The modeling method is quite different in each of the programs you made, though pretty much every other program is similar to one or the other. Get the trial versions of MAX and LightWave first to see which one's more to your taste- there's a good number of people that can understand one just fine but find the other's interface incomprehensible (LightWave's Greek to me, for example. I more or less figured out the rendering prog, but I couldn't get the modeler to do much of anything. And there are just as many peopel who have the same issue with MAX). As far as LightWave goes, I can't help you, but get LightWave Applied- it and a few other books are quite good on the topic.

Pure RDS lovin', baby. She gets a bit cranky after 500,000 polys, and I have to port to Carrara to do a any fancy light effects (auras, light cones, etc.), but it's what I've been using for years and it's what I know how to use. Though if MAX ever has a "$3400 off sale" I'd likely spring for that. I'm just getting into organics, now that I've got Carrara (which is better at the rounded stuff), but I'm still mostly a machinist. I used to work with modified polys, nowadays I find myself building straight up from vertexes more and more. How I do it is really dictated by what each mode of the program can do- my polymeshes are generally as simple as I can get away with, and assemble into more complex shapes.

Perhaps I should amend my first statement- I don't make a bit deal out of lights, because they're rarely much more complicated than picking out the color and putting them where they belong, and I can get a good approximation 99% of the time. I also use a lot of artificial light sources, which helps. The "secret tool" isn't software, it's just an aquired skill from years of experience. Two years ago, when I was the stupidest of stupid newbies, I would have looked at what I'm doing now, and sworn that it had been done with a whole slew of advanced plugins and render tools, and taken days. Now, I'm doing sub-photorealistic work, and the only additional piece of equipment I use any significant amount of the time is an inverse duplicator. It's simply that I'm reasonably (but still not entirely) well-versed in my decrepit old copy of a five-year-old raytracer/modeler, and have learned some new techniques. I can already get a reasonably close approximation of photorealistic with a program that's so old that the company that made it is defunct. I can already make any component out of that reactor scene in ten minutes or under, with a program that's effectively abandonware. TELL me you can't do any better with your $3500 copy of MAX or tooled-out version of LightWave. If you really can't do it, if it's really impossible with all that software muscle, by all means, let's trade. You don't need anything more advanced than Ray Dream Studio, sans radiosity, disp maps, fully functional aura/light effects, and ability to go beyond a million polys without taking a day between mouse-clicks. I'd almost find this thread offensive, it's so silly- it's like a little rich boy who got a Lamborghini at age 16, complaining that he can't go anywhere. Those of us who have to walk on foot don't do too shabby, excuse me. I'm serious about that trade, though. I can send you over a copy of RDS any time, you just mail me those MAX CDs. You'll be able to do photorealistic finally- you'll love it.

It's possible to do a realistic render in any program- radiosity isn't necessary, and most procedural effects can be faked in Photoshop within a few hours. The main trick is getting the textures right, closely followed by hi-detailing the models (even non-organics often benefit from some subdividing, etc.). I've never seen lights as all that important, but soft shadows and radiosity are nice when you can get them. But by far the hardest bit is textures. A model you can generally tell what's wrong, and there's usually a simple solution- a texture has to look exactly like it does in life, or it just won't look right. Your best bet is to have a picture of the texture type you want handy, and base a procedural (no mapping, and thus better) off that (like one does with a complex from-life model). Use a color picker to get the predominant colors off the picture, for one thing.

http://www.3dap.com/hlp I was once a lowly gamer, then I came here. Spent about two years getting familiar with my program, now do high-poly modeling and am looking for a job. Not bad, by my book. 'S a bit thematic, though. If you don't know what FreeSpace 2 is, you probably won't get most of what's going on- it's still got its modding roots, though it's definitely been changing to straight modeling/rendering over the years.

Me, I've tried LightWave, I've tried MAX, I've tried Carrara, and my tool of choice is Ray Dream. MAX operates in much the same way, and is in fact better at booleans than RDS, but is painfully overpriced in my opinion (couldn't afford my own copy, by a long shot), and tends to lead to too much reliance on simple primitives (never could figure out how to draw a plane and extrude it) while Ray Dream allows for a comfortable balance between primitive-based modeling and direct vertex editing- and, if anything, is faster and easier than the other aforementioned programs in the latter department. I generally end up getting a few hundred more polys than I would in MAX or Lightwave, and Carrara's got a few more tools for organics, but it's a rare occasion when these concerns have overridden my essential preference- I think the last time was when I was attempting to do a whole person from scratch, and I ended up not getting too far, anyway. I suppose it's half familiarity, half price tag, really.

You know, sometimes you can still click the render button even when it's grayed out... but yeah. You need to save more often.

...That, coupled with the fact that the vertex modeler is apt to entirely lose your polygons if you rotate them (or if you do much of anything else), the odd handling of the main screen, and the fact that I can't get Carrara to do more than one render a session most of the time, would all point strongly in favor of my incredibly corrupted, slow, screwed up, but functional Ray Dream. Carrara is an excellent renderer. But that's all, in my experience, it really can do well. And since the version I have (1.1) doesn't even have a useful help file, much less any kind of support for Amapi, I think I'll stick to the intelligible program. But that's just my advice.

I think that's mostly the render making the bump map look odd, since it's a procedural. One that doesn't come out with quite the right effect as a texture, unfortunately. Here's a texture map sample to provide a little color variation... I'm not sure whether this is the right direction for it or not.

Neither. Get Ray Dream 5.5 for a hundred-something instead. Better modeler than Carrara, pretty much all you need for rendering until you're in the LightWave market.

Oh, and the cockpit's supposed to be kinda nested. My original design didn't have a noticeable cockpit at all, but I was talked into it. Pilot's supposed to be safer with most of the fighter wrapped around him, and picks up all his sensory input from the chromed block at the front, which has stuff on the other side. Since, when inserted into the game I'm setting up my current stuff for, the actual fighter is supposed to go at about 90kps and do a full turn in less than a second, a side view wouldn't help much.

I would, but my RDS glow effects are shot, and importing into Carrara involves a whole lotta fixing up. Here's a first attempt at "greebling", with a sorta chromed-over plate shader. I lost a lot of the highlight by giving it a strong bump map, but it's still essentially the same thing with the appearance of more detail.

This site has a "free stuff" section for each program. I'm not entirely familiar with the procedure for getting them on here myself, but...

I wish I could tell what the original did so I could use this...

To the extent that anything, including XP, works on XP. Why wouldn't it?