Ampti, Wings 3D, Blender, Anim80r, and a host more that I probably do not even know about. How does one know which one to choose? Which is easiest for someone who has little or no modeling experience to comprehend? Which has the best tutorials for learning how to use the program? Which is best suited for making stuff to use in Poser? It is not practical for me to download and give each of these I try, I need to whittle the field down a bit and pick maybe one or two to try. I did look at blender but could not make heads or tells of it. I hear folks talk about wings 3d, how does that compare to blender or some of the others. I started out trying to learn anim8or but found myself wishing there were better tutorials, or if there are, that I could find them. Any advise, help, and thoughts on picking a modeler to use with Poser, and hopefully not to difficult to learn, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks! If NaySayGuy can do it, than maybe there IS hope for me. LOL Missed this tutorial. I swear, you must have a dozen clones hard at work, cranking these tuts out like you do. Hence forth you shall be known - in all your incarnates - as Sir Dr. Geep. :O)

You're welcome and, you might, also, want to check out the ... Wings3D Forum here at R'osity. cheers, dr geep ;=]

I've sometimes felt like asking the same question... The bits of fiddling I've done have been with Anim8or, and I've had a few WTF moments. |I suspect that the different programs have different strengths. One little problem, I may sort out by cutting away the component I want to modify, moving it back into Poser, doing the rotation, back into the modelling program, and back into the desired place in the model. Yes, I know it sounds horrible. Anim8or isn't good at rotations. That's maybe the sort of detail wanted.

Well, Although the wings interface took some getting to used to figure out, the tutorial support overall and the power of the application made me choose it over the others.

I've done quite a bit of modeling with all four of those apps. Eventually I ended up prefering Wings mainly because for me the workflow is faster. Others may feel differently. I'd hazard a guess that if you did a poll of those four apps Wings would probably win hands down. I like em all, though.

Not free but cheap: Silo
Its kinda like Wings3D, just different. ;D

Here are some Wings3D/Silo tutorials.

I strongly recommend Blender. The rendering engine and online support have been greatly improved lately. Did buy the manual when I first got my hands on it a couple years ago, which helped a lot.

a new version of Blender came out today, and there's a linke in the Bryce forum for it (try this too is the headline of the thread), it can import native Wings format, I hear..but I still use Wings..;) it's a conspiracy..your eyes are getting heavy..;)

I think that Wings is definitely the best free modelling app, however for Poser it has a major limitation....being a "wings" modeller (whatever that means) results in all models being "closed", which makes it useless for modelling dynamic clothing (which is open). It's fine for all other stuff.

Cool. I'm gonna take a look at that. I still have a soft spot in my heart for Blender. Thanks for the info, pakled.

Heya, face_off, what do you mean by models being closed? Oh, and thanks again to everyone who has replied. I appreciate the info. :O)

What he means is that it's box modelling. However, what he may not be aware of is that you can take any polys in wings and apply them to the "hole" material -- when exported, the hole material vanishes -- those polys do not exist. So it can be used for creating the single sided meshes for various things. for what little it is worth, Silo is a nice tool -- but it is not free. I have been fairly astounded at just how good for modelling for Poser wings really is -- it just takes getting to know the program itself and what it can do, then thinking n ways to use the things it can do to achieve your goal. It's surprisingly powerful -- as far as pure box modelling goes, it's definitely on par with the current version of 3DS MAX or Lightwave -- but it does not have a huge number of time saving features -- so you sorta have to do it the "old fashioned" way. But, basically, if you can envision it, you can make it in wings. THe tutorials linked to on the main site and the past posts here at rosity have an amazing array of cool tricks, all presented in very easy to "get" ways that show you nifty stuff. in fact, the tip I meniton above comes from reading int he wings forum here ;) (Thanks BazC!)

Hi ynsaen, thanks.

Agghhhh, the Hole material. Of course! Why didn't I think of that! I've been looking for a soln to this problem for ages. Thanks a heap ynsaen. You've just made my day.

lol -- should have seen me when I first tested that -- I jumped up out of my chair so fast I sorta bounced out of my top. Very embarrassing -- but not unlike the outfit I was trying to make at the time....

the "hole" material? (thinks about the portable hole illo for AD&D CD-ROM) hmmm....

... "hole" cloth? Does P5 have a hole cloth room? ;=]

Hmmm, not sure about a "hole cloth" or "hole cloth room", but I swear P5 comes with a black hole that swallows stuff up! I have sat on the event horizon watching my work get gobbled up as P5 mysteriously stalls, crashes, or otherwise shuts down unexpectedly on me. Good thing I save often.

.bookmark

Shadownet (getting off topic here....), I've had similar problem, but got 2 ways around it.... 1) I now always start a new scene from scratch (ie. load the original V3 figure, mats, etc). I think working from previous pz3 files gradually corrupts things. 2) If P5 hangs (for me usually when I save a large file), just Ctl-Alt-Del and select the Task Manager. When the TM pops up on the screen, P5 mysteriously comes back to life for me!

Hi pkinnane, thanks for the tips. I have noticed that P5 does seem to corrupt things more if I save in pz2. In fact I have had files saved that I could not later reopen. I have had less problems with pz3 in P5. What I have started doing, when I use P5, which truthfully is not real often, I keep running backups, sort like b1, b2, b3, and then one BB that is sort of the master copy of the current. After I get to about b9, I start over again with b1. As for tip 2, that does not seem to work for me. What has worked is either waiting and sometimes the problem clears itself up, and when that doesn't work, sometimes I can click on the P5 icon again on my desktop, like I am going to launch the program new, and that will sort of jump start it and get it working again. When all else fails, I give it the three finger salute and start over again - which happens a bit more often that I like.

I recently replaced my graphics card, so as to get DirectX 9 support. Much more RAM than the original, and it seems to have made a difference... If it's correct that Poser doesn't use hardware acceleration, that extra RAM seems to be the only significant difference. I suspect I ought to get the latest OpenGL stuff too.