Hey guys, long time no see!

I was thinking of trying my hand at some 3D modelling. I know some of you guys have experience here, do you have any personal recommendations?

I was mainly weighing up between Blender and 3DSMax, both of which I've heard great things about. Price of the software is not particularly a factor for me at the moment, I'm more interested in ability and ease of use, etc.

What are your thoughts?
And I haven't been to active, how is everyone?

I don't have any experience with 3DSMax (it's whopping expensive), but I can vouch that the Blender workflow is great once you get used to it. One hand at the keyboard, one at the mouse and you're on a roll. Kinda like Emacs for 3-D modelling, if you will. The learning curve (much like Emacs') can be a little steep though, many new users are put off by that - they don't know what they're missing

Just FYI, if you have access to an academic email, you can get 3ds Max for free. It's not too hard to break into modelling, but there's also a tremendous depth of 'stuff' to learn on top of the basics of getting a model build and wrapped (stuff I've never had the time to learn, to be honest, like animation/IK, particle effects, spline or nurbs modelling, etc).

(I've not used Blender for nigh on 20 years, so I can't comment on it)

aldo wrote:Just FYI, if you have access to an academic email, you can get 3ds Max for free. It's not too hard to break into modelling, but there's also a tremendous depth of 'stuff' to learn on top of the basics of getting a model build and wrapped (stuff I've never had the time to learn, to be honest, like animation/IK, particle effects, spline or nurbs modelling, etc).

(I've not used Blender for nigh on 20 years, so I can't comment on it)

Oh my, free you say? How so, pray tell? Would this be a full licence?

ghhyrd wrote:

aldo wrote:Just FYI, if you have access to an academic email, you can get 3ds Max for free. It's not too hard to break into modelling, but there's also a tremendous depth of 'stuff' to learn on top of the basics of getting a model build and wrapped (stuff I've never had the time to learn, to be honest, like animation/IK, particle effects, spline or nurbs modelling, etc).

(I've not used Blender for nigh on 20 years, so I can't comment on it)

Oh my, free you say? How so, pray tell? Would this be a full licence?

It's restricted so you can't use it for commercial purposes but (AFAIK) is the complete piece of software. I've also not encountered any time restrictions for the license.

See http://students.autodesk.com/.

You can do the same thing to get Maya. But if you're interested in animation / particle effects in animation I would avoid it. Freaking crashy / sluggish program in that regard.

very nice post

amber wrote:very nice post

And you as well.