There are many 3d visualisation and animation packages on the market, one of the most popular is 'Sketchup' a product made by Google, another is Maxon's 'Cinema4D'.

Sketchup pro retails for about £300 and is on the lower end of the market, Cinema4D retails for about £2500 and is on the higher end of the market.

Features of Sketchup:

*3D modelling

*Sketch style rendering

*Camera animation

*32bit only

Advantages:

Apart from its cheap price-tag Sketchup is a very intuitive modeling tool which allows the user to produce 3d models in a short timeframe. One of its most standout features is the push/pull tool which compares to the extrude tool in other 3D packages. The distinct advantage the push/pull tool is that it allows polygons to be extruded forwards or backwards along their axis while creating cuts in the correct places automatically, deleting stray vertices and edges automatically.

This tool really speeds up the modeling process.

Disadvantages:

The modeling tools in sketchup are very much geared towards architectural style geometry, Sketchup's tool advantages soon show their limitations when the geometry is not positioned at exactly zero degrees rotation, The intuitive cutting tools don't snap correctly and it can become a pain editing an already positioned model in a scene.

Hard surface, geometric models work well in sketchup, but the tools are very limited for more organic 3D modelling.

The options for animation are limited to camera animation only, and the method for doing this is poor, it works via a scene to scene method and leaves no control over how the camera behaves between these scenes resulting in strange motion.

The rendering options are very limited.

Features of Cinema4D:

*3D visualisation

*Animation

*Particle generator

*Global illumination

*Mograph Physics

*Hair

*Character Tools

Advantages:

Cinema 4D includes a wide range of tools and options allowing a user to produce almost any type of 3D visualisation work conceivable.

The feature that makes it stand out from most from rival software packages is the superb 'Mograph module' which allows very realistic simulations of physical bodies. Mograph is surprisingly fast to pick up and delivers excellent results.The inbuilt rendering engine allows the user to produce true photo-realistic results.

Disadvantages:

Cinema's modelling tools aren't as intuitive as sketchup's and require a lot more knowledge and understanding to create complex geometry.

There are very few other disadvantages apart from the hefty £2500 price-tag

Conclusion:

Sketchup is ideal for quickly producing low end architectural 3D visualisation. A high end program like Cinema4D is a must for producing 'high-end' 3D work.

But that does not mean that sketchup is only for low 'end-work', sketchup's fast modelling tools can be utilised and included in a high-end workflow.

Sketchup geometry can be exported out and imported into cinema4D for rendering and texturing, thus saving modelling time, but this is really limited to architecture due to the nature of sketchup modelling tools.