I am ready to purchase a modeler. At this point Amorphium is my favorite candidate. I would like some opinions from the 'ol pros here. I understand that Nendo is popular, but I am unable to get it to work with my Voodoo card. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

The BEST money can buy is 3D Studio max, Lightwave or Maya....but they run $1000+ US Truespace is great too its about 400. I would suggest if you're just starting out to get truespace - its a good base to start. RDS is just crap IMO. Good hunting -DA P.S. go to http://www.creationengine.com to get student discounts

Thank you and you're right! Those are awesome programs. I have access to 3ds at work. What I'm specifically looking for, however, is a non-vertex based modeler; one that I could use in a variety of rendering solutions. I'm looking to do mostly organic stuff like humanoid models and morph targets as well as props. Thanks again!

No doubt in my mind Cinema 4D XL .now anyone that knows me will know I'm a fan of this app but I just got the latest version on thursday V6 and this thing rocks for modelling it blows max and LW out the water and i don't say that lightly either as I reviewed both and stated how good they are....I created a pair of creature feet in about 20 minutes using hypernurbs and that was the first time I've tryed them (I normally model with splines)...but its stil pricey compared too nendo or amorphium so if its to much get Nendo, amorphium is kind of cool but to kidish...not sure what problem your having with the video card I'm using a banshee voodo .........Steve

Thanks Steve...downloading the demo for Cinema 4dxl now!

Best modeler IMO is Rhino3d [www.rhino3d.com], all of the other programs listed are combo programs [i.e. animation.rendering.modelling]. Rhino has an extremely easy learning curve, exports well in to Poser, morph targets are a piece of cake. But just my opinion.

heya; i'm the best modeller. :) (sorry, just kidding!) i like amorphium, but i feel it is underpowered and under-controllable, if you know what i mean. it makes mighty fine body parts (though a bit on the high-poly-count side), but what are you going to assemble all the parts with? (you do have their demo, right?)

Rhino 3D is the best that I have used, it has a lot of bang for the buck. Can be used to model, morph, & render. The newest version 1.1 even has a polygon reduction tool that is out of this world. Amorphium is good, but not for "real" modeling :) -Trav (P.S. If you want to see what rhino is capable of, take a look at the Rhino forum here, we have people who are making photo-real stuff with only a month of using the program)

I second the Cinema 4D XL recommendation, and XL6 in particular. Very fast, very stable. I've used Amorphium, and though it is a fun little app I wouldn't recommend it as one's only modeller. It is great for deforming existing models, and I use frequently it as a specialized tool for certain things. However I can't imagine trying to use it to create everything.

Thank you all very much for your time and input. I will consider Cinema4dxl and Rhino.

Watch out for Rhino. It's export is not always clean and can leave holes. I spend a lot of time cleaning up Rhino and MAX models. Max is painfully overwritten and requires too many plug ins to make it really useful out of the box. If you are looking to build malable poly surfaces, Mirai is the best I have used. It is high-end and expensive but MAX, Lightwave, Soft and Maya have gone to some length to copy syuff from Mirai. (quite little trips to Viewpoint, you know fact finding....) Nendo is alot like Mirai, not as elegant but very fast. almost no learning curve and under a 100 bucks.

I use lightwave 6.5 and Cinema 4DXL6 While the lightwave modeler is awesome cinema edges it out just a little