3D

[atlanteay]

I'm very into digital art. With Photoshop, i am limited to using existing stocks but nothing new. So i want to learn some 3D designing/modeling etc.

I tried Anim8or and it's okay... the rendering system was terrible unlike 3D Max's MentalRay.

So is there a good, free or relatively cheap software that is good for getting into 3D designs? Also, is there an extensive guide that comes with it? By extensive i mean, so detailed that it tells you what every button and option mean and do.

i heard Blender and C4D are good but which one is easier to learn and use?

[Shoeberto]

Blender's really, really good. It just has a unique interface. Once you get down the basic keyboard commands, though, it's not nearly as hard as it seems. Spacebar to add an object, B to select vertices, stuff like that. And it's completely free, best of all.

[o_O]

Blender is what I learned on and it's fantastic. All of the computer graphics courses at my university use and recommend it. Blender is good because it gives you the basic knowledge required for 3D modelling and animation which you can take to any other 3D software, like 3DS Max (which is also fantastic, but it costs a lot).

[atlanteay]

Blender is surprisingly easy to grasp once i got the interface down Thanks Hsu and o_O !

[o_O]

<a href="http://www.blender.org/tutorials-help/">These</a> tutorials were instrumental for me. I strongly recommend giving them a try.

[Discord]

3D Studio Max was the best the last time I checked. Forget about the word cheap though.

[crono_logical]

I used to use old versions of TrueSpace which they gave away for free whenever they came out with newer versions, but that was years ago I'd probably try Blender if I was still interested in playing with 3D models though

[Rostum]

Blender is probably the best free modelling program out there. I personally use Maya, as I just love the hotbox and all of its features (and there's just so much learning material) -- but it's expensive, though you could use the PLE version for free.

I think you'll find that a lot of the gaming development community prefer to use 3DS Max, and a lot of the other industries (such as film) use Maya. They are pretty much the same thing, except that Maya has NURBS, and they are amazing (though confusing to work with at first).

Houdini is probably the most amazing piece of software, with their latest version just being released. I believe it is the only 3D application that is solely based on working with nodes (Maya does, but that's more to do with materials and rendering).

If you want some extremely awesome learning material and an all-round good community, go to 3DBuzz (google it, though they are on a tour for the month).

(By the way it doesn't matter which one you learn, as long as you are comfortable with the user interface and way that things are done and of course if you like any extra features. Because either way, you will be working with polygons and they are the same in every program)

[Discord]

[...]I think you'll find that a lot of the gaming development community prefer to use 3DS Max, and a lot of the other industries (such as film) use Maya. They are pretty much the same thing, except that Maya has NURBS, and they are amazing (though confusing to work with at first).
[...]

Just a word of correction: past four version of 3DS MAX also had a NURBS designer.

As far as I remember, 3DS MAX is pretty universal. Lightwave was the one they use for architecture in games, i.e. mostly for strategies. I don't know about Maya though.

I used to work with 3DS MAX 5 a couple of years ago. It's decent and pretty easy to learn. You also get a pretty good tutorial with it, just to get you going with the program itself. According to Wikipedia there's version 9 now, but I wouldn't know as I've never used it myself. 3D design programs tend to get upgraded almost annually.

Anyway, ask Omecle, he seems to know quite a bit about it.