I've been using Truespace with Bryce for ages but it's starting to feel a bit limiting. Looked at Blender, didn't like the interface. Didn't care for Wings either. Found the trial edition of Silo quite intriguing and liked what I saw but it's crashed again (that's three for four times today) and after discovering how flakey and buggy Vue Esprit was, don't want to get burned again. I think I'm after a subdivision modeler, any suggestions? Perhaps there is a service pack for Silo?

uh..I dunno..I use Wings and Blender..;) Cinema 4d and Strata will also do modeling, but I'm not sure what subdivision modeling is (I'm in the country, maybe nurbs are burbs..;) I suppose you could look at Rhino, Lightwave, and Maya (if you can actually afford them, that's a different story..;)Here's a few places to look.
http://www.cbel.com/3d_graphics_software/
warning- while almost everything is here, it's a little heavy on the ray-dream side. Shirley there should be something there..

Message edited on: 08/30/2005 16:52

You might also want to look at Modo,.........once again if you can afford it. @pakled, don't call me Shirley !

im with pakled wings and blender will do the job fine

Give Cinema4D's demo a whirl.

Attached Link: http://www.luxology.com/modo/201/

What exactly did you find off-putting about Wings? Just curious.

Attached Link: http://www.zbrushcentral.com

Message edited on: 08/30/2005 23:37

"click-drag-done" You can do that in wings and blender already....for free.

I use Playdo, never have any problem with that plus it is so easy to manipulate into shape..give it a go, i'm sure a toystore near you sells it... Sorry, was joking there. I can understand you not wanting to get burnt again. Give wings a try, don't be put off by the interface..even i a none-modeller is starting to use and learn it...need to these days not many doing models one can afford..

www.thewings3dsite.tk :)

I use Wings, it took me all of 3 hours to learn 90% of what it can do. I spent about the same amount of time with Blender and got maybe 5% into it. Blender's hard. But, from what I see, C4D would be my choice for a professional package.

All useful suggestions - thank you

Not so worried about free, you get what you pay for.

Just want something reliable, straight forward and cost effective, don't mind rewarding people for building good product.

Message edited on: 08/31/2005 07:37

I'm with you, Mark. I, like you, don't mind paying, if it will suit my needs. I've tried Maya's modeler, Houdini, 3dsmax, viz, Lightwave and others that were high- and medium-end packages. Others that were medium and somewhat lower were Mirai and Nendo. I found the interface on Nendo to be the simplest and, when development went stagnant on Nendo, I went to Wings, which was a clone that rapidly was gaining all the same capabilities as Nendo. I settled on Rhinoceros for NURBS and on Wings for Sub-D. I could have paid a chunk of change, if I thought another Sub-D program would be better, but Wings is powerful and useful, as well as intuitive; you just have to familiarize yourself with the commands, which doesn't take too long at all. As has been said earlier in this thread, a few minutes and you can learn much that you will ever need about Wings. The interface is clean and deceptively simple, so I think some people think it must be rinky-dink, but I use Wings for professional projects all the time. I couldn't care less that it's free, though I admit that part is nice when your department is budgeting software upgrades and Wings doesn't factor in.

What would you suggest for a Macintosh user?

On mac, the best free modeler is Wings3d.If you have money, then its C4D,Maya, or Lightwave.The last 3 all ahve demos, so you can see what you like better.

Darn! I keep forgetting that Winds3d is available for the Mac. Believe it or not... I'm still stuck with OS9, because of an older scanner than won't work in OSX.