and count upwards) helps a lot, and in case the program does crash, you don't have too much work loss to mourn.
If you just want to create basic shapes, DS primitives are quite usefull. I once created the Brandenburg Gate just from DS primitves. Dreamlight has a tutorial on creating in DS, if you want to shell out lots of money.
UV mapping is not eally complicated, but you have to do it a couple of times to get the hang of it. There are a couple of tutorials on youtube for Hexagon.
Oh, now that's interesting... I've heard from a lot of people that it can crash every half-hour or more, under Windows 8 and that instability was severe. Not good if you're in the middle of creating a spaceship or tank or something like that.
Yeah, noticed Dreamlight's tutorial, but waiting for a discount, for obvious reasons. :) A lot of theirs I have are presented well.
Blender may be overkill if you just want modeling software but It's my modeler of choice between my Mac and PC and it works flawlessly between the two.
Hexagon was an inevitable crash to desktop every 10-15 minutes on the four systems I tried it on (XP,Win7, OS 10.5, OS 10.6)
I'll throw in my vote for Blender.
Any new program you use, there is going to be a learning curve. I hear many people complain about Blender's UI, but as far as I know, you can customize it almost any way you want. It has never once crashed on me, it is 64-bit, it can do everything from vertex/edge/plane modelling, sculpting, uv unwrapping and mapping, texturing, you can even render straight to Luxrender if you want to.
Give it a try. Don't say, oh, I don't want that free Ferrari because I only learned how to drive an automatic! :)
I think I did get it to crash once, but I didn't understand Sub D at the time and brought my divisions up to what would be used in a 90 minute Pixar blockbuster. It's one of the more stable apps on all platforms that I've used vs what it's capable of doing and the one time I reported a bug the dev group had a fix that night posted for me to test. It does take a lot of undeserved overlooking because it's not a 3,000$ program even though it can go toe-to-toe with pretty much all of them.
I use Silo and since the update I have had very few if any crashes.
I used Cararra back when v2 came out. The modeling room was woefully out-of-date back then but the renders looked nice. Maybe it's time to see what the latest version is like.
I love Hexagon, but in the end I dropped it because it's not stable enough for me (also using 64-bit system).
I've had the opportunity to try these:
3DS Max: too pricy but also too crammed with stuff I will never need but still pay for. Also, high learning curve
Curvy: its interface I couldn't get used to, but it's great for organic modeling
Sculptris: nice (and free!) very intuitive, simple software, but lacks features
Blender: I like Blender a lot. Still in the process of getting to know it, but I had an immediate click with it
Sketchup: Not too hard to learn but I came across its limitation for commercial work (you can always pay for it of course, but it's $590) and I dropped it
Here is a list that might help ^^
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_3D_modeling_software
...DreamLight has a Tutorial programme that covers modelling with Primitives in Daz Studio. Don't have it because for me video tutorials don't "sink in" as well as written ones. Still I can't see using primitives for creating extremely detailed models particularly since you don't have all the vertex/polygon modelling tools that a regular modelling application offers.
To effectively "weld" you have to "group" all the parts together which changes the centre point for transitioning and rotating (important if you will be using the model in an animated sequence). Modelling with primitives also relies heavily on DFormers and the Geometry Editor tool along with Opacity Channel to effectively "create" different shapes out of the standard ones which, depending on the complexity of the model, can actually be more labour intensive than building it in a dedicated modeller. I look at modelling with primitives as a good stopgap when you need a simple prop that is unavailable or in a format Daz Studio is unable to import. I use it occasionally when I need something in the "crunch" (like a classic "rabbit ears" antenna I needed for an old telly in a scene I am currently working on).
It is sad that Daz seems to have apparently abandoned Hexagon since they took the effort to create the two way bridge with the Studio application. Simply adding a polygon/vertex modelling function that is on par with Hexagon to Daz Studio could only make matters worse all around as the added complexity would mean more potential instability for the application as a whole. I would rather see features like open ended cloth dynamics added instead which Studio has needed for years.
Why not model in Blender, import and rig the obj file in Daz Studio? Figure setup tools are free with DS 4.6.