3D modellers

what 3D modellers do you recommend, free or pay for

i need one that can model and texture and some tutorials on modelling, i am getting ready for Max3D

3dcanvas : www.amabilis.com

If you're looking for a fast workflow and lots of control over your texturing, try Wings3D+Ultimate Unwrap 3D. If money isn't an issue, try the 3dsmax demo.

what markd said!!!

AC3D - it's excellent.

http://www.ac3d.org/

Silo is the mutt's nuts. It's so much better than everything else, it's hard to believe they sell it so cheap.

Silo Kick ass. Silo2 will be... super kick ass. ^^

What I love about Silo, you learn it in a day, and you feel comfortable right away.
Each time I reopen it after weeks; I find back my controls and command really fast, it’s definitely an intuitive and innovated piece of software.

No brainer, Lightwave ticks all your boxes.

Another vote for Lightwave.



Me too!

I do buy a new car instead of Max3D (enterprise/pro) ....

Has anyone had a look at Modo? It's made by the creators of Lightwave, and although I haven't tried it out yet, it looks promising. Its rendering capabilities are beautiful, and it's apparently easy to use.

Unfortunately, it's quite expensive.

XSI.

Milkshape 3D is okay as long as you are modeling under several thousand vertices. I tried modeling a city with it and that didn't go so well :) If I were you I'd try and find 3D Studio Max for a really cheap price. (Searching at google is a start.) I'm probably going to end up doing this once I have enough money.

Cinema 4d. now theres an exporter this is a great option, really easy to use.

3dsmax has the most to offer game artists, its a very complete package with the best 3rd party and exporter support. So you very rarely get stuck with good tools and no art pipeline.

ok which one is newbie friendly

i tried a demo of a modeller and it confused me

Wings3D.

Try them all. Download the demos and test each one out then pick which one you like best.

I prefer 3D Studio Max 8 to anything else. I own Silo3D and that's the bizness; feature packed, also. For highpoly to low poly conversions, Silo's Topology Brush is awesome.

I tried wings3d but never got on with it. Same with Blender.

XSI Foundation.

i started with Cinema 4d after trying max which i didnt really find very easy to use and i didnt really like the way the UI was aranged. ive since used it and it is very good, im still much quicker in cinema 4d. maya is great but ive never managed to get an animated model out of it and into blitz and its very expensive (we have it at work). As a modeler cinema 4d is amazing and so easy but for animation its a knightmare, its to complexe for simple game animations to be made quickly. i use pacemaker to animate as its much better suited and faster.

XSI Foundation is brilliant. I used to use Milkshape and Gamespace (totally regret purchasing gamespace - what a piece of junk).

When I bought XSI Foundation it came with a bunch of DVDs of tutorials and helpful tips.

yeah i would have looked at XSI but id just shelled out on cinema 4d.

a powerfull one is www.blender.org and best of all its free

Modo Addict here...

WHAA?!?!? I just checked out Blender - it looks awesome!!
I'm gobsmacked that it's for free.

try getting an animated model out of blender and into blitz

so in your experience, what is the best modeler to get an animated model (character) into blitz, like the easiest and quickest to make and export?

assuming you are already familiar with the program.

and what is the best one to get a level into blitz?

and if it is expensive, like 3dsmax, what low-cost one is next best?

Blender has scripts for exporting to MD2 or so it says on the website - doesn't this work?...anyhow it can't be any harder to write an exporter for it than say 3dsmax or whatever else has one surely?

any program that has an exporter for blitz3d (max and lightwave i think) or just export an animated direct x mesh and get ultimate unwrap to convert to b3d. i would say milkshape but if you use vertex weighting milkshape doesnt support them as far as i know.

pacemaker is a good bet just get your static mesh in 3ds format and then animate in pacemaker and export a b3d file easy!

When I model I do some stuff in code, more complex geometry I use 3dsMax, and for general 3d file checking and basic manipulation I use Deep Exploration, although since "Right Hemisphere" turned professional the price on that is a bit steep and I just use an old version.

I have a miggy LightWave floppy at home. That was....

Ok, painful :)

I'm finding Wings3d is good for making standard objects. I just made a table using a tutorial from http://www.geocities.com/paulthepuzzles/aardvarks.html.

Pacemaker won't run on my win98se machine. It keeps crashing, so i will have to try using Fragmotion for animation, as MS3D is quite tedious for animation.

I used Deep Exploration a while ago for converting, but found UU3D was better. It may be my imagination but the free version of DE produced errors/not sure what now.

Lightwave ! s'all I use, The moddeling process flows so well.