Whats your favourite low-end modeller and why?
Community Forums/Developer Stations/Whats your favourite low-end modeller and why?
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| When you was looking for a low-end (cheap) 3d modeller to use what made the one you chose stand out enough to make you use that instead of the others? Wings3D seems to be a very popular 3d modeller and yet at first glance it appears very amateurish and basic, but it's very easy to use... same goes for Milkshape and C-Shop 4. Quill3D appears to be a lot more advanced and harder to use than the above modellers and was designed specifically for Blitz (I think), but I don't know how popular Quill3D is. So do you go for features or ease of use? and does it help if it was designed specifically for Blitz or at least with Blitz in mind? |
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| I really liked Truespace (early versions are cheap) but it lacked in the export department. I couldn't get on with wings, found Milkshape to be a bit clunky but with excellent export/import capability. I use Lightwave now, but that isn't cheap :| |
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| We use Silo (www.nevercenter.com). The main reason we use it is that it's easy,powerfull and fun to work with. I really recommend it. We've tried 3DS Max(too technical), Maya(too deep), Blender(too weird) but once we used Silo, we were sold. Finally a modeller that doesn't let you feel stupid an didn't hinder us artistically. Silo is a pure subdiv modeller, nothing else, so for uv mapping we use unwrap3d(also very nice),for animation CharacterFX(it does the job) and for the lightmaps we use Gile[s](simply rocks). |
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| I didn't really like Truespace/gameSpace... never could get used to it. I've tried several 3d modellers recently and I found a few decent ones, but none that really stood out. Milkshape is probably the best I've tried, but DeleD, Form-Z, ppModeller and Wings3D weren't bad either. |
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| I just tried Silo and it's pretty good. Very easy to use, and has plenty of mesh editing features, but that seems to be all it does have (as you said). For game development, every 3d modeller I've tried has been lacking in at least two or three areas. |
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| DeLeD,i tried this a while ago found it realy easy to get used to and stayed with it. http://www.delgine.com/ dave |
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| For 90$ you can get Carrara 2 at http://www.purplus.com/ which is a quite good and fast modeller after you are used to the strange looking GUI ( which happens far faster than you would believe :) ) |
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| yea, I like DeleD... and it's still being worked on by the developer(s). I did have a few problems with the interface though... especially when it came to selecting/moving/rotating objects. Also, you can't create/edit in the 3D viewport which is a big turn off for me. |
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| I haven't tried Carrara Studio yet... Im downloading a demo of version 3 now. |
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| Milkshape is just about the only game in town if you want absolute control over the position of every vertex in your model. That's what gets me with some other modelers; it's hard to make models that animate well when the vertices are scattered willy-nilly around the joint areas. (Now that B3D has vertex weighting, that's less of a problem.) I also find it easier to make models that look EXACTLY like I want when I can grab vertices and move them around. I wouldn't recommend MS for really complex or high-definition models, though. |
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| Yea, that's one thing I like about Milkshape... all the vertices etc are displayed and manipulated in a very simple way which makes it easy to get the results you want and keep the mesh from becoming a mess. |
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| i'm no Blenderhead, but when i did try using it the interface was too unusual for me. however, the interface was recently overhauled, so anyone who hasn't tried it might want to give it another go. appears to be gaining new momentum. |
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| Wings3d is clearly a more powerful modeller, particularly for game use, but I just can't get to grips with the interface. For me, it's Milkshape all the way, partly because it's interface is so similar to 3dsMax and partly because I'm a control freak and I simply have to position all my vertices manually. |
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| If Wings3d wasn't cross-platform and open source I would have said it was made in Blitz3D, lol... the interface is hand drawn and the window resizing looks like the kludged Blitz method everyone uses. Milkshape seems to be the favourite so far... I tried Carrara Studio 3 earlier and I was quite impressed by it, but I don't think it's really suitable for games developers. I noticed it exports to a .B3D format, but it's not the Blitz3D .B3D. |
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| I use Cinema4D, i find he is very powerfull and easy to use. Cinema4D + MotionBuilder = You have all tools for make your own PRO Quality games. And i know Quality Tools have a Price :) Regards, |
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| I use 3D Canvas,its powerfull and pretty easy to get use to. I here that soon Richard is going to be releasing a new version of Canvas with a better and faster rendering Engine witch could make Canvas one mighty powerfull 3D modeling tool. |
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| I have been using lightray3d for a couple of months it seems to be a very versatile tool. And it has good support for the B3d file format (Both import/export). I also use wings3d and Ultimate Unwrap3D I wood highly recommend looking at the lightray3d demo on http://www.sxcreations.com/lr3d/lightray3d.php Qcat |
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| I just tried LightRay out. It's not bad, but it's quite slow on my PC and it's annoying having to change modes every time you want to move/rotate/zoom the camera. It seems to have a lot of features though and I might look into it some more. |
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| "Milkshape is just about the only game in town if you want absolute control over the position of every vertex in your model. That's what gets me with some other modelers; it's hard to make models that animate well when the vertices are scattered willy-nilly around the joint areas. I also find it easier to make models that look EXACTLY like I want when I can grab vertices and move them around." What bizarre comments. You make it sound like no other modeling tools allow you to directly control vertices, when in fact EVERY modeling tool supports that (requires it, really.) Well, I suppose "every" is too strong a word; I can think of maybe two modeling tools which aren't based on/don't allow direct manipulation of vertices, neither of which I've seen mentioned on this forum. Direct manipulation of vertices is the most basic modeling method, a task fundamentally inherent in just about every modeling tool I've ever used or seen. Saying Milkshape is better than Wings3D (or whatever) because it allows direct manipulation of vertices is kind of like saying Volvos are better than Toyotas because they have wheels. *** "partly because I'm a control freak and I simply have to position all my vertices manually." Here again, you make it sound like Milkshape is the only tool you can do this in. I'm rather at a loss to understand how you could possibly model anything in 3D Studio Max or Wings3D or Maya WITHOUT manually positioning vertices. *** If you just don't like the interface then whatever, but it is quite erroneous to describe Wings3D as "amateurish" or "basic." Wings is a very powerful modeling tool, incorporating the latest subdivision surfaces technology, and is a favorite modeling tool in the 3D art community, including many professionals. Milkshape on the other hand is barely adequate for the modeling needs of game development hobbyists. |
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| Metasequoia V2.2.4 shareware is very good modeler, it got blobby option and the magnet tool is better then wing3d and you can have 4 windows to work with like max, except that you can only save in it own format, to bypass this you download the freeware version and load your saved model you made in the shareware version and export to dxf format and then convert it.... the thing that suck is you can't register the shareware version because the guys only sell his product in japan.... http://www21.ocn.ne.jp/~mizno/main_e.html |
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| There is also a plug-in for Ultimate Unwrap 3d to load and save the Metasequoia files. |
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| If you just don't like the interface then whatever, but it is quite erroneous to describe Wings3D as "amateurish" or "basic." Wings is a very powerful modeling tool, incorporating the latest subdivision surfaces technology, and is a favorite modeling tool in the 3D art community, including many professionals. Milkshape on the other hand is barely adequate for the modeling needs of game development hobbyists. Milkshape is very simple, even primitive, but that's what I like about it. It's not the ability to move vertices around; it's the fact that you HAVE to place all your vertices that I like. If, for example, I want to limit a model to 200 polys (because there may be 100 of them on the screen at once), Milkshape gives me the ability to toss something together from scratch without having to think too hard about LoD. Add in some tricks of the trade and you can make pretty detailed models with very few polys. Wings3D is great too, but it's a modeler with a different purpose. I have it and use it when poly count isn't that important. For that matter, Art of Illusion is another cool modeler with booleans, so I use THAT when I need booleans. :) |
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| When it comes to low-poly modelling (And note that I am talking about actual _modelling_ here)I find Wings3D hard to beat. No other tool I've used alllows me to work fast, be creative and still let me have control over the structure/poly-count. I have my roots in 3d Studio ver. 2 (Yes we're talking DOS version here!), and used the successing versions for many years. But when I encountered Nendo (Wings 3D is practically an exact copy of Nendo, created since the company that produced Nendo went bust (see below)) it was instant love. I find the remark about Wings 3D beeing amateurish with a poor interface totally off mark. Nendo (and it's 'big-brother' Mirai) was built by Nichimen specificly with low-poly charcter design in mind and the interface is adapted for this. At the time (we are talking late 90's here) the interface was very cutting edge, quite unlike any of the other tools around at the time. And since Wings 3D lends all of its main interface features from Nendo this is equally true foe Wings 3D |
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| I merely stated that it appears that way at first, which IMO it does. After using Wings3D it's clear that it's more powerful than it looks. |
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| Chris: Sorry... I guess I read your post rather hastily. But now for some exiting news (Being a Nendo fan, at least I think so!) Talking about nendo made me check Izware's site. Izware took over the licences from Nichimen when it went bust, but for a long time nothing has happened. (I distinctly rember checking their site a few months back only to be met by the "Back soon" message that has been there for a long time. ) But now it seems that they are rolling again and the site is up. As it seems that the core of the company is made up of former Nichimen developers there might be interesting things happening in the future. I know I will keep an eye on what they are up to. If you are interested you can check it out here: Izware Site //PetBom |
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