Just a quick question for anyone in the know - Whats the best and/or easiest program to learn to make clothing and possibly figures or props that is available on the market? I see a lot of members in the forum that make their own clothing for figures and was hoping to possibly start myself. Thanks again

You may find these links to these free or low priced 3D modeling programs helpful:-- Anim8or

• Blender
• MilkShape 3D
• 3D Canvas
• Rhino
• Amapi

I model in Truespace which may be within your budget. You may like to visit my site to see what that program can produce.

IMHO Cinema 4d XL V7 :o)....but theres a few that will do the job such as Truespace, Max and Lightwave and more....to be 100% honest with you you need to try the demos of as many apps as you can as one persons love may be your hate, heres a good free one to mess around with till you decide www.anim8or.com and heres a site with a tutorial on morphing poser stuff with it http://interneteye3d.com/ Steve

Attached Link: http://www.fignations.com/resources/home.html?page=/resources/apm.html

with ref to all the new users who've just got Poser off a cover disk, do you want to update the FAQ with links like this so's they can check the available software?

Attached Link: http://www.wings3d.com/

Careful what you wish for. I used to be a Poser fool. Then I started playing around with modeling. Now I'm a modeling fool, and hardly have any time at all for actually using Poser. :-) Seriously, try the free demos, find one that "fits" and stick with it. You might want to take a look at Nendo and Wings3D as well as the others that were mentioned here. jon

Now..somebody's talkin' my language...I only use 3D Max to view files...I 'm just learnin' how to change my default screen ' wanna learn how to MAKE stuff. I love these proggies n' wanna learn MORE!

Free and easy will be hard to find i think Ron, but the best of the freebies is probably amapi http://bakhter.com/html/main/amapi4.html its a nice little app :o).....Steve

Ron I think you've just found out what I was going to tell you. If they've got lots of features, like Blender, then they're not easy to learn.. Actually Blender is ridiculously hard to learn, but it is free, and it is AMAZINGLY powerful. I have to disagree about Amapi; I find that almost impenetrable. Therein lies the rub; any advice anyone can give you is going to be personal, one person likes this one, another a different..... The bottom line is; THIS AINT EASY, but it is incredibly rewarding and worth the effort. If you just want to learn techniques get hold of a 30 day demo of a program called MORAY. It won't be any use to you for POSER 'cos at the moment it won't output anything poser can read (though that may change, it's a modeller for POV) but it has the clearest easiest interface of any 3D app I have seen anywhere, and learning it will set you up for the others. I understand where you're coming from, I think the next on the list would be TRUESPACE. Now it isn't free BUT version 3.1 has been given away several times on cover disks so someone you know may well have a legitimate unused copy (it's worth checking out back issue orders of mags too) PhilC started with TRUESPACE, in fact I think he still uses it, so that's a pretty good recommendation yes? Rhino and Nurbs: without getting too techy; nurbs are great for modelling EXCEPT when you want to take your nice tightly coded small model file and translate it into something Poser can use. Then the file size multiplies horribly and you end up with monster big files, - and you know what Poser is like when you push its memory handling right? Don't go there. Don't get me wrong I've seen what Rhino can do and it is a fantastic program, but not for you right now. My second option for you would be Anim8or, mostly because it's free, but also because it isn't loaded down with lots of extra features. The interface is clean and fairly intuitive. Start small and work up, you'll be amazed what you can do. Hope that helps. Please remember these are only my personal opinions, someone else may have a completely diff view. If I appear to have insulted anyone's favourite program I apologise, didn't mean it that way, just looking at it from the point of view of someone starting out best wishes as always peejay

Attached Link: http://pub33.ezboard.com/bnendowingsmirai

Wings3D is Free (Open Source), and outputs to .obj format. And it is the easiest to use 3D modeler I have ever used (and I've used all the free ones). You won't get a lot of answers about it here, but it does have its own very active and helpful forum (see link). It also imports and exports Nendo files, so you can use Nendo to color your models and avoid all that messy UV mapping if you want. The only caveat I would give you is that it has problems importing Poser figures (he's working on that), but for building stand alone props you can't beat it. You really should give it a try. jon

You seem to give up a lot, Ron. ;) Remember how much effort you put into learning Poser? You have to put the same effort into learning any other program.

Attached Link: http://www.anim8or.com/manual/index.html

I agree on Blender. It is MUCH MUCH more stable on Linux, but my Linux box is in Lousiana somewhere, so that's no help to me. Anim8or looks pretty straightforward though..

In fact, I think I will download it.

Anim8or Manual

Well, when I click on some buttons in Poser nothing happens either. I had to read the manual to use Poser. ;)

I know Anim8or has a couple of good tutorials on its site; there is the egg plant tutorial and the hand tutorial, plus an HTML manual. I thought it was pretty criptic at first too, but reading helped. As far as Blender goes, that is probably the most complex modeler you could pick of those discussed here. There are books (literally) written on it and you need them to make much progress. I don't much appreciate a screen full of icons with dozens of choices either and gave up on Blender almost immediately. That is why I settled on Nendo and Wings (they work essentially the same, learn one, you know the other). Here things are presented in Menus with words. File -> New. That seems pretty intuitive to me. Right click in the workspace and you get a context sensitive menu. Got an empty workspace? Right click and you get a list of primitives to choose from. Click on one and presto, there it is. There are only 10 icons in the whole program, and you don't have to use any of them, as all functions are available via the menus. And again, there is an on-line manual and some mini tutorials at the site. It does take some effort to learn a program, even Poser. jon

Ok. I for one have tried all the programs listed and a few that are not listed by my mentor Phil C. But for me the only one that I could really understand is Amapi. Phil took the time to teach me the ends and out of truespace, I just did not get it. Then I moved to rhino, Serge was way cool to help me understand how the program works but I still could not get things to look the way I wanted. Then I met Dolly and he turned me on to Amapi. I did not get the way they things work. But then he told me about the latest vershion of the program and I fully understood how to do some of the stuff that I want to do. So I guess what I am saying is all programs do not work for all people. Ron I am like this, if a program gives me to much trouble in the working of it then it hits the trash. If not for the forum here at render then I would never have met any of the great teachers that I have had. My advice to you is to look in the forums and go through them and read all you can about who is doing what with what program. Then try them all and find one that works for you.

Here is what my screen looks like in Max. I've been using it almost every day for two years and I still only know what about 3/4 of those do-dads operate. Max is a really great program though, but really pricy, too. They really aught to do a Max lite with modeling only, as that is all I use it for. Anyway, notice the colors on the vertex that is selected, Max does a reall nice graduated fall-off on the selection, if you wish, I could have never done Supermodel vickie without that!

Ok ron I have Ver 6 and you can download the demo of the program from the site. Remember that I am ok with the program and the master of these programs are as follow: Truespace: Phil C Rhino: Xurge Amapi: Dolly Sorry if I left anyone out or any programs, but I can't keep all of you in my head. The three listed are people who I speak too all the time.LOL So grab the program and then do what I did burn the midnight oil, read all that you can get your screen to load and bug the hell out of one of these three ( Just kidding or am i? ).LOL Naw they are great and the guys in the forums ( some of them) will go out of there way to help you or at the very lease will give you a link that will show you a step by step how to get what you want out of the programs. Oh and I have lightwave, tried it twice. I just did not like the inter face of it and then all the tools got me all confused. But it is a good program when you want to add something to and obj. Thanks the John Hoagland, I figured out how to add a cape to this chest armor that Xurge helped me make. So its not all bad just ugly.LOL