[Gibbusflame]

What's a good place/tutorial to go to, that would give a nooob a good idea on what modeling is like? Someplace that introduces the inexperienced to the basics.
Program suggestions would also be helpful. I've heard of so many different things, Blender, PCS(2?), Truespace, 3DMax(?).
Help please! I'm totally new to this and would like to learn 

[Angelus]

What's a good place/tutorial to go to, that would give a nooob a good idea on what modeling is like? Someplace that introduces the inexperienced to the basics.
Program suggestions would also be helpful. I've heard of so many different things, Blender, PCS(2?), Truespace, 3DMax(?).
Help please! I'm totally new to this and would like to learn  

http://www.blender.org/

Although i'm using 3DSMax, i recommend Blender ( mostly because Max is painfully expensive ), so will most of the users here.
Don't bother trying Truespace, unless you have masochistic tendencies that is.

[shiv]

That gives me motivation to try once again using Blender and learning 3D modelling...

[Rodo]

I've just started using blender and is quite intuitive to my opinion, also you can find some tut's on youtube that will teach you the basic about first steps in blender.

[Gibbusflame]

Okay, thanks.

[Vasudan Admiral]

The basic ship building workflow for a Blenderer is:

Code: [Select]

Concept drawing -> Modelling -> UV Mapping -> Texture painting -> Hierarchy setup -> Conversion to POF -> Tabling -> Testing
(Sheet of paper)   (Blender)    (Blender)      (Photoshop etc)       (Blender)            (PCS 2)        (Wordpad)    (FSO)

There's a guide on blender -> PCS2 conversions in my sig.

[Gibbusflame]

GIMP is good enough for texturing, right?
And tabling. Is there a guide on that? Or is that some simple, cut and paste thing? I haven't got a clue yet. Lol

[Dragon]

Tabling is very simple, you can learn it from here:
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Tables
It's a list of all tables and their functions, just play around with them and see what happens.
Most of entries are self-explantory.

[TrashMan]

http://www.blender.org/

Although i'm using 3DSMax, i recommend Blender ( mostly because Max is painfully expensive ), so will most of the users here.
Don't bother trying Truespace, unless you have masochistic tendencies that is.

Ignore Angelus. He doesn't know what he's talking about.
Truespace is great.

[Vasudan Admiral]

[Insert me promoting blender and brutally beating down TS here. Again.]

Don't ignore Angelus.

[TrashMan]

*Insert me brutally beating blender and VA.*


Honestly, the best advice I can give you is to try out a few programs and see which suits you the best. You don't even have to limit yourself to just one program. I use 2 myself.

[Angelus]

*Insert me brutally beating blender and VA.*


Honestly, the best advice I can give you is to try out a few programs and see which suits you the best. You don't even have to limit yourself to just one program. I use 2 myself.

Don't ignore me!

Since Scooby made the tut on how to convert models via dae, i don't use TS anymore.
I didn't remove it from the HD though, but only because i feel a bit sentimental about it.

[Vasudan Admiral]

*Insert me brutally beating blender and VA.*


Honestly, the best advice I can give you is to try out a few programs and see which suits you the best. You don't even have to limit yourself to just one program. I use 2 myself.

Try? Sure. Continue using? No way. You don't want to require more than one program in your modelling workflow - program jumping like that absolutely sucks and with a good program in the first place it is completely unnessecary.

There's also the other problem where learning two programs at once to see which you like better (more often than not) makes you favour the easier one to learn. I learned TS and Blender at once, and since learning involves relatively simple shapes and the like, I was finding TS a lot easier to figure out. So of course TS became my primary modelling and texturing app and remained there for years, simply because I had put all my energy into learning it and didn't really explore what Blender was capable of.

It was really only once Water pointed out that Blender's UV mapping toolset was actually really good that I began to fiddle with that, and literally within weeks I was able to far surpass the quality I'd previously been able to achieve after years of TS/lithunwrap.

So the best advice I can give is to do some homework before using any 3d app and find out what their capabilities are from reviews before you go about investing time and energy in learning how to use them. There are some charts that give a rough idea here and here (slightly out of date) for example, and as someone who does know both apps I can tell you that Blender is definitely a much much better choice than TS. I doubt that will stop existing TS users from using it anymore than the fact that max and maya are more powerful than Blender stops me, (and incidentally if you want to learn one of those apps instead of Blender or TS then go for it!) but skipping TS will save you a lot of time, pain, frustration and effort - which is my main goal in every single 3d app debate on HLP.

(And yes, I really do enjoy 3d app debates )

[Gibbusflame]

I'll probably stick with Blender then.
I probably won't be venturing into 3DSMax or any programs that I'd have to pay to use (15 year old kid with no job, and small patience? Yup!)

[Dragon]

There was a free version of 3DS Max made for game modelling, it was called GMax, but it seems that it's no longer distributed.
Maybe it's mirrored somewhere thogh.

[Getter Robo G]

Air sim games usually mirror it.

Regardless it makes limited out formats (.3ds, not MAX) ect

It's a pain in the ass to get a gmax mesh into fs2 but I've done it.

I usually used the md3/mdl of some sort doom plugin and then used 3dexploration to make it into a .cob cause sometime textures don't stick when you go the 3ds route with gmax, it or just up and fails or you get a block of jagged polys aroudn a box like a blank borg cube...

I haven't done it in over two years though so I might be missing a step.

[shiv]

Ignore trashman TrueSpace is masochism.