Snapz wrote:
I thought MoBu is like $400 mth subscription? $3600 per version stand alone license? I would have to look again, I could be misstating.
Yes, something ridiculous like that. Webanimate is around $90 or so--quite a difference in price. iClone with 3DXChange is closer to $600 I think. Granted, Webanimate probably doesn't do as much as Mobu but considering I only use a subset of Mobu's tools, I think Webanimate or iClone is potentially a great value. (I say 'potentially' only because I haven't really used these two yet.) If they're easier to use too, then I'm all for it.
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I have 6 different types of editors, Mobu, Maya, 3ds Max all 2014, WebAnimate 2016 Stand Alone, iClone 6 and Blender, along with iPi Studio as an editor also.
Professionals meaning Pixar or Disney? Most of the very large studios use in-house designed software, along with commercial software like MoBu. Maya for modeling.
When I was with Rhythm & Hues, the studio developed and maintained proprietary software for animation, compositing and rendering. They did use ZBrush and Maya for modeling, and Houdini for certain FX work. The department I was part of, The Box, used mostly 'off-the-shelf' software, which mainly meant Maya, LightWave, ZBrush, Vue Xstream, Photoshop and Fusion. We sometimes used Blender and Houdini to create specific fx elements. We also developed a lot of smaller but specialized tools. For mocap, we usually worked with Giant or House of Moves but my supervisor was always interested in my iPi Mocap Studio experiments. In fact, back in the 'beta days', some of my earliest iPi Desktop Motion Capture tests were shot in our cafe area (using Logitech cameras) late at night. Shortly after I created the first 'Brudders Music Video' scenes at home, my boss and I discussed possibly using Mocap Studio on a video game cinematic job. Sadly, that was just around the time Rhythm started to collapse.
After that, I freelanced with The Asylum for about a year and a half, and there we mainly used LightWave, Fusion and After Effects. Some of the crew also used Maya, Max, RealFlow, and Houdini for specific situations. The Asylum also had a license of Mocap Studio but I think I was the only one there who knew how to use it. I set Mocap Studio in a meeting room once but after that I found it was easier to shoot at home with my personal license and bring the data in to work on.
These days, I'm on staff at DreamWorks Animation. I can't talk about the software used there but I think I can say it's a mix of proprietary and commercial software. The team I'm with uses mainly off-the-shelf software but we also write some of our own tools.
So, in my experience from big to small studios, the range of software is used can vary quite a lot, and it can include proprietary, 'consumer' or 'pro' software. Generally, studios want to use whatever it takes to get the job done quickly and with great results.
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There is another called MODO, its cost is much higher, but less than MoBu and has some great animation features.
I occasionally use Modo but only for modeling, not animation. It used to be reasonably priced. I started out with Modo 101 but I stopped upgrading at version 601. They've since integrated a version of Ikinema for rigging and animation, so it bears much similarity to Webanimate.
G.
