Could anyone please tell me what would be the best type of modeling and rendering software for a beginner? Thank you

lots of folks use WINGS....it's free and we have a good forum for it here...try the wings forum. i'm not sure about rendering. Bryce is a good renderer and not too pricey. your best bet is to start with something with alot of forum support, i would think. of course all modellers have their own interfaces, etc., and it is hard to know what is best for you. try some of the demo versions of the commercial ones, as well. see what is easiest for you.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12402

here's a link to the modelling forum....it has a list of free apps in the forum graphic.

I started with Paint Shop Pro, then moved to Bryce and fell in love immediately. The great thing about Bryce is that it has an extremely excellent rendering engine and is very, very cheap ($100USD). Wings is also awesome, I agree. My opinion is that a great combo of programs is: Poser, Bryce, Wings, and Paint Shop Pro (Photoshop if you can afford it). This is what I have, and older versions of all of them. And Bryce has an ENORMOUS, very very helpful forum community.

Attached Link: http://www.planit3d.com/source/software_files/3dmod.html

Also you can get a completely free but older version of Truespace here. It seems to be all neat and legal, especially since Caligari is offering a discount on the upgrade to the newer version (v5 I think it is) if you download it. And no viruses or adware that I could find (there are lots of free adware scanner programs out there anyway even if there is).

Free modeling software: in addition to Wings3D, there's Blender and gmax. Blender is pretty powerful, but has a rather peculiar user interface that takes getting used to. gmax is a sort of "3D Studio Max Lite", with far fewer options, but it's extensively used to produce models for games, AFAIK. And Shade LE is a good low-budget modeler/renderer. Bryce is cool for creating landscapes, but it's not a modeling program. The user interface doesn't match with my way of thinking and working, but that's personal. The render engine is slow, but quite powerful. And if you're interested in 3D human models, check out DAZ|Studio. Works very well with Bryce, it certainly doesn't have the power of Poser 5 or 6, but it's free and the content that comes with it is pretty cool. If you want power, the Poser 5/6 + Vue 5 combo is wonderful. Beats DAZ|Studio + Bryce any time of the day. But that combo is also a lot more expensive. I'd advise trying the free and cheap tools first, to determine what you like. And later you could purchase more powerful modelers/renderers/whatever, based on what is right for you.

Attached Link: http://www.eovia.com/products/hexagon/hexagon.asp

You might like to take a look at Hexagon, a new modeler from Eovia. It's not real expensive, and I have found it to be very easy to use. There is a fully functional 30 day demo version that you can download to take it for a trial run, and some videos of the software "in action". It makes modeling fun and almost easy.

notepad if you want to learn povray scripting, or learn to read an obj file ( it is plain text ) you can create any model by typing in the correct sequences of numbers in notepad. not as fast or interesting as using a graphics app but functional.

Jaqui-- Ug! That sounds painful. Personally I would rather just go get Wings and use that. I just don't have enough grasp of spatial relationships to model something if I can't see it. And it would be a pain to make a change, import to Bryce and render, make another change, import to Bryce again and render, etc. when you can just use Wings (or Truespace) for free and see it as you make it. Kudos to you, man! Not something I would even care to attempt. Cheers =)

Attached Link: http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/default.asp

You might take a look at the software here. They have a 3D program as well as 2D graphics programs.