Lightwave vs Cinema 4D on Mac
by Brent007
on
Dec 26, 2006 at 5:37:17 am
Hi all
I'm a 3D newbie trying to decide which 3D package to purchase for a growing, fully mac based, video business.
I have no drama learning any package but performance and productivity are most important particularly in regard to rendering speeds.
I have trial versions of Lightwave 9, Cinema 4D 10 and have previously trialed Maya.
I wrote off Maya because in the Mac environment it does not support 64 bit processing and it's rendering was very slow. My housemate has been using Cinema 4D on a PC and I noticed his high quality rendering was infinitly faster than Maya on my mac. Thus - I began looking elsewhere.
I really like the lightwave 9 interface - no nonsense/space saving - seems good - but am finding it difficult to get info on rendering speeds for mac etc. Also the new pricing is very attractive.
Basically if Cinema 4D is faster at rendering and better in a mac environment I would be tempted to lean in that direction. Am a little concerned at being able to produce photo realistic results in C4D as lightwave seems to be better in this area with a simple off the shelf purchase of the product.
With future in mind - I have no drama purchasing new equipment/video cards to improve performance or to introduce other terminals for network rendering - just need some guideance on which piece of software is more suited to creating a viably productive environment on a mac system.
Any input would be appreciated:
My current system is: G5 Dual / 1.8 GHz / 2.5 GB RAM / GeForce FX 5200 video card
Re: Lightwave vs Cinema 4D on Mac by davesink on Feb 2, 2007 at 11:00:29 pm
I use both LW and C4D and find Cinema 4D to be my choice for most projects. In all fairness, I learned Cinema 4D first, so maybe I'm just more accustomed to the GUI.
Cinema 4D is without a doubt more stable than Lightwave, especially on a Mac. I've been using it for several years now, and have maybe frozen just a few times total.
The development cycle for Cinema 4D is remarkably fast compared to the glacial pace of Lightwave, and when they release something (Most recently Hair and Mograph modules), it's generally well designed and a pleasure to work with.
Integration with After Effects (Multipass rendering, Compositing tags, ability to save as AE Projects) is top notch.
While C4Ds rending engine has been maligned from time to time, even their base renderer is highly fast and capable, though you need the advanced renderer to do GI, caustics or Ambient Occlusion.
That being said, I find Maxon's pricing policy to be a expensive and confusing, especially when it comes to upgrading/adding modules. Lightwave is a bargain in comparison, though many LWers opt to use the excellent FPrime renderer.
As for 64 bit, as I understand it, no program is going to deliver it on the Mac side until the OS is written for it, but you can bet the farm that Cinema 4D will have it before Lightwave. Lightwave is still in beta with their UB version while C4D has had it for more than a year now.
Re: Lightwave vs Cinema 4D on Mac by morebo on Feb 21, 2007 at 10:55:32 pm
Interested in the same issue... What about learning curve? Is the learning curve steeper with Lightwave or Cinema 4D. As I have read around the www users find C4D easy to learn, but what about lightwave?
