For learning on how to use, Lightwave is easier to learn then 3d max but personally I find that 3d max can do more then Lightwave. I find for modeling that 3d max can do more then lightwave. I would recommend 3d max over lightwave but that is my own preference. If you do a google search, you can find lots of tutorials on both. If you are looking for a good 3d forum, try cgtalk.com .

>>due to the fact that most universites/colleges want you to know some 3d<<

Lessee... print design, prepress, multi-media, web design, 3D modelling/animation... oh, did we mention the tuition hikes to help pay for our state of the [cough] art labs?

Once upon a time... design fundamentals, visual analysis/thinking/strategy were actually considered more important than software fluency. Weird, huh?

some answers from another forum that i thought might help....check out

cgtalk.




www.cgtalk.com

1) Only Maya and Max have access to Vray. You could wait for the Vray exe project or for Maxwell tho. The only renderer capable of fast blurry reflections is Vray, all the others are slow at that. Lightwave is generally quite slow at everything when compared to Mental Ray, Cinema4D or Vray. It also doesn't support micro poly displacement, which is supported by Vray, C4D and Mental Ray.

2) Built in great poly modeler: i think you should forget Maya. It's the worst poly modeler i've ever tried for both workflow and tools, Maya was originally designed for NURBS. The best poly modeler out there is IMHO Cinema4D r9 at the moment. Lightwave doesn't have ngons, doesn't have edges and it's starting to show its age. Max isn't exactly excellent but the tools are there, XSI is a bit better for sure, at least it supports isolines editing and smooth proxies. None of them are even close to Cinema4D r9 for poly modeling.

3) NURBS: Lightwave doesn't have NURBS, Max sucks at NURBS and so does XSI, and this is also the opinion of Max and XSI users, they ALWAYS avoid using NURBS. The only decent NURBS modeler i can think of is Maya, if we exclude the dedicated NURBS modelers out there (Studio, Rhino, SolidThinking, ThinkDesign, Catia, Pro Engineer...).

4) XSI, Maya and even Max if i'm not wrong support Xref's. Cinema doesn't and i don't think Lightwave does that either.


I'd go for Maya + Vray + Silo (or C4D r9 core) or i'd stick with Cinema and add a NURBS modeler such as Rhino and maybe wait for an update to our Advanced Render or wait for Maxwell/Vray exe.
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Post Edited (_Tyger_) : 11/26/2004 2:37:11 PM GMT

Alright, thanks alot for all the information guys.