www.strata3d.com. © Strata." />

Strata 3D is a good entree into 3D animation. It boasts a full feature set, an excellent renderer and is available for free from www.strata3d.com. © Strata.

Now is a great time to purchase a 3D animation solution. The line separating low-cost and high-cost software is blurring. You no longer have to invest tens of thousands of dollars in a Unix workstation running high-end software in order to create stunning animation, but what solutions provide the best bang for your buck? The good news is: there are a lot of choices out there. Now here's the bad news: there are a lot of choices out there!

Software
Today's 3D software packages are all-in-one marvels that range in price from a few hundred dollars to many thousands. They all contain modeling, texturing, animation and rendering tools. Many also include inverse kinematics, particle systems, dynamics, ray-tracing and scripting systems. What usually sets the pricier packages apart from the others is the depth, not breadth, of their options. The bottom line is: all of these packages are being used to create wonderful animation.

Hash logo adorned by KeeKat created by ReelFX and Blit Wizbok created by Victor Navone. © Hash, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Waving the flag high for inexpensive, high-quality 3D character animation software is Hash, Inc.'s Animation: Master (www.hash.com). Running under Windows 98/NT/2000 and Mac OS and costing only $299, this package boasts a tremendous price-to-performance ratio. The inverse kinematics (IK) and skinning functions found in Animation: Master rival those found in high-end rivals Maya and Softimage. The modeling system excels at organic shape creation. In addition to traditional Phong and raytracing, it has a very nice cartoon shaded renderer.

For a nice example of work done in Animation: Master, visit www.navone.org and look for Victor Navone's Alien Song movie. This terrific piece led to Navone landing a job with Pixar Animation Studios to work on the upcoming feature Monsters, Inc.

Monkey, created by Raf Anzovin at Anzovin Studios with Hash Animation:Master. © Hash, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The mid-level price point software includes Maxon Cinema 4D ($1700; www.maxoncomputer.com), ElectricImage ($2000; www.electricimage.com), NewTek LightWave ($2500; www.newtek.com) and Discreet 3D Studio Max ($3500; www.discreet.com). These applications have been used to create award-winning animations and effects for broadcast and film. It is perhaps this encroachment of moderately priced software upon the territory of high-end software that has spurred price reductions from Alias|Wavefront and Softimage. 3D Studio Max, in particular, has a great number of plug-ins available to fill the gaps between it and Maya or Softimage.

Walt Kubiak, founder of The Krislin Company (www.krislincompany.com), has built his 3D animation studio around Discreet's 3D Studio Max 4. The upcoming Baloonatiks series was created entirely in the alpha, beta and final release versions of Max 4. Says Kubiak of the decision to go with mid-level software instead of one of the higher-end packages, "Technology has come along so far since a few releases back that we're doing better work for the same amount of money. To be honest, Max has become, for lack of a better word, more 'Maya-like.' From pre-production to post, we created thirteen and a half hours of animation in 16 weeks."