Sorry your browser is not supported!

You are using an outdated browser that does not support modern web technologies, in order to use this site please update to a new browser.

Browsers supported include Chrome, FireFox, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer 10+ or Microsoft Edge.

Geek Culture / Extracting Editable Objects from a Single Photo

Author
Message
mr Handy
17
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 7th Sep 2007
Location: out of TGC
Posted: 11th Sep 2013 02:06
Link
3-Sweep: Extracting Editable Objects from a Single Photo, SIGGRAPH ASIA 2013

Just watch.



P.S. let me copy two top comments from youtube:

what kind of sorcery is this?

48 Dislikes are from Adobe!

P.P.S. I want to test it on ponies :3

Back to top
Profile PM
Chris Tate
DBPro Master
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 29th Aug 2008
Location: London, England
Posted: 11th Sep 2013 02:52 Edited at: 11th Sep 2013 02:53
Link
BS. Absolute rubbish; now way is that authentic. HAHAHAH! People think that that is real; where in the blazes did the overlapped backdrop come from when the telescope was rotated? And what on earth is that telescope standing on? And where is its shadow

It is not real; I can't imagine how any digital scanner could interpret the shapes so flawlessly without loading or errors. There isn't a great deal a machine can do to interpret depth just by scanning a bunch of pixels.

Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Phaelax
DBPro Master
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 16th Apr 2003
Location: Metropia
Posted: 11th Sep 2013 03:40
Link
Quote: "It is not real; I can't imagine how any digital scanner could interpret the shapes so flawlessly "


Why not? It's just a more advanced form of edge detection. You can circle an object in photoshop and delete and it'll auto-generate the background to replace it.

Even so, I have my doubts as well considering how the selection so easily snaps to the objects. But to get the 3D shapes, it'd have to analyze the color shading to get the proper depths.

But there are tools out there that lets you draw a 2D object and it builds a 3D model from it.

http://zimnox.com
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Chris Tate
DBPro Master
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 29th Aug 2008
Location: London, England
Posted: 11th Sep 2013 04:12 Edited at: 11th Sep 2013 04:15
Link
Yep I use such tools; but I doubt this particular example is authentic. It should at lease contain some UI besides a couple of red and blue handles.

It is just my gut feeling, just looking at that obelisk example with the foreground railings conflicts with my brain cells. I could be wrong.

Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Jimpo
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 9th Apr 2005
Location:
Posted: 11th Sep 2013 04:50
Link
I guarantee you this is 100% authentic. I took a computational photography class for fun at university, and I've seen and done so many crazy things like this that I've become desensitized to it.

Quote: "where in the blazes did the overlapped backdrop come from when the telescope was rotated? "

There are plenty of incredible convincing seam filling algorithms that can fill in holes in images without anyone being able to notice the filled in region was never there to begin with.

Quote: "There isn't a great deal a machine can do to interpret depth just by scanning a bunch of pixels."

There is a great deal a machine can do. My professor showed off one of his research projects in class, where not only was he able to recreate the 3D scene from a single image, but he was also able to perfectly recreate the lighting. Using this, you can place your own 3D objects into the scene and render them with matching lighting. We were shown several pictures and no one was able to spot which objects were fake and which were real. There were even videos, like one with a picture of a pool table that had fake billiard balls bouncing and rolling around on it. The whole thing looked like any normal video.

Man this post is making me appreciate how awesome that class was!

http://degorpg.blogspot.com/
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Chris Tate
DBPro Master
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 29th Aug 2008
Location: London, England
Posted: 11th Sep 2013 13:41 Edited at: 11th Sep 2013 13:57
Link
To reiterate; I use and know of such tools as I did state; I know of the lighting extraction techniques, but this video doesn't look real; there is no loading phase, no UI, no mention of maths or computer science principles, no technical terms or phrases, no references, no industry terms or phrases or references, and the telescope is not standing on anything? And such a dramatic recalculation of the backdrop would at least take 2 seconds. You can't even render a bloody scene in 2 seconds on most PC systems. There is no UI in this "software application", and the presenter sounds 15 years old.

But I know it has been done, I could do it myself if I was paid to create it in about 6 to 12 months; but not so flawlessly, and these people did not do it, OR, it IS real but is exaggerated.

Buy anyway believe in this video if you want to.

Quote: " "There isn't a great deal a machine can do to interpret depth just by scanning a bunch of pixels."
There is a great deal a machine can do. "


You say there is a great deal a machine can do; I agree. A machine can do many things; it can scan photos into a 3D object, it can print spreadsheets. But this video is not authentic.

Does anyone know where the website for this software project?
Quote: "
Using this, you can place your own 3D objects into the scene and render them with matching lighting. We were shown several pictures and no one was able to spot which objects were fake and which were real."


I know you can put 3D objects into a scene to make them look real, I am a programmer, 3D modeller and texture artist; I have a trained eye from 10 years of practice and can tell that that telescope is overly saturated in hue and is not standing on anything, before it was extracted into 3D, and after.

I know you can use an algorithm to extract the width of similar pixel paterns to guess the width of the object, and use that measurement as a centre point of a revolved cross section to produce cylinder shaped items such as telescopes; but not so quickly and effortlessly on the part of the CPU, and disclosed with crayon like blue and red handles not even stroked with pixels, they look like adobe drawing paths at 5 or 7 thickness. All 3D software I have used use pixel stroked handles at 1 or 2 thickness. And the video shows no vanishing point cross-section defined, the software shows no calculation of the perspective used for the circles used to extrude and revolve the damn shape. You need a vanishing point or cross-sectional line or plane to determine the angle of the telescope.


Why is the candelabra's shadow on the same side of the light source? And do not get me started on that Obelisk

It is an Adobe Premiere / After Effects video of nothing more than a video; and is an insult to your university professors real work.

But enjoy believing it is real.

Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
mr Handy
17
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 7th Sep 2007
Location: out of TGC
Posted: 11th Sep 2013 14:17
Link


Back to top
Profile PM
Chris Tate
DBPro Master
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 29th Aug 2008
Location: London, England
Posted: 11th Sep 2013 14:33
Link
Yuk. That looks disgusting; I hate texturing characters lol.

Interesting though.

Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
mr Handy
17
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 7th Sep 2007
Location: out of TGC
Posted: 11th Sep 2013 15:16
Link


Back to top
Profile PM
TheComet
17
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 18th Oct 2007
Location: I`m under ur bridge eating ur goatz.
Posted: 11th Sep 2013 19:18 Edited at: 11th Sep 2013 19:20
Link
Quote: "To reiterate; I use and know of such tools as I did state; I know of the lighting extraction techniques, but this video doesn't look real; there is no loading phase, no UI, no mention of maths or computer science principles, no technical terms or phrases, no references, no industry terms or phrases or references, and the telescope is not standing on anything? And such a dramatic recalculation of the backdrop would at least take 2 seconds. You can't even render a bloody scene in 2 seconds on most PC systems. There is no UI in this "software application", and the presenter sounds 15 years old."


While I'd like to state that the GPU would be capable of performing such calculations at real time, I still doubt this video is true. The way it's presented is too unprofessional and it doesn't reveal anything about how it's done.

As to recalculations: I'd assume you only need to perform one recalculation at the point where the object is extracted. After that, you have the 3D object and there's no point in recalculating anything, except for handling the rendering.

TheComet

horses
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
baxslash
Valued Member
Bronze Codemaster
18
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 26th Dec 2006
Location: Duffield
Posted: 11th Sep 2013 20:01
Link
@mr Handy, that video is pretty awesome too. It's kind of like an advanced version of SketchUp...

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Quik
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 3rd Jul 2008
Location: Equestria!
Posted: 11th Sep 2013 20:47
Link
crazy part of this is that it creates perfectly seamless textures on most of them



Whose eyes are those eyes?
Back to top
Profile PM
mr Handy
17
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 7th Sep 2007
Location: out of TGC
Posted: 11th Sep 2013 22:26 Edited at: 11th Sep 2013 22:28
Link
SIGGRAPH papers:
http://kesen.realtimerendering.com/siga2013Papers.htm
Quote: "3-Sweep: Extracting Editable Objects from a Single Photo
Tao Chen, Zhe Zhu (Tsinghua University, Beijing), Ariel Shamir (Interdisciplinary Center), Shi-Min Hu (Tsinghua University, Beijing), Daniel Cohen-Or (Tel-Aviv University, Israel)"

Next step:
http://www.math.tau.ac.il/~dcor/
Quote: "I am a Professor at the Department of Computer Science. I received a B.Sc. cum laude in both Mathematics and Computer Science (1985), a M.Sc. cum laude in Computer Science (1986) from Ben-Gurion University, and a Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science (1991) at State University of New York at Stony Brook.
My research interests are in Computer Graphics, Visual Computing and Geometric Modeling and including rendering and modeling techniques, Shape Analysis, Shape Creation and Editing, 3D Reconstruction, Photo Processing, compression and streaming techniques, visibility, point set representation, morphing and volume graphics. Click here for a more accurate H-index of publications.
I was on the editorial board of several international journals including CGF, IEEE TVCG, The Visual Computer and ACM TOG, and regularly serve as a member of the program committees of international conferences. Between 1996-8 I served as the Chairman of the Central Israel SIGGRAPH Chapter. I have a rich record of industrial collaboration. In 1992—93, I developed a real-time flythrough with Tiltan Ltd. and IBM Israel for the Israeli Air Force. During 1994--95 I worked on the development of a new parallel architecture at Terra Ltd. In 1996--1997 I have been working with MedSim Ltd. on the development of an ultrasound simulator. I am the inventor of RichFX, and Enbaya technologies. I was the recipient of the Eurographics Outstanding Technical Contributions award in 2005."


Comparison:
Youtube channel: user/dannycohenor


Sure, fake.

Back to top
Profile PM
Fallout
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 1st Sep 2002
Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 11th Sep 2013 23:06
Link
It all looks completely feasible to me, and is very interesting. The concept is very similar to defining a face and then extruding it, except the extrusion happens along an edge detected surface. The example of the toothpaste tube failing shows it is fallible and working on a very basic level.
Back to top
Profile PM
Matty H
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 7th Oct 2008
Location: England
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 00:29
Link
I agree with Fallout, all the objects have a symmetry to them and nothing impossible seems to be taking place, although it is still very impressive.

Back to top
Profile PM Email
Jimpo
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 9th Apr 2005
Location:
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 03:05
Link
Quote: "There is no UI in this "software application", and the presenter sounds 15 years old."

This is a SIGGRAPH presentation, not an ad for a software application. It's more about showing the technology to fellow researchers rather than showing a working software piece. Videos like this are staged to purposefully not show any UI elements, as they aren't to relevant to the underlying algorithm, and the video recorders are very careful to avoid showing any bugs or flaws with the algorithm.

Anyways, computational photography and computer graphics are awesome. This thread makes me wish a I did more with them

http://degorpg.blogspot.com/
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Chris Tate
DBPro Master
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 29th Aug 2008
Location: London, England
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 03:15 Edited at: 12th Sep 2013 03:17
Link
Quote: "This is a SIGGRAPH presentation, not an ad for a software application. It's more about showing the technology to fellow researchers rather than showing a working software piece."


Yeah I know, that first video post (which is the one I was commenting on) is not real footage of a working photo scanning algorithm. So that telescope was taken from one source and pasted onto the separate photo to illustrate.

Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Jimpo
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 9th Apr 2005
Location:
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 03:23
Link
I believe the telescope is on the side of the fence the picture was taken from and is on a stand that isn't visible in the image. It's just taken from a weird angle. Something like this:



http://degorpg.blogspot.com/
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Chris Tate
DBPro Master
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 29th Aug 2008
Location: London, England
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 03:49
Link
Don't worry about my opinion Jimbo. We cannot agree on this, it's impossible for me to believe that telescope is standing on anything; or what appears to be a railing. It's my photoshop eyes, those pixels don't match up.

Ignore me, it doesn't matter if I think the first video is over-exaggerated.

Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Jimpo
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 9th Apr 2005
Location:
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 04:02
Link
Haha alright.

I'm sure even PhDs are guilty of waiting until last minute, cutting every corner possible, and throwing together a somewhat believable video of their algorithm in action.

http://degorpg.blogspot.com/
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Chris Tate
DBPro Master
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 29th Aug 2008
Location: London, England
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 04:23
Link
The facial one kind of scares me though; imagine all those face-book photos being used for mischief; although there are many misuses of existing tools originally created for good.

Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
thenerd
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 9th Mar 2009
Location: Boston, USA
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 04:51
Link
Quote: "Yeah I know, that first video post (which is the one I was commenting on) is not real footage of a working photo scanning algorithm. So that telescope was taken from one source and pasted onto the separate photo to illustrate.
"


I agree with this, but I don't see why it matters that they photoshopped the telescope in. I was under the impression that this was implied, the picture didn't try to look extremely realistic beforehand. The point of using an already photoshopped picture seemed to be for clarity.... It looked like after they generated a model the creators just displayed a background behind it that didn't include the original telescope.

However, that wasn't the point of the technology that they were showcasing! The impressive part is that they are able to generate a mesh from the contours of a shape, and that seems entirely legitimate, regardless of whether the image that they are generating from was real.

In addition, I found the homepage of one of the professors who has worked on this project, as well as other similar projects:
http://www.faculty.idc.ac.il/arik/site/research.asp

Back to top
Profile PM Email
Chris Tate
DBPro Master
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 29th Aug 2008
Location: London, England
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 06:26 Edited at: 12th Sep 2013 06:27
Link
Yeah true.

Thanks for the link to the website; as suspected the documentation is pretty brief.

I can figure out how to revolve the candelabra using bezier paths and hue sampling; what I can't figure out is how to determine the field of view without additional input from the user And my method would fail to work on greyscale images or if the backdrop uses a similar tone to the object. I'd need lots of straight lines in the photo to guess the viewing angle.

Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
easter bunny
12
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 20th Nov 2012
Playing: Dota 2
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 07:27 Edited at: 12th Sep 2013 07:30
Link
if Autodesk, one of the biggest names in the business can 'only' come up with this......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz7yPglLsxE

[yeah, I know, 123d catch is actually pretty good, but you still need to take a large number of images]


The NEW, awesomest app on Google Play
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Chris Tate
DBPro Master
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 29th Aug 2008
Location: London, England
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 08:23 Edited at: 12th Sep 2013 08:25
Link
Well, at least that is "working software". Autodesk would be the first to implement such a thing, long before Adobe. Some of their software costs more than some homes; you'd need a mortgage to install them.

Quote: "SAVE UP TO $1,500 ON SELECT AUTODESK SUITES & SOFTWARE"
Save? I couldn't even afford half of the saving.

Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Quik
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 3rd Jul 2008
Location: Equestria!
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 08:29
Link
but then again Chris Tate, 3ds max is meant for industry gaming, not small man startup ~~



Whose eyes are those eyes?
Back to top
Profile PM
ionstream
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 4th Jul 2004
Location: Overweb
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 08:56
Link
Extracting edible objects? Gimme a picture of some donuts, pronto!

It's definitely real. It's SIGGRAPH, amazing technology is debuted there all the time and you can download the working software. It won't be all that user friendly. The background removal was stated to use something called the PatchMaking algorithm, you can see where the seams are but it does a pretty good job, something on par with Photoshop's background removal.

SIGGRAPH has awesome stuff, check them out.

Back to top
Profile PM Website
easter bunny
12
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 20th Nov 2012
Playing: Dota 2
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 10:05
Link
Quote: "It's definitely real. It's SIGGRAPH, amazing technology is debuted there all the time and you can download the working software. It won't be all that user friendly. The background removal was stated to use something called the PatchMaking algorithm, you can see where the seams are but it does a pretty good job, something on par with Photoshop's background removal."

Get me a link quick!


The NEW, awesomest app on Google Play
Back to top
Profile PM Email
easter bunny
12
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 20th Nov 2012
Playing: Dota 2
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 10:26
Link
looking around, I found a number of reputable sources that had articles about it, so this gives it some credit at least.

http://www.wired.com/design/2013/09/jaw-dropping-software-that-makes-3d-models-from-any-old-photograph/
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/09/09/3-sweep-3d-technique_n_3893537.html
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/199842/
http://gizmodo.com/this-impossible-software-can-make-3d-models-from-a-sing-1277902245

And this page, which has info from SIGGRAPH asia:
http://kesen.realtimerendering.com/siga2013Papers.htm


There's possibility it's real, though it'd still be fairly useless, static lighting on the textures etc.
useful for indie game devs, but that's about all I say


The NEW, awesomest app on Google Play
Back to top
Profile PM Email
mr Handy
17
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 7th Sep 2007
Location: out of TGC
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 11:28 Edited at: 12th Sep 2013 11:30
Link
Quote: "In addition, I found the homepage of one of the professors who has worked on this project, as well as other similar projects:"

.
Quote: "And this page, which has info from SIGGRAPH asia:"


I believe my post is invisible?

P.S.
Quote: "There's possibility it's real, though it'd still be fairly useless, static lighting on the textures etc.
useful for indie game devs, but that's about all I say"

How about making stereo pictures? It's a next-gen of 3D coming. Modern TV has built-in auto 2D-to-3D but it is way worse than this.

Back to top
Profile PM
Van B
Moderator
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th Oct 2002
Location: Sunnyvale
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 12:00
Link
I'm dubious, but hell, I'm dubious with all these videos that show miracle techniques.

What I do know, is that Cyriak could do some remarkable things with this... He's the guy who does those Cows and Cows and Cows videos.

I am the one who knocks...
Back to top
Profile PM Email
mr Handy
17
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 7th Sep 2007
Location: out of TGC
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 12:41
Link
Quote: "Cyriak"

Oh yeah. I wnat this in real stereo 3D!



Back to top
Profile PM
Chris Tate
DBPro Master
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 29th Aug 2008
Location: London, England
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 13:20
Link
Quote: "but then again Chris Tate, 3ds max is meant for industry gaming, not small man startup"


Yep; but 3DSMax is cheap for Autodesk's standards. I think one of their Autocad solutions has a commercial license for $75,000. I don't think they reveal prices explicitly.

That stuff is probably used by companies like Ford, BMW, architectural and hardware manufacturing companies. I should have taken up CAD software development...

Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
baxslash
Valued Member
Bronze Codemaster
18
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 26th Dec 2006
Location: Duffield
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 13:54
Link
Quote: "I should have taken up CAD software development"

...and I should have stuck with it

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Van B
Moderator
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th Oct 2002
Location: Sunnyvale
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 14:08
Link
With 3DS Max, it was the industry pro's who pushed the price up!

It used to be fairly cheap, then suddenly Quake3 Arena happened and AutoDesk realized they could bump the price up and sell to developers. It would be nice if they released say, v4 for free - even going that far back, it's a really nice and useful modelling package that would suit most indie developers just fine.

I don't use it these days, it used to be my favorite thing for rigging and animating hierarchy models. These days I use Rhino3D, for technical models it's second to none - for organic models, well I make do, but it's really more for product design and prototyping... Gimme Rhino3D and a 3D printer and I'd be all set

I am the one who knocks...
Back to top
Profile PM Email
baxslash
Valued Member
Bronze Codemaster
18
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 26th Dec 2006
Location: Duffield
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 14:24 Edited at: 12th Sep 2013 14:35
Link
Quote: "It used to be fairly cheap, then suddenly Quake3 Arena happened and AutoDesk realized they could bump the price up and sell to developers."

I thought 3DS Max was pretty expensive back in V5 when I was using it heavily. Back then it was owned by Discreet. Gmax was the developers free alternative which can still be downloaded, although I'm not sure which version of 3DS Max it was based on.

It was the boon of 3D animation rendering used in media and film that really pushed the price up I believe.

Developers only really needed character skinning and rigging / model output.

I really miss playing with Max but I have other toys now I guess

EDIT: Looking into it it seems Autodesk had it from the start and the original cost was $3495 in 1990...

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Van B
Moderator
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th Oct 2002
Location: Sunnyvale
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 14:38
Link
Yup, I think v5 was a major price hike - v4 was only about £350. I'm sure that GMax was based on v4, has the same UI and stuff. v4 was used by Paul Steed (I think that's his name) for the Q3 characters, wrote books and tutorials for it, then v5 pushed the price up, and 3DS Max very quickly progressed onto v6, maybe even just to back up the increased price or make it a more tantalizing deal for AutoDesk, like show how much work they are putting into it to make it the industry standard. That's how I remember it at least, never really looked into it very deeply.

I am the one who knocks...
Back to top
Profile PM Email
baxslash
Valued Member
Bronze Codemaster
18
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 26th Dec 2006
Location: Duffield
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 14:52
Link
Quote: "Yup, I think v5 was a major price hike - v4 was only about £350."

According to the AutoDesk link I posted the price was $3495 for the original version. Not sure if that's true but it was around that price for v5 as I remember it.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Back to top
Profile PM Email
TheComet
17
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 18th Oct 2007
Location: I`m under ur bridge eating ur goatz.
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 16:26
Link
Quote: "Yep; but 3DSMax is cheap for Autodesk's standards. I think one of their Autocad solutions has a commercial license for $75,000. I don't think they reveal prices explicitly."


Enterprise software is ridiculously expensive. At the company I work at, the PCB layout software I use costs around $300,000 per person per year. The upside is of course all of the support and quick bug fixes you get. Cheap/free software always lacks in quality of its documentation and support.

TheComet

horses
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Van B
Moderator
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th Oct 2002
Location: Sunnyvale
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 16:42
Link
Ahhh, I think I'm getting confused again, I only paid £400 or so for v4 because I already had v3, that must have been the upgrade price. I got v3 through a company I worked for, making technical diagrams for a court case, I managed to convince them that 3DS Max was the best software for the job, and the court case finances were at the point where a few grand didn't make much of a difference
We were being sued by the Ministry of Defense (and we won!) so you can imagine how much of a non-issue the price of 3DS Max was back then!

I've only updated it once, I can't even justify spending hundreds from my own pocket for each new version. I'd happily stick with v4 if the damn thing still worked on my PC, it's still a great option for model rigging, setting limb pivots and centres, and basically plugging the gaps that Rhino3D leaves. That's why I think it'd be great if they fixed up v4 and released it for free - get the non-pro's on board so when they are pro, they'll want to use the latest 3DS Max.

I am the one who knocks...
Back to top
Profile PM Email
baxslash
Valued Member
Bronze Codemaster
18
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 26th Dec 2006
Location: Duffield
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 16:48 Edited at: 12th Sep 2013 16:52
Link
Agreed, it's crazy only having an education version when there are lots of professionals/semi-professionals that might learn to use it in their own time and then end up buying the full version because they see how awesome it is and already know how to use it. I convinced my employers to purchase Autodesk Viz (an architectural visualisation version of Max) because I had learned how to use it in my own time at University.

It would be great if they made a cheap game dev version (like gmax) with a massively cut down feature set just for creating / rigging / texturing game models too...

Sorry for the off-topic talk

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Quik
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 3rd Jul 2008
Location: Equestria!
Posted: 12th Sep 2013 17:05
Link
to be fair - 3ds max and maya and.. most of their software is free "for learning purposes" - which is imo really cool. More softwares should do that if you ask me ^^

*just noticed you guys actually did venture there,,, oh well*

I really wish Zbrush would do that too :/ And adobe with their softwares - as I THINK it would encourage people to use their softwares - and buy it when they feel "ready"



Whose eyes are those eyes?
Back to top
Profile PM
Back to top

Login to post a reply

Server time is: 2025-05-15 22:47:19
Your offset time is: 2025-05-15 22:47:19