To preface this, I have some limited experience in ZBrush and Truespace, but beyond that most of my graphics time has been spent in Photoshop and Poser.

I have access to Maya 2008, 3d Studio, and Lightwave 9 but no experience on any of them.  I was considering purchasing Shade 8.5 but I wanted to find out, first, what app(s) most of you think would be the best for a relative 3D beginner to use if I wanted to create Poser objects and conforming clothes?

I have friends in the graphics industry, so acquiring the software cheaply isn't a problem even if I have to pay for an older version.

Thanks in advance.

I make a most of clothes in Hexagon, and some in 3D max. (I find hexagon faster for quick simpler pieces) Zbrush I end up using mostly for displacement, bump mapping and texturing.

Most of the apps that you mentioned will work just fine - they definately have the capacity. The biggest part of the decision will lay on what's most comfortable for you, personally.

You need to demo all the software first and find the one that fits your way of thinking. What works for one person can be a nightmare for you, so choose wisely.

I'll start out by saying you definitely don't need to buy shade. Any of those other apps you mentioned will do just fine.
PhilC has a tutorial CD for modeling clothes for Poser using Truespace,  on his website.

I've seen & heard good things about Blender, do a search on Youtube for "Big Buck Bunny" & prepare to be amazed.

You can try wings3d, fast learning curve and it is free. I think it is one of the best box modeling applications in the "market". If you are going to use box modeling to make your clothes, I think this is a great choose.

Quote - I've seen & heard good things about Blender, do a search on Youtube for "Big Buck Bunny" & prepare to be amazed.

I use Blender myself and love it.

You can find the cartoon **here
**
And more info on Blender here

hexagon & silo are two very low priced very capable apps.
max and maya, are a bit of overkill if you are just using them to model clothing in they are so much more full 3d solutions, as is lightwave and cinema, although cinema if I remember correctly is a modular app so you only buy what you need.

I used tS5 for a great many years after leaving 3dsMax as it was the closest I could find to max in my price range.

Shade would be OK if you think in Shade which I could not do for teh life of me, but as Tashar said, what one likes the other may not, so definatly try as many demo's as possible.

I forgot about Blender.  I've had it on my HD for a while but never really played much with it - I found the UI to be terribly convoluted and confusing (no more so than Maya, though).

What I'm hearing from you guys is that everyone uses a little something different.  Here I was hoping for a concensus or something :)

The best app for Poser clothing is Lightwave.

Quote - The best app for Poser clothing is Lightwave.

Can you elaborate?  It's one of the apps I have easy access to if I need it, but my concerns are mostly in learning a completely new UI and the Poser clothing creation process both at the same time.

I knew Lightwave OBJ files were easily imported into Poser - do the Poser models import just as easily into Lightwave?

What do you like about it the best?

I think he means the fact that Lightwave doesn't split the mesh by mesh groups, which if you do lots of clothing, is almost the holy grail of an ideal feature.

That being said, I do my Poser stuff in a combination of Silo, Shade, Amapi, Zbrush, 3d-coat, and Lightwave, depending on what I need to be done.

I agree, Shade has a very specific "mentality", which is not for everyone. I am happy with it, I must be one of the lucky guys ;)

Quote - "The best app for Poser clothing is Lightwave."

Can you elaborate? 

Yep!  What Manoloz says plus realtime updating of morphs and UV maps.  See,  you can start your morphs at the low poly stage and Lightwave with automatically update them as you add detail.  Same with the UV maps. 

As for Poser to Lightwave and vis versa.  The only diference is Poser's scale is 40% - 42% less than lightwave's mm scale.

What I like about Lightwave the best,  is most VFX studios use it in conjunction with Maya.  So learning to use Lightwave for Poser clothing also opens the door to that field as well.  A lot of free plugins,  too!

BTW the UI is text based buttons.

"What I'm hearing from you guys is that everyone uses a little something different.  Here I was hoping for a concensus or something :)"

Modeling apps are very personal. That is why you need to try them all. Find that soulmate of an app. I know, that sound corny but you will find it's true. The free ones may be all you need, Anim8tor,blender or Wings3D. The lower priced ones are Hex, milkshape and Silo, Mid to higher range are C4d, lightwave and Modo, which is what I use now over everything, Maya, 3DSMax, XSI. Did I miss some?

Don't spend money until you know what you want and if you even like to model. not everyone does.

Modo!  I've got to get that app!  Money's short.  Maybe the Poser Saints will smile upon me and I'll win the lottery.

Wings 3D & Blender is what I use.

I use these to make props.

I'm sure they are also good for clothes making.

Blender has a lot of functions too.

But, I suppose for figure making and morph making invest in 3D Studio Max.

The free ones are limited.

yeah...Blender can do everything, which is good. But there's a menu for every thing it does, which is....something you have to get used to...;)  it's free, and a new version just came out.

Wings 3d is simple to learn, and free. I applaud anyone who can use Truespace (or as I called it, the Qbert Modeler...;) to make anything..;) It was the most convoluted UI I ever saw, until I saw Blender...;)

There are thousands of modeler programs (I know one site that has over a thousand listed)  out there. The only consensus you're going to find is that people here like to model clothes...;)

Try the free ones, see what you think. All you're out is some download time. Go to the spendy ones if the freebies don't cut it. See what works for you.

Quote - What I'm hearing from you guys is that everyone uses a little something different.  Here I was hoping for a concensus or something :)

Ha!  If you find a consensus, let us know about it!

Seems like any application, or combination of apps has it's pluses and minuses.

"But, I suppose for figure making and morph making invest in 3D Studio Max."

I started making my first morphs with Wings3D. You can make morphs with any app that moves verts. Some are better than others, true, but they all can do it. Wasn't Apollo done in Wings? or was that just a rumour.

Let's not forget that V3/Daz 3gen figures were done in Lightwave and V4 was done in Modo. So no need to spend that kind of money unless you need that whole package.*

"Ha!  If you find a consensus, let us know about it!*

Seems like any application, or combination of apps has it's pluses and minuses."

Aint that the truth.

At the end of the day there's no definitive answer to which is the best overall, whichever app you personally feel most comfortable using is the best for you.

I don't model clothes tho, haven't attempted that yet lol.

I just make my own props. Im hoping to share my freebies soon.
As soon as I can figure out how to upload them here lol. or link em here.

Small stuff.

hmm, Wings does morphs???

I just use it to make .obj files or Blender.

I'm starting to like Blender a lot.

It's whatever you can afford really, whatever works for you.

Anyone considering content-creation for Poser should give Cinema 4D a serious look.  When used with my (free) Riptide plugin for .obj import/export, you can do the modeling, morph-creation, grouping, material zone creation, uv-mapping and even 3D-projection-painting of textures (BodyPaint is now part of the app) all in one app (download the free C4D demo, then go download my fre plugin - the demo is save-disabled, but you can still import/export .obj files with my plugin to test things out).  The only thing it won't do for Poser is Poser-rigging.

With Robert's excellent interPoser Pro plugin, you can also load most/all Poser scenes/content, including posing, lighting, conforming clothing, morphing, etc. as well.

Of course you'll first have to decide what kind of clothes you would like to make. The process for conforming clothes is different from dynamic clothing. Then decide if the tools from PhilC aren't good enough for you (you can always use it as a start and just push a few verts around with any of the modeling apps). Using Zbrush at lot of things can be done with a fairly basic set of clothing as a starting point. Personally I would say start with creating clothing with the PhilC tools, then use that to play with Zbrush and only then see what is missing to determine what is required and what application suits you best (after testing them).

Study what other people have done. See for yourself what you can do with relatively simple tools (displacement maps, transparency, textures). Study the use of dynamic clothing (pay a lot of attention to using different groups on the clothing, each group can be a different material or can have different properties).

Most people find that they don't really need a lot of modeling to get what they need (given what has already been made, the tools available and the possibilities already available in Poser itself and simple maps).
Unless you want to make clothing to sell, anything produced with any means that produces a result you like is good enough.

Okay my 3 cents here on apps
For someone who has never modeled clothing till recently I'd say for a starting off point get Pegasus Modeler, it is cheap ($50 us) and comes with tutorials. Also as someone mentioned PhilC has tutorials on his site which are good and can be adapted to almost any modeiling program, but what they did not mention is his Clothing Designer Suite of Software. I use this to create a base shape of the clothing and use either 3dsMax or Pegasus Modeler to refine the way I want it. Max is good due to the GUI is better than most other 3d modeling apps I have used.

Max, Rhino and Lightwave were all 3 very  easy for me to get a handle on the basics. All 3 of those are good for making Poser stuff, btw. My freebies and may past marketplace products were made using all 3 of those (i switch back and forth between apps frequently. when I get bored with max, I use lightwave for a while, etc. My very first products were made with Wings, the program I cut my modeling teeth on.

...true, most any 3D app will do (at least in combination with some other apps).  I also recommend trying them all out to find the one you're most comfortable with.

• if you're on a tight budget, and/or not sure what your long-term commitment will be, then start with the free and relatively inexpensive apps.

• if you're in it for the long-haul, spend more time with those free demos and/or shop around for pricing and/or pre-owned older version deals (some apps like C4D will let you transfer licenses to another user).

Note that very few apps (I can't think of any, aside from Cinema 4D) will let you do 'everything but rigging'...

• some apps will re-order vertices (breaking morphs)
• some require an external app for uv-mapping (grab the free UVMapper program)
• some don't know what a 'group' is (Poser uses polygon groups to define bones for any "conforming" or posable figures - you may need to use Poser's grouping tool, or purchase some 3rd-party grouping tool)
• ...related to the above, if it does understand 'groups', it may be only to split your mesh up at group boundries (adding vertices in the process, potentially re-ordering them in the process)
• some either don't understand .mtl files (don't read or write them) or they otherwise don't provide good support for creating/preserving material zones.
• relatively few apps have paint-on-mesh capabilities for creating textures and painting over seams.
• etc.

...so spend time with each candidate application and get a feel for how many hoops you have to jump through to get everything you want done and/or how you like the interface, then factor that in to your cost vs. value decision :).

Also, before investing in one of the big apps, like Lightwave, Cinema, Max, etc...  There are several lot cheaper applications which can do almost all the work.
Wings can to a ton of work. I'm paricularly fond of Hexagon, it will model and UV map, and let you do some texturing. If you watch for sales, you can pick it up for as low as $30 bucks on DAZ.

My windy wizard robe (in the marketplace) was made almost 100% in hexagon. The only thing I made in max were the cloth simulation morphs. Modeling, UV mapping, grouping and other morphs are all Hexagon.

However, whatever app you choose, you;ll need a good set of utilities to make your item poser-ready. UV mapper is a must have. For morph importing and pose and cr2 making and hacking, I use a number of Dimension3D tools. (Dimension3D is a vendor here on rendo)
PhilC also has an array of very handy tools for making poser content.

Quote - What I'm hearing from you guys is that everyone uses a little something different.  Here I was hoping for a concensus or something :)

Consensus?!? From this community?!? ROFL! Sorry but everyone has their own individual workflow and style. As someone has already said, find the workflow that suit's you best. If you're familiar with TrueSpace already and feel comfortable with it, get the tutorials for making clothes in there. If you want to try finding something better, download every demo program you can find and see which one works best for you.

Free is good right? Then Blender.
I use Max myself.

Modeling is another world to learn, some get it and some are mystified by it.
Best of luck!

Quote - Free is good right? Then Blender.
I use Max myself.

Modeling [in Blender] is another world to learn, some get it and some are mystified by it.
Best of luck!

Excuse my edits, but I think that reads just as truly :).

But yeah, if you can figure out it's interface, Blender is a powerfull (and free) app.

Edit away, mohawked one!

I use Blender myself, have Silo and find it too difficult and awkward after Blender - weird, hey? I actually LIKE the Blender interface - it's all gelling and making sense, so I'm getting my work done quickly. Now, if only the proportional edit tool had a limiter thatwould keep it from affecting those vertices that are close by, but are not part of the mesh you want to effect.

K, gonna start a new thread... Calling it Clothing Design primers, who knows a good one?