I'm looking to get into this a little bit ... in my copious amount of "free time." I'm looking into using Cinema 4D software, but I was wondering if that was a good choice (since I don't want to learn one thing and find out it can't really do what I want). To give you an idea of what types of things I want to do, I would basically (at the moment) use it for astronomy simulations. Like what it may be like to fly through a dense planetary ring. Or showing a neutron star drawing material from its companion star. I would also like to use it to start to bring some concepts/characters/scenes from a fantasy story I'm writing to the screen, per say. For example, creating and briefly animating something like these plants: Or this passage:
I used to know 3DsMax to an ok extent. It's not that great, and i've done animation in there too, but I don't' rally remember how to do ti.
In the freeware on the web check out the ray tracers, fractal generators, and 3D modelers. The best software combines all 3, but they are usually commercial although there are often student versions. Lightwave and 3D Studio Max are the main high end pieces of software in this department. skieur
