Software list

[Trevor Tizard]

Wonder if you could give me some help......

My IT manager is putting together a projected budget for the next 12 months and wants to know what software I can see me requiring over the next 12 months so he can enter a figure. Obviously this will only be a guess ("our business is not run on budgets" (quote fron the chairman)) but any realistic thoughts you have will be much appreciated.

We are a housing developer and I currently work full time at Arch Viz alone, with no plans to hire any more staff in the next 12 months. My current software is:

AutoCAD (on subscription)

Viz 2007 (on subscription)

Vray Advanced

RPC European trees, Casual people, Parking lot cars

Adobe Photoshop CS2

Total textures Clean textures V6 & Trees & Plants V10

I am currently doing work for print only and am intending to begin animation shortly (DVD's for sales etc), and my thoughts so far are:

Crossgrade from Viz2007 to Max

Autodesk Combustion

Without this turning into a "Dear Santa" style list, any "essentials" you think I should consider would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,

Trev

[Brian Smith]

I think Onyx trees are a must. $595 will get you there entire collection to include flowers and a plugin that lets you apply wind to the trees with a few clicks of the mouse.

[pen duick]

You do not need to by additional plant modeling tools since EASYnat now comes with AutodeskVIZ 2007 & 3ds Max 8 for free. You may only need to budget additional EASYnat plant credits though.

[AJLynn]

Sounds like you've already got most of the important stuff. For animation, Max would be better, and you should look into a video editing/compositing/DVD authoring package. More textures and some prop libraries are always useful, which ones would depend on what kind of work you do. Same goes for a disc of HDRs.