I'm curious to know: what are peoples' opinions on the best modeling program to use to create meshes for Poser, particularly for clothing. I'm struggling with Blender, but so far have not found any tutorials or tips that address using Blender and Poser - which should probably tell me something. So what does everyone else use, and why do they use it? I'm carefully not defining what means 'best' but I'd be interested in ease of use and compatibility of the results with Poser. (And OSX compatibility.)

This is something highly personal. What works for someone else won't necessarily work for you. And you'll probably find that most of the "pro" clothing makers use very expensive software, such as 3dsMax, Rhino, or Lightwave.

If you're planning to buy a software package, try before you buy. They all offer demos you can download and play with. You don't want to shell out $3,000 and then find out you hate it.

For free programs - again, I would try several and see which one you like best. Wings3D is probably the most popular free modelling program among Poser users. But I couldn't do anything with it. I love Anim8or, though - I was making usable props within an hour, no tutorials or manual needed.

You might want to give the Shade demo a try. It's from Curious Labs, so you get a discount if you own Poser. $49 for the LE version, I think - a great deal for what you get, IMO. Unless the Shade interface drives you nuts, of course. :-)

Shade is pretty good, if for no other reason than it integrates really well with poser. I use it to import poser scenes and render them. I've also mananged to create props in it, even a short skirt for use in the cloth room. Shaders Cafe has some pretty good tutorials for it too. Apart from that I've tried amorphium and it was a pain, a nice program but not great with poser. Zbrush has been fun so far, not sure if I'm going to be able to do clothes in it, but it's good for original figures. Oh and it has a live 3d painting mode which has been great for making textures. Oh I agree with randym on the shade interface it is a bit odd, but once you get the hang of where it puts things its not too bad. Hope you find what you're looking for, John :)

Zbrush isn't all that useful for making clothing. Poser users use it to make morphs - custom head morphs for Vicky, and that sort of thing.

You might consider Silo. I haven't used it myself, but if I were in the market for a modelling package right now, it's probably the one I'd get. It's very cheap (about $100) and it's a polygon modeller (as opposed to a nurbs modeller like rhino or a metaball modeller like zbrush). The reason it's so cheap is that it only does modelling - no rendering, no materials, no animation etc.

Stick with Blender, but you'll have to grab some online tutorials because it's quite different than Poser, but once you get the hang of it, it's great! You do need to grab an .obj import/export script. Feel free to ask any specific questions you might have and in my gallery you'll see any props were either modeled by me from scratch or heavily modified in Blender as well as the full body morphs for the characters. Some of the render were done in it too, but I'm now a POV-ray man.

Message edited on: 12/30/2004 16:09

i second blender, but just a note the 2.36 import/export works okay now, and issues out the proper smoothing. The price is really nice ($0)

MarbleCLAY is another option you may want to try.

I use Wings3d for all my modeling! Found it easier to use than any other program I tried. Look around in the Wings froum.