Rhino3d or Cinema 4d

[davide445]

Did have some short experience with C4D and AFAIK is not a solid modeling software, so other choice is Rhino.

Will like to do both modeling useful for printing and also animation, mograph and rendering for more interactive and marketing related activities.

C4D will be a mess for 3d printing or can be an all round program? Rhino is so more difficult to learn?

[Entity]

Gday,

I do 90% of my print designs using Cinema 4D, took awhile to get my head around it, It`s great for fine detail adjustments and you get set desired polygon counts as high as you want depending on how many alterations you require to your object. I have tried Rhino5 but only rarely use that ( haven't given it a fair chance to be honest ). I have tinkered around with Solidworks & AutoCAD but purely because of the hours I have put into C4D that's my prime design software for printing atm. Plus squillions of you tube tutorials out there no matter which one you decide to go for.

Cheers

Cheerss

[awerby]

Rhino is a NURBS surface modeler, it's not a solids modeler. You can make a sort of solid by attaching surfaces together, but it's hard to get things perfectly watertight, particularly if the surfaces have edges with problems.

C4D has its roots in modeling for animation, so it's good at making 2D renderings, but I doubt it's an optimal tool for creating solid models either. I'd say that if making 3D prints is important to you, that you should keep looking - there are lots of 3D modeling software alternatives out there these days.

[jimc]

rhino is a nurbs modeler that is true but its whole purpose is to design perfect solid watertight models. nurbs are just the type of lines you build your model with. its industrial design software designed for making models that are going to be produced so its function is making solid watertight models. while you can produce surfaces as well, it is a solid modeler. if you end up with a model that is not watertight then that comes down to a sloppy workflow. rhino is easy to learn, powerful and absolutely perfect for producing model for 3d printing, injection molding or inc milling, etc. if your looking for sculpting type models then its not for you. rhino is very heavily used in jewelry, toy, marine, furniture, architecture and your average consumer products. imo rhino is one of the best tools out there for producing models for 3d printing. if you goto infiniteskills.com they have complete video courses. beginner and advanced. they are very well done and will have you up and running with it in a day or two.

[davide445]

And what about Moment of Inspiration (MoI)?
Reading can be a easier to use alternative to Rhino.

[Entity]

Jimc,

Whats a good open source slicer program for preparing your models for printing, I tried slicr3 but it wont export 3xg files in a firmware version that my creator pro recognises.

Cheers

[Sebastian Finke]

And what about Moment of Inspiration (MoI)?
Reading can be a easier to use alternative to Rhino.

I grew up on Rhino (going back a long time, last one was Rhino 3, I think). It is a good program. Moi is written by the same guy that wrote the original Rhino code for McNeel. It is not as fleshed out as Rhino but is still very good, light-weight and easy to use. It so good in fact that I bought a license a few years ago. Then it was still V2. Then V3 came out and it is even better. At the price you can't really beat it. Just bear in mind: it is not parametric (neither is Rhino), doesn't have the import/export options of Rhino, doesn't have the AutoCAD plug-ins of Rhino and it only creates models i.e. no drawings, assemblies, etc. If you look on the Moi website you will see that users are getting amazing results.

[davide445]

I grew up on Rhino (going back a long time, last one was Rhino 3, I think). It is a good program. Moi is written by the same guy that wrote the original Rhino code for McNeel. It is not as fleshed out as Rhino but is still very good, light-weight and easy to use. It so good in fact that I bought a license a few years ago. Then it was still V2. Then V3 came out and it is even better. At the price you can't really beat it. Just bear in mind: it is not parametric (neither is Rhino), doesn't have the import/export options of Rhino, doesn't have the AutoCAD plug-ins of Rhino and it only creates models i.e. no drawings, assemblies, etc. If you look on the Moi website you will see that users are getting amazing results.

MoI is beautiful but limited, the limitation in exchange and operate on AutoCad or other cad files is huge. I'm not a designer and will mostly check and modify others design.
Rhino is more complete but I did find it with awkward UI.
There is no other nice to use yet complete solid modeling / editing tool?

[jimc]

i don't know any of the open source slicers. i have been using simplify 3d for the past 2.5 years.

as for rhino, not sure if any of you guys can qualify for the student version or not but that is really reasonable. if you are in school or you have a son or daughter or any other family member in school then you can qualify. you can get it from novedge who sells on eBay. its about $130. if your on a mac then the full mac version is fairly reasonable right now as well and the edu lic for mac is even cheaper....under 100 bucks i think. i use both. the key is to get yourself the videos from infinite skills. just watch both the beginner and advanced set and you will be using like a pro in no time. for a new rhino user i can't recommend those enough. i find rhino to be a very natural way to model. i have a bit of a woodworking background and find rhino workflow to be very similar to if i was to build something out of wood. someone mentioned the UI. the UI is extremely customizable. you can set it up pretty much however you would like. the command line is great. if you can't find that tool your looking for then just start typing the first few letters and the tool or command starts. very easy. sometimes i think of a tool i might need or something i want to do but don't know how so i just start typing and damn if a command or tool doesn't pop up in the list. its pretty crazy how extensive that piece of software is. you can download either pc or mac for free for 90 days. if you are interested in starting with it i may be able to help with some videos. just send me a pm.

[Sebastian Finke]

MoI is beautiful but limited, the limitation in exchange and operate on AutoCad or other cad files is huge. I'm not a designer and will mostly check and modify others design.
Rhino is more complete but I did find it with awkward UI.
There is no other nice to use yet complete solid modeling / editing tool?

Why would you need the AutoCAD plug-ins? Your first post doesn't mention that.