What is the best modelling program?

[Zylyx_]

are you FBI by any chance?

[xtremetrooper]

are you FBI by any chance?

What?

[Zylyx_]

lol, nm, just thought the whole thing of like "dont use pirated software" was kinda a warning

[xtremetrooper]

It's alright. It's just that my PC is kind of old, and these commercial products are quite bloated, and use up a lot of memory. The free versions of software are more optimized, and if I try it out and don't like it, I can easily uninstall it without any problems.

[ceriux]

i use milkshape its a good low poly editor, yes it takes money to get it (legally) but not as much as profecinal programs - sorry sp, it also has just basic layouts for the tools and a couple plugins. its a small and easy to use program. technically it even has your uv mapper and animator built into it as well...

[xtremetrooper]

www.turbosquid.com/gmax - This site gives you a serial number so you can license the product. I guess they took ownership of gmax when Autodesk stopped supporting it.

And yes, Blender's interface is quite ugly for my taste. The guy who said it didn't work well with the older engines, he was an anonymous poster over at collective.valve-erc.com, a site which Valve took down. So I guess he can't be slapped in the face or experience tcp-ip violence.

[Electro]

I use 3D Studio Max (I simply prefer it, after having used both max and maya extensively). The company I work at uses both max and maya, maya mainly for rigging/animation.
Maya is also one I've used professionally in the industry. XSI is becoming more common in some places. Max and Maya (probably moreso Maya) are the big boys in the industry.

Mudbox for sculpting.

Photoshop for 2D. That's it. Nothing else.

Once you learn how to model in any of the larger scale programs, they all have similar feature sets. So then it's just a matter of getting a grip of a new UI.

[xaGe]

..I have one thing to add about the digital graphic tablets. The cheapest & most basic Wacom you can currently buy would be the Bamboo. At $79 US its not a huge investment to enter into specially if its your 1st one. Its great to use in painting/modeling programs, especially in programs that support pressure sensitivity like Corel Painter, Gimp, Paintshop Pro, Photoshop, Zbrush, etc... I now have a 4"x6" Intuos3 and love it to death, but for 5 years before it I had gone through 2 of the basic Wacom Graphire tablets which I had also loved. At the time they where the lowest entry level tablet before it was replaced with the Bamboo line... Other than that I owned a Aiptek tablet as well that worked pretty well, but not as nice as the Wacoms...

..Finaly, get a graphics tablet if you can. It will speed up your workflow dramatically. If you have around $500-$600, get a Wacom one, otherwise, try the Trust ones (cheap but good, around $100 - $180). Make sure that is has atleast 512 pressure levels. Also, a scanner is not a bad idea either...

[Zylyx_]

well, the bamboo is A6, but if you can work with that, then it's pretty good.

[jim]

are you FBI by any chance?

I'm the FBI! FREEZE!

I learned the basics of modeling with something called Quake Modeller. There were no primitives in it, so I had to make even the simplest box manually.

Then I changed to 3dsmax and has used ever since. For sometime I used milkshape to do animations, because I didn't know how to do them with 3dsmax. Never used milkshape for actual modeling, it felt odd. Now I just do all with 3dsmax.