[Nehemiah]

I have always loved the work produced by all of the modding community in coming out with truly spectacular user-made models.  That being said, as a fun thing to do on the side, I wanted to get into making models/maps/textures myself.  What programs are out there to do this, and how much do they cost?  Are there any that are decent, have widespread use, and are free?

[Droid803]

Blender's free.

[Nehemiah]

Blender's free.

Do you have a link where I can download it?

[Nehemiah]

Nevermind, I see a whole list of 3d editors on the tutorial.

[Nehemiah]

Okay, so another question.  Which model editor do you use mostly, and why do you like it?

[Angelus]

3DSMax, because it's powerful, but expensive.


Blender is fine, once you get used to it, most people here use it. It's free. That's where you should start.
Wings 3D is the most basic one. Quick to learn.
Sketchup, well can't say anything about it.
Truespace...don't. Just don't. Unless your pain treshold is rather high.

Max and Blender can export to .DAE ( with export plugins ), that's another pro for those two.

[Rodo]

that's good, another modder 

[headdie]

on blender watch out, I downloaded the 2.5 beta and there is a number of changes that mean many of the 2.49 tutorials don't apply directly as a small number of short cuts have changed and features have moved/removed/replaced.


other than that I swear by it

[rhettro]

While I have a long history with 3D graphics, I've only recently started working with Blender.  For a free app, it is incredibly powerful.  Even though version 2.5 is still in alpha, the interface redesign brings it closer to 3DSMAX in usability.  So as a starting point I would say go get Blender and find some box modeling tutorials on the net to get you started.  Otherwise, my favorite app for modeling is Rhinoceros, which can model any kind of surface you can imagine.  It is a NURBS modeler so the resultant model must be converted to polygons before Freespace can use them, which can be a bit of a challenge, but accurate models can be created rather quickly with it.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Blender. It's completely free, has all the features you'll need (unlike Wings3D), converts easily to FS formats (unlike Sketchup), and the interface is real good. Well, it may be intimidating at first, but it was really built by modellers, for modellers.

[Rodo]

Yeah, old blender user (2.49 ones) will find using blender 2.5 quite annoying, basically because they changed most of the shortcuts and even the most basic operations such as Alt+Shift to move around is no longer supported (or it was changed), that made me go right away to the old one.

On a positive note:

I've noticed 2.5 renders even faster than 4.9 versions, I tried rendering a really heavy earth skybox and the difference between the two versions was noticeable, not FASTER FASTER, but faster.

[Nehemiah]

I downloaded Blender 2.6, and it's quite complicated.  I don't have a clue where to begin with it.  Is there any way to just draw and connect some polygons on a grid with it using (x, y, z) coordinates?  I mean, you have to be able to make a simple block model of what you're making before you play around with maps or textures or anything, right?

[rhettro]

There are blender experts here that can offer you more help than I, but one thing that kind of tripped me up the first time I tried blender was that to select objects, you have to click them with the right mouse button.  You can change this in preferences, but once I figured that out I could actually try some of the tools.  This is a good free document on using Blender 2.4 http://tinyurl.com/s6o3c .  Also, there are many good tutorials over at www.blendercookie.com .

[Zacam]

I'd say, start with 2.49. It's still good current stable, and all the tutorials will apply and work in it.

2.5 should only be used by folks familiar already with blender or 3D scene modeling.

[Hades]

Blender. It's completely free, has all the features you'll need (unlike Wings3D)

And just what are those features?

[qazwsx]

Blender. It's completely free, has all the features you'll need (unlike Wings3D)

And just what are those features?

DAE export?

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Blender. It's completely free, has all the features you'll need (unlike Wings3D)

And just what are those features?

Model hierarchy?

[Rodo]

I downloaded Blender 2.6, and it's quite complicated.  I don't have a clue where to begin with it.  Is there any way to just draw and connect some polygons on a grid with it using (x, y, z) coordinates?  I mean, you have to be able to make a simple block model of what you're making before you play around with maps or textures or anything, right?

I learned by watching some guy's vids on youtube and not giving up 

It took me 1 failed model to understand the basic operations in blender, and 1 more to learn the proper techniques to make models FOR fs.
I'm still learning a lot of stuff, but I gotta say... it's good I came around with Blender.

[Aardwolf]

Blender. It's completely free, has all the features you'll need (unlike Wings3D)

And just what are those features?

Cumbersome interface.

Actually it does have Boolean ops, and texture-space ambient occlusion. And rendering. But that's about it.

[Hades]

Blender. It's completely free, has all the features you'll need (unlike Wings3D)

And just what are those features?

Model hierarchy?

Actually, I'm not sure but I believe it does have this.