Thoughts about Cheetah 3D

Thoughts about Cheetah 3D

I have played around with Cheetah 3D for a few years on and off and I am writing this post because I do value the program. I have background in Maya and Cinema 4D but the cost has gotten a little too much for individuals like myself(IMO). I have taken the last few months to learn Blender and I'm pretty impressed.

I feel for Cheetah though. It is quite a good program but the one roadblock I find is the lack of tutorials. I mean solid, thorough, well thought out tutorials. I am comparing to things for Blender on CGMasters and some other sites. A software can be very capable but if you can't figure out how to really use it, it doesn't matter.

I see v7 is on the horizon. I just hope there is someone putting together some really great tutorials or courses, or I'll be sticking with Blender.

BTW, when I checked the list of tutorials for Cheetah on the forum there are a number of links that are broken (maybe it's because they are all so old).

Tutorials are important, no question. I like for example smboerner's last tutorial. Not because I actually have in mind to model such a t-junction at the moment, but because he uses techniques that differ from mine. That's always interesting and good to know.

Often enough you learn in a tutorial to do a certain thing and nothing else. And in a certain way. So if you want to do something else, you're still stuck if you're somehow depending on tutorials.

What I like about Cheetah is the way it's thought out and that it is easy to use. The minute I opened it, I could work with it. I didn't need to read a help file, a tutorial or something else. Most things are easy to find. Others are not even documented. Of course, there were lots of things to learn, but it's intuitive. Never heard somebody say that about blender.

The second part is this forum. You don't have to look through several tuts to find a solution because you can ask. More often then not, some people here even model something to show you how to do it or try several renders to create the right kind of material. It's a very small community, but good. But like I said: for most things you don't need to ask. It's mostly self-explanatory and you can find your solutions for your own projects in no time. With a little bit of testing and trying, of course. You usually don't need a tutorial to find your way.

When I opened blender for the first time, I couldn't make head or tail from the interface. I couldn't model despite using several other 3d apps before. I didn't even know how to start. There you need tutorials, because without them you're stuck very fast.

But still, Blender is a good program, and in some aspects even better than other 3d-software, including Cheetah of course. For example blenders fluids are an alternative to realflow which is really great but so expensive it's out of reach for hobbyists and small firms alike.

Cheetah has it's flaws, especially some missing possibilities (like sss that hopefully will come soon in a later incarnation of v7, volumetrics, layers and so on), but it's stable, doesn't need any high end hardware, easy to use (and learn) and has a great community.

I don't think that there will be enough new tutorials for you any time soon. But if you're really stuck with your project, there is help just around the corner in this forum. Often in minutes. And as interesting as the tutorials usually are, you don't really need them to visualize your ideas.

Since Blender is free, and C3d is really affordable; it's pretty easy to use both.

I like C3d for how nice it looks and it's ease of use. It's the first 3d app that I learned and I'm not sure how easily I would have gotten into it if it hadn't been for this app. I own Modo 801, but still mainly use C3d in my day to day work.

I like Blender because it packs a lot of punch. I'll agree with Hasdrubal that Blender isn't known for being very easy to use out of the box though. Even tutorials that you learn at one point you can either forget how to do it a few months later after not using consistently, or the way it works has been totally re-arranged / changed in a newer version of Blender.

Hopefully you'll stick around.