Silo for mesh creation? others?

[Tenly]

ooo just discovered Silo and it seems (so far) so much easier to get a handle on than blender. Its 159. to buy so I thought Id get some feedback from folks who might have tried it before I go all in. going to try some tutorials. But any feedback on a great tool to use for learning to create mesh for SL is appreciated.

I want to create shoes. And maybe if I can master shoes, mesh clothing.

In case anyone who has not heard of it is interested here is the url. Please let me know what you think.

Blender, I know is free but the UI completely distresses me. Its not designer friendly INMHO. everything is where I never expect it to be. which is my bad I know.

http://nevercenter.com/silo/

Might be interested in something like maya down the road but maybe thats a hard program to learn as well???

[arton Rotaru]

I have no experience with Silo, but from what I see, it doesn't export to the Collada format, which is what Second Life requires. It also does not have any rigging tools, which will be essential if you want to make clothes.

It's a pure polygon modeler, which will have it's place in a production pipeline, like Zbrush, Mudbox and the like. You can model and export as obj with it, and bring the model into a more comprehensive program like Blender, Maya, 3ds Max to do the skinning/rigging for clothes. Note, OBJ does not support skinning/rigging information. So bringing the model back and forth between Silo and another program, the rigging information will be lost each time.

Blender might be a pain to learn in beginning, but I can assure you that learning Maya won't be any easier. The problem of these programs are the endless possibilities they offer, which makes it easy to be overwhelmed from the interface. Compared to a stripped down modeler like Silo.

May recommendation would be to learn just 1 program at first that can do it all. You will need it sooner or later anyway. Will be tough, time consuming and frustrating to learn for a while. But we all started like this, and went down that stony road.

But like I mentioned, I have no experience with Silo, maybe someone else can tell more about it in conjunction with SL?

[Cathy Foil]

Silo is a great basic modeling program.  I bought it two years ago but haven't used it much.  I have played around with it and I think it make a great beginner's modeling program.  I am not to sure about its ability to make UVs but you could use other free tools for that like Blender.

Silo's user interface for basic modeling looks wonderful and very intuitive.  Since all it does is modeling there isn't a whole lot of stuff in there to get you confused.  Silo doens't do rigging so you will have to rig in another program.

Right now Silo is on sale on Steam $27.99.  Only real drawbacks to Steam is you have to log into Steam every time you want to use the program but for the price it is worth it.  

Here's a link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/100400/

There are lots of other programs for sale on Steam as well.  You should check them out but I say for $27.99 definitely get Silo.

Hope that helps.
Cathy

PS if you can't afford ZBrush another totally awesome program for sale on Steam is 3D Coat.  It doesn't quite match up to ZBrush yet.  I say it is about 70 or 80% as good as ZBrush but a fraction of the price and it has Physics Based Rendering PBR for short which last time I checked ZBrush didn't have.  Get the Educational version for $80 USD.  You will be limited to 7 layers of textures at 1024 by 1024 but that is perfect for SL.  You can always combine textures in Photoshop or Gimp if you need more than 7 layers.  I have used 3D Coat extensively and can honestly say it is one of the best programs I have every used.  It also doesn't do rigging so you will still need a program like Blender. 

Here's a link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/100980/

[IvanBenjammin]

I used silo for a couple of years, and its a great modelling tool, with a couple of caveats:

It doesn't UV very well. The tools are all there, but its missing the vital ability that higher end tools have to preserve UVs when editing the mesh. I also found its UV editor to be quite unstable - undoing certain functions would crash Silo. It will do the job, it can just be quite frustrating.

As Arton mentioned, it doesn't export collada, so you'll need something like Blender as well, if only to import obj and export dae. If you're creating rigged items like shoes and clothes, then you'll need blender for a bit more.

I sympathise with your Blender distress - I can't get my head around it, either. I've recently dropped Silo for Maya, but I've used Maya in the past (just couldn't personally afford it till now!). I'm not sure whether to recommend it to a newbie or not... on the one hand it makes more sense than Blender (IMO), on the other, its several layers deeper, which can lead to frustration. It also costs real money

[Tenly]

I looked at Maya yesterday but it was 195.00 a month. way too much money for a newbie like me! but Ill keep my eye on it. thank you for the feedback

[Tenly]

Can you use zbrush to import an avatar...make shoes, texture, uv, rig etc? I thought someone said not, but maybe I was wrong?

[Tenly]

Thanks for the feedback folks. Between you and a few forums I found this morning I figured out that I wont be able to use Silo. Its buggy for one, and I couldnt even mouse with it and follow the tutorial. However, it is a beautifully simple program and Im a little disapointed regarding what I read in the forums.

Id look past the bugs to learn this tool as its one of the first that had good tutorials to help one get started and it really IS intuitive. 

I wrote to their support and sales to express my experience and to tell them I hope they do not abandon it like Hexagons creators did. Im afraid they are diverting their talents elsewhere though.

We really need a tool like this for beginners like me.

OKay, well now Im off to try Moda 902. Which is pretty damn expensive so it may not be for me either. but its way less than 4500. for Maya. But thats on another thread as I didnt want my concerns or questions for one to get lost in my queries of the other.

Thanks for your time and your advice!

[IvanBenjammin]

Look at Maya LT - That's about $40/month, though I'm not sure if it has the full suite of animation/rigging tools you'll need.

Silo actually was abandoned by its creators, but then they inexplicably came back and started patching it. They're a very small team, and there's much more money to be made selling phone apps...