Hi, All! I want to thank everyone who offered input on my informal survey question last week Old Question Returns; What 3D Modeling apps does everyone here use? I posted similar questions in the Poser & Modeling Forums at Renderosity, as well as a Post over at PoserPros. Besides tallying the responses directly posted, I spent a little time prowling the various software Forums and websites looking for links to tutorials and who wrote them, as well as searching back 6 to 8 months thru old postings for when others had asked similar questions, noting who had responded. I want to stress that I used a purely subjective method of scoring, and multiple votes were counted when an artist recommended more than one app, as long as they admitted some experience with each. Bearing in mind that this was completely informal and by no means definitive, heres the results, in case anyone else is curious. In first place is Rhino 2.0 with more than twice the votes of the second place App - (23). Second place was Lightwave (11) Third is a three-way split between Cinema 4D, 3DS MAX, and Amapi - each with (7) Fourth was Truespace with (5) Raydream had a surprisingly strong support, along with Infini-D, and there were a few scattered endorsements for Amorphium, Milkshop, and some of the free and shareware modelers, but I was primarily interested in the major current commercial apps. Again I want to thank everyone who was kind enough to take the time to post feedback directly. http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=654272 http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=654275

I posted along with the rest, but it was a small first couple of posts, don't know if you saw it, but we use AutoCad 2000....just thought I would share that with you again. Sharen

Um, that's MilkShape, not "Milkshop". I'm rather disappointed that trueSpace had such a poor showing. Do you think it would gain more street cred if Caligari raised the price to $1999?

I am actually surprised, I thought Truespace was the most popular program...Sharen

I never would have expected Rhino to be so high up. Interesting! Thanks for sharing!! Aaron

Sharen, sorry I forgot to mention, I had 3 "votes" for Autocad on my graph. Milkshape, right:-( - (I hate typos!), Sorry. I have to stress again, this was very informal, and a LOT of folks who use Rhino also listed other apps they use for some purposes. I was dissappointed about Truespace, also. I had pretty good prices already negotiated for TS5 & Amapi 6 (In a bundle with Cararra Studio) as upgrades. I can't help but wish there were some way to poll all REST of the Artists who create meshes in freestuff and the MarketPlace here and at other sites, I'd REALLY like to see the results of that survey!

I use Ray Dream Studio 5.5 from way back. Others do, too.

I have seen others use Lightwave (esp. Dacort), Rhino, Amapi, but a lot of people use 3DMax. 3DMax may be the most used, whether people will tell you or not.

I'm not surprised by the Rhino result. Renderosity has the best Rhino forum on the internet, therefore Rhino modelers tend to gather here. And it is one of the best modeling programs too.

there are special 3dsm forums so this should be the reason, but I don't think 3dsm is a good professional program with a good quality. The best way to go (and not as expensive as 3dsm) is to use an extra modeler (e.g. rhino) and a good renderer (cinema4D, lightwave, flamingo as a rhinoplugin)

Gotta love Rhino...

quote "The best way to go (and not as expensive as 3dsm) is to use an extra modeler (e.g. rhino) and a good renderer (cinema4D, lightwave, flamingo as a rhinoplugin)" If you have Lightwave then there is no need to use Rhino because Lightwave already has one of the best modeling engines around. A few people do use Rhino for modeling and Lightwave for rendering but that's just because they already knew how to use Rhino and didnt take the time to learn Lightwave's modeler.

Or because they HATE LW's modeler, like me. Although the only time I use LW is when at a friends'. And did you know Rhino was used to model the Green Goblins glider in the Spiderman movie?

I really hate the interface, that's how. ^_^

Yep, one look at the LW interface did sell me on the Cinema4D/Rhino3D combo. ;P

yepp, just like me