Ok guys n gals, heres the question of the day lol Which 3D modelling program should I get for maiking poser gear? Ive seen 3ds max, lightwave, maya and rhino are all out there, but which one would work best for a newbie working for the first in modelling? Which would be the easiest to learn, yet give me more bang for my buck? Which plugins should I buy? and so on, and so on.... Ive seen 3ds max up close, but its scary...so I'm thinking on counting that out of my list, but what do you all think? The stuff I'm looking to make would range from simple props, to clothing, to weapons etc.... Thanks for your help!

I think the best thing to do is to first decide on your price range, then download demos (if available) of those applications that you can actually afford. I use trueSpace and I love it. It has a graphical interface that some people hate but others love (myself included). You can download a demo at www.caligari.com . I've heard very good things about Lightwave, too. :)

your biggest bang for the modeling buck is amapi6. theres a free version (4.15) linked in the amapi forum to give you a taste of it to see if thats the program you want to work with. try 'em all before you buy because lightwave, max and some others are quite expensive for the average bear. You'd hate to drop coins on something and find it doesnt follow the logic you prefer for ease. BT

Rhino is excellent value for money. I learnt a lot by using the free program Anim8or - for simple items it's quite good.

I demo'd Lightwave, Maya PLE and Cinema4D, and chose Cinema for it's easy-to-learn all-in-one package. I'm on a Mac though, so 3DSMax was not an option. From everything I see in terms of plugins, tutorials, etc.. Max is the most popular choice. Then again though, Lightwave does have just about the best modeller in the industry.... All of these 3D programs have radically different interfaces, and they are all intimidating before you start doing the tutorials. The biggest challenge in picking one is the work of going through each demo and learning enough of each program to make an informed choice. It ain't easy, but you have to do it because these programs aren't a small investment. -Adam

If you're on a p.c. try the free demo of rhino. i agree with brycetech....amapi 4.15 is the program that finally let modelling "click" for me. then, i tried rhino, and was soooo hooked. of course, both of those are "nurbs" programs, and, i tend to enjoy organics....

Attached Link: http://amapi.idevgames.com/html/download.html

Here is the link for the free and *legal* Amapi 4.15 Alex

okay... what the hells a NURB when it's at home?L... I hear so much about them.. those and metanurbs.. what's next? jibbyribbles? L.. man me confoozed L Dolph.

NURBS = Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline It's a mathematically complex way to make things smooth, more or less. -Adam

Blender is FREEWARE and still available at mirror sites, despite the company's recent collapse. You'll need a book-$40-50. An incredible bargain, and you can import .obj files into it, too!

Terminus >> thanks for that.. it's easy to get lost amongst the jargon.. I think I'm gonna go do every tutorial I can find and come back when I'm feeling a bit less stoopidL

http://www.pablosbrain.com/blender3d/mirrors.php Here's a good site, with some additional crap too. Don't invest heavy bread until you monkey with the Blender first!

Just a heads-up.. Blender is by far the most radical interface design, with a steep learning curve (note the need for the book). It's a nice program, but the interface is unlike anything you've likely used before. Just my opinion, but If you are just learning to model, learning to use that program is an additional burden... I'd start with one of the (other) free modellers such as Canvas3D, Wings3D, Milkshape3D or Anim8or. ( can usually be found at: www.- insert modeler name here -.com ).

Radical interface, but once you get the hang of it, fast and easy to use. The Blender 2.0 manual is the better of the 2 books available. It's easier to refer to.

Well, I like Carrara (ver. 2). So far I've made some cloths for Mike adn I'm working on a new outfit for Vicki (attached screen shot. It's not quite as powerful as Lightwave, but it does have it's own bones and one of the best internal texturers I've seen, as well as what appears to be an excellent animation section (I haven't explored this part yet!). Also the package ships with Amapi 5.15, so it's native lack of NURBS isn't as big a problem as it first seems. Also the fact that it's price is a fraction of Lightwave or 3D Max helps a lot ;) mike

I used Ray Dream designer and Carrara a lot, but I was never satisfied with the modeling tools it has, and I would definitely not endorse it as a good choice specifically for making Poser clothing. The "spline" modeler is really the most useful of its tools, but it's not very flexible at all. The quality of conversion from spline to mesh objects is also not in the same league as the more professional packages have to offer. Worst of all is Carrara's attempt to do boolean subtractions. The resulting mesh you get is usually horrible, often with glitches and spikes that are hard to fix and generally unacceptable. I have used Carrara a lot for other projects not involving Poser, and I still use it, but for making Poser clothing though, you really need to have a strong modeler that can make complex organic shapes with ease, and gives you a powerful set of UV mapping tools for generating usable coordinates (beyond just blindly choosing simple projection types). The way Carrara's modeling has to happen in a separate "modeling room" with only a small preview of the whole scene also makes it a very difficult to build models around figures. In the better 3D programs, you build your model right in the same space as your imported figure, and you can see all sides of what you're building at the same time. Impossible in Carrara. Now that I'm working in Cinema 4D a lot, it really hammers home exactly how deficient Carrara is in the modeling department. Disclaimer: All this in mind, please note that I have not used Amapi. I'm giving my opinion only on Carrara, without knowing if the bundled Amapi program addresses any of the above-mentioned shortcomings. -Adam

Oh, sorry I missed attaching the screen shot. And after terminusnord's post I am also adding a shot of the suit I made for Mike. I'm not doing this to start an arguement about Carrara! It's just I keep hearing about how you can't make Poser cloths in it and I find it pretty easy concidering I started in Raydream. That's not to say there aren't better out there. I've seen people talk about features in both C4D and Rhino that look really interesting, but I've never been able to understand either of those programs, dispite dl'ing both demos and trying them. I guess this is best summed up as "horses for courses". DL as many demo programs as possible and stick with the one that you feel most comfoprtable in! mike

Carrara is a very capable 3D program. Especially with version 2's bones, photon mapping, global illumination, caustics, and some of the best texture editing abillities I have seen. You won't find an easier, funner, powerfull 3d app then Carrara in its price range. Carrara also has multi-pane views as well. You can see 4 views at once if you choose. Regards, -Paul

Attached Link: http://www.annsartgallery.com/freeprop.html

Go follow the modeler links at this site and play for a while.

Trav: are you making the clothes in Carrara by modifying the original figure meshes, or are you bringing the figures into the mesh modeler and then skining clothes around them (and then deleteing the original figure)? While it's a perfectly valid technique to use bits of the riginal mesh for making certain skin-tight clothes items, you can only do so much with that method. For making clothes you want to own the legal rights to, for example, you have to build them from scratch without using any parts of the Daz figure mesh. This is the kind of thing I found very difficult to do in Carrara, but very easy to do in other programs, because of the whole "modeling room" issue. In my reply above, I wasn't trying to bash Carrara in general; I like it and I use it at work almost daily for making stuff to import into Director Shockwave 3D projects. It is incredible for its price. I hesistate though to recommend it specifically for making poser items. I just don't think it can compete at this task with 3DSMax, Lightwave or C4D. The person who started this thread said they are considering Maya and Lightwave, so I think they are indicating willingness to spend some serious money to get the best tool for this task. I just got Carrara 2.0 btw, and I'm currently doing a project in it exclusively. It's an architectural bridge model though, not poser-related. C2 is greatly improved over C1.1, that's for sure! -Adam

terminusnord: Like I said I'm not trying to start an arguement. I know that there are other programs that can do this better, but not for the price, IMHO. I used Lightwave in school (long ago) and had the use of it on a friends system until he moved away. Personally I can't afford that kind of mony for a hobby, much as I liked the program. I create the clothing mesh as a raw out line then skin them to the target figure. The mesh is 100% mine, but the shape is made to fit around the target. Eventually I want to write a tutorial. It's a modification of what thip does in Amapi (there's a tutorial in the Amapi forum). Once I have the basic shape I add vertices by hand until I get a density that I think will "move" well in Poser. This is where I think some other programs may have some better tools, since I think Carrara's 'subdivide" function adds too much to the mesh and "smoothing" function changes the size of the mesh in unpredictable ways. When I was using Lightwave this function seemed to work better. I then use UVMapper Pro to "cut" the model and Poser Pro to set up the bones. UVM Pro also gives the UV map, but I have to admit I'm not much of a texturer. Mostly I use Poser material colors for now. The earlier Mike outfit consists of a jacket, pants and boots. The eplets, medals, and belt are smart props. All of the items but the medals (chest and arms) and the eplets (which were created earlier and re-used for these cloths) were created in Carrara as original mesh and fitted to Mike. Here's a closer screen shot of the outfit I'm making to Vicki. Right now it's in 2 pieces, a shirt and pants (which I'm still working on). I also intend to create a jacket to fit over the shirt and boots. mike

PS: sorry for "grabbing" so much of this thread. I just realized how much of it has moved off the original topic. If it has upset anyone, please accept my appologies. terminusnord: I'll be glad to discuss this further if you want, drop me an IM or we can take it up in the Carrara Forum, which seems more appropriate. mike

Just a footnote : "what thip does in Amapi" can be done by anyone in any 3D app, provided it can do Booleans and move vertices. It's a simple technique : you "scan" the reference figure by booleaning thin slices, and then fit rings from your own mesh to the slices. Boring and uncreative work, but once you have a good base mesh you can use it for all future clothes creation for that particular figure. Better - and more expensive apps - can do the basic fitting stuff automatically (such as ClothReyes for 3DMax), but who can afford those ;o)

Sorry again, I just can't resist jumping in here! Thip: I've adapted your technique a bit for Carraras tools. Instead of boolean slices I used the "hide and reveal" functions to create the slices as I went along. The basic meshes are a series of cylinders (an adaption of PhilC's cube method) fitted to the body thrunk, arm and leg then blended together at the shoulder and hip, and in Vicki's case, some adaption for other attributes. Again, once the general ouline is created I add mesh density by hand until I'm satified it will "move" well in Poser. Sometimes I have to go back and add more after boning the figure, when it just won't move right. I really do want to write this up with screen captures once I set up a site to host it on, it's nothing new, just a blend of several others techniques adapted to Carrara's tools. I've never used max, but I've read about this function and a similar one in Rhino, over on RDNA. Your right, who can afford those programs! I sure can't. mike

Thip....Rhino does that automatically with the "contour" tool. you just define the parameters, and the program does the rest. try out the demo...i hear the new demo has 50 saves, as opposed to 25 on the old one. it's all fully functional. and, you know...i would not steer you wrong...you got me started with this modelling addiction, back in the amapi forum...(still have never figured out how to do that dragon head tute that came with the free version....arrrghhh).

Thanks for the info, folks - and sorry for infecting you with the modeling bug, Poppi ;o) I've read a lot of positive posts about Rhino, so I'll have to try it out sooner or later - better make it sooner, I think ;o)