Another newbie question. Can I use Autodesk's Motionbuilder with A6? What's the difference between Motionbuilder and Maya? They both create characters and models, right?

Noob65

motionbuilder is an animation studio package. Maya is a modeling/building package. read the specifications on the sites for both products, they are clearly defined there.

Ok, I did and it confused me a little. To clarify, do you need the motionbuilder to make characters you make in Maya to move in a game or is the motionbuilder just an animation movie package?

Sorry for my lack of knowledge in this department.

Noob65

no.

its just an application to do animation. you can find many applications that do the same thing. modeling programs, some do some don't handle animating.

modeling isn't just point and click and your model is built, nor is animating or textureing ( skinning). it can be difficult, time consuming and take a great deal of time developing even the basic skills.

One tool/application isn't better than another, its more about learned/developed skills, the tools learning curve and what you need to create ( application of the tool to the project)

Grimber...great thanks for clarification. Would you recommend A6Pro for a beginner? Would it be sufficient to create a good multi-player on line game with not too much graphic backgrounds but good characters.

Thanks for your patience,

Noob65

I would say : No.

I havent tried to script a multiplayer game (have only extra). But I heard its very tricky, so I think you should first learn C-Script -> start with lower edition.
With A6 Com u can make a multiplayer game too.

nipx

I don't know if you should get pro or not, maybe someone else can make that decision..but that is basically based on wether or not you can afford it and wether or not you need it right from the start.

Multiplayer scripting is tricky, I agree with nipx on that. However it is learnable as well. The main thing is learning where functions take place...on the server or client, and so forth. I am no expert in mutiplayer, not even close. I am just sarting to learn this side of scripting. However I can tell you it is in fact learnable, but it has a steep learning curve to it.

until you have at least a basic knowledge of c-script itself...you really can't learn mutliplayer. Well you can, but with the tutorials currently available they all pretty much require some sort of working knowledge in c-script itself. hope that helps you out in some way

Based on the questions you have asked here... and taking into account that you need muliplayer functionality... get commercial. It is the lowest-priced engine that has multiplayer support (200$). I would recomend extra, but if multiplayer is really your thing, then commercial is, at minimum, what you need to get.

Regards,
Raddaddy

Thanks all for your input in the matter. I think Pro is the right choice, it still very cheap compared to Unreal 2&3. Unreal is quite unreal in it's performance but so is the price of $350,000. I've been trying to compare prices on Maya and some sites sells it for $6,000+ and at Autodesk's own store you can get it for $1,999. Just wondering if anyone knows where you can get a lower price on Maya ?

Again thanks for all you help,

Noob65

One thing you should really note is Commercial can only support up to 4 multiplayers at one time. Meaning, four computers can be used to join a multiplayer session. If you have 8 multiplayer users with 4 computers, you can have two controller pads connected per computer and program a split-screen, multiplayer game from there.

If the only feature you really want is unlimited multiplayer, you will need to cough up $900 for Professional, even though you want just features from Extra and no features from Commercial -- that is, if you don't care about shaders, which is great if you want to support older and newer computers alike.