First question - which is the most populated board here? Is there some sorta place every goes to for general discussion? The only specific software I have listed is TrueSpace 7.

Second - Looking for a freeware model painting software but can't use anything that is CAD or 3DS specific. I have Tattoo but it's not all that useful. I also have Future Paint 3D which is awesome but I think it's a trial thing - does anyone know if features shut off on Future Paint 3D?
What would be really helpful would be finding a plug-in that would allow me to import and manipulate 3D models in GIMP or Photo POS Pro.

Third - What is the most visited forum site regarding graphics? I signed up with some elite community site but I'm absolutely novice and not looking to go commercial with this. Just looking for some place that is laid back, liberal and not as serious.

Due to being a jobless slob I'm currently restricted to freeware programs only. 
Have tortured myself with TrueSpace 7, have watched 3D Canvas lock up and crash repeatedly and have yet to successfully load a model with texturing into Art of Illusion. Removed Moray and POV off my system once I realized the programs were more for serious engineers and Serif 3D Plus is too bare bones. Rheingold is cool but can't save or export in the trial version so I'm left with CB Model Pro and Teddy Smooth which are much easier to work with but Teddy is still in alpha stages so is very unstable. Amazingly, CB, even though Beta, is quite polished.

Any advice or direction would be GREATLY appreciated.

hmmm , for modellers if truepace isnt working for you try bender, wings3d or anim8or. All free and blender is very good , but has an odd interface.

For painting I do uvmapping and then use a conventional paint ptogram to do the texture on the map.  GIMP is probaly the best known free paint program. It does layers so many photoshop tutorials can be made to work with it.

The Poser forum is the general purpose forum I suppose. People who use Poser or Daz studio also model, paint , etc etc. For specific questions the application specific forums may be better.

Here I use the forums Poser, Poser technical, python, modelling, Lightwave and photoshop forums depending on the problem.

If you want a decent freeware renderer you can download Bryce 5.5  It has terrains, trees and skys which you can tweak endlessly for your backgrounds and it is very easy to import a mesh and texture it within the program. Bryce is also very forgiving about importing less than perfect meshes; most ngons don't faze it. I use the free Wings3D for most of my general modeling needs. You might want to check out the new freeware Sculptris as well.

 Hey, thanks alot for the replies. I'm going on a hunt for sculprtris right now. I"ve dloaded wings and Anim8tor - haven't tried them yet. Do have Bryce 5.5 saved to USB - thought it was just for terrain sculpting (I'm pretty new to this).

And yeah, Truespace sent me on a bender but that didnt' help much. LOL.

Kidding, I also have Blender but I can't even get the windows set up the way I want them set up let alone figure out what I'm doing with it. LOL.

 Oh man! Sculptrist is friggin' AWESOME! This looks much better than screwing around with primitives and polygons.

You're probably already aware of all this stuff but CB Model is similar to Sculptris (definitely not as powerful though) and I was quite surprised to see the Beta version of a program work and look so perfectly polished when modelers like Truespace are on release 7 and are still clunky and sloppy.

If you're not familiar with CB Model Pro you can get it here www.cbmodelpro.com/
It's totally free all you have to do is trade a name and email address for it's unlock key.

MAN, that Sculptris video REALLY wowed me. I tried my hand about ten years back with borrowed programs and I could just never quite manage working with 3DS and Cinema 4D and such. I just don't have the mind for it. I can free hand draw but I suck at fighting with vertices.

Carrara is free sometimes.  For outdoor rendering, Vue Infinite has a PLE version.

 I haven't been messing around with Vue, Bryce or Terragan (?) too much because I'm just looking to model silly animal characters and such. I don't have an eye for landscaping.

Thanks, I'll keep checking on Carrara.

And just found out that there's a free version of Blacksmith!

Hey, what's the deal with DAZ? It looks like it's more of a Poser like program for setting up and dressing already made models than it is a 'from scratch' modeler...

*"Hey, what's the deal with DAZ? It looks like it's more of a Poser like program for setting up and dressing already made models than it is a 'from scratch' modeler...

• Are you speaking of DAZ Studio?
  At the basic level it's a freeware figure posing and animation program which can do a lot of the stuff Poser can, including exporting posed figures as .obj files, which can be useful if you need some people in your render. DAZ studio, and Poser are definitely not Modelers.
     Carrara on the other hand is a fairly full-featured 3D content creation suite. Carrara's modeling tools aren't as powerful as some of the really good modeling apps like Modo, Silo, or even Hexagon, but they are pretty good, and fairly well rounded.

* I'm just looking to model silly animal characters and such*.
There's no avoiding verts I'm afraid - Even something like sculptris really needs a base mesh.

 Thanks for the info. 

Well, I tried Blacksmith, even the commercial version and it's still not as...accessible, I guess you could say, as Future Paint 3D which is about the price of a new PS2 game.

I'm just wondering if Future Paint 3D's trial works on an honor system or if something is going to flick off eventually.

I'm not using these programs for business or commercial purposes, just for fun and showing to friends.

Quite impressed with Metasequoia as a basic modeler...even more so than Wings but have only spent twenty minutes in each so far. i guess it is because Metasequoia made instant sense upon first review of it (well there was some confusion about having to convert my primitive first before I could freely edit and sculpt it.).

Marble Clay looks like it does everything I want a modeler to do but am very confused that I made a new primitive but it didn't show up in the modeling window, not sure if the program doesn't function properly on my PC or maybe I just need to go and download a manual or tutorial for it.

3DCanvas is probably the least intuitive modeler I have ever tried using.  I would never recommend it to anyone.  I bought the Pro version and never got my monies worth from it.  I recommend any modeler (even Blender) instead.

 Vaaary intersting...I just figured out what was up with Marble Clay - it's a spline modeler and doesn't use primitives...which makes me if wonder if this is meant to be more efficient than a modler that works with primitives.

I haven't actually tried modeling with 3D Canvas yet, the one that is getting me is Art of Illusion - its seems like a great program but I have yet to successful import any models or textures into.

 With 3D Canvas I've just been importing and messing around in it and then it crashes. LOL.

That's about all it's good for.  Mostly it's for modeling very lo-res game content.

I like Silo.  It's simple to use.  But not free.

 I'll have to give Silo a look-see. is it a several hundred dollar or several thousand dollar program?

Theres pleanty more stuff in metasequoia than first meets the eye (I've been using it for 8 years now.)I think I'm the only person outside Japan that seems to use it so any questions give me a shout.

 Hey, thanks alot man. I know one question you can answer - is there a site where I can download english-translated plugs for Metaseq? Great program but not sure how much support it gets in english-speaking countries.

Ha! Been reading the manual for Marble Clay - it was written in Japanese and the manual author had to use a software translator to auto-translate it so learning Marble is going to be a double challenge! 

These Japanese modeling programs are pretty friggin' good though.

 I wish I could slam CB Model Pro and Sculptris together. CB's symmetry option can be put on and taken off any time you want without damage to the model but the actual detail sculpting is horrid compared to how easy it is in Sculptris.

CB seems to be dependent on drawing your own creasing areas and then adjusting strength slider as to how much of the model is going to get pushed and pulled when you tug on those drawn lines. Takes a good eight minutes to get the affect I want where in with Sculptris's style and tool set it's instantly drawn.

I tried making a new monster head in CB just now and got the basic shape but from there it was just a lot more practical to export it to Sculprtis for facial muscles and wrinkles.

english-translated plugs for Metaseq? I'm guessing you mean tutorials.
Not that I've found. Tuts for wings or hexagon will work just as well, its just a matter of the terminoligy. For example symmetry in CB = mirroring in metasequoia

I've noticed that metasequoia, despite 'mirroring' also has a 'sym' button. Is this for symmetry and have the same affect as mirroring? I played with the button, it didn't seem to do much and a couple of times the button was grayed out.

Also wondering, I can 'create' in metasequoia - it looks like it's meant to add verts, lines and faces but after selecting three vert points, the tool stops and I don't see my new lines appear. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

I was trying to make abs on my torso, ended up increasing the mesh by 4 but that made it so that I can only manipulate the model with the move tool - to many polys to do much else now it seems.

At the Metasequoia website I noticed the program being able to open up four different viewpoint windows - is that exclusive to the latest version or can I do that with the freeware version too?

Symmetry is usually greyed out for me so I don't know what conditions need to be present for it to work. Mirroring joined would be for the head and mirroring separated would be for doing ears sort of thing. You can right click on the object panel for quick access.

create line - first click creates a vert, second creates another vert and the line joining them, and so on.
create tri -  3 clicks and you get a tri
creare face - 4 clicks creates a poly
It tends to be a labourious way of modelling so I tend to use it for joining parts of primitives together (bridge I believe its called in wings)

Without a screenshot I'm not sure on your last point. Mesh smoothing will just subdived the polys and doesn't take into account any curvature (catmull-clark sub-d will but you'll need a different style of modelling).
You should be able to select any vert or line or face and muliples of (shift select) I'll post ascreenshot if you're having trouble.

cheers
Mark

I think thats only in the shareware version. Personally I never use it cause the keyboard shortcuts are quicker (F1, F2 ,shift F1 etc)

 Thanks, man. Yeah, the free program here called Marbel Clay works strictly with building models face by face like that and that's what I thought Metasequoia's was for, I was just hoping that I could use it to build faces on an already existing primitive that I was in the process of sculpting without having to increase the poly count for the entire model.

Apparently the shareware version (just tried that version out too) has the extra button for allowing four split screens.

 Ah, yeah, I saw that when I was reading up on the documentation. Guess I really don't need to see multiple windows at the same time. I'm  thinking some other programs where I'm struggling to position things.

Ah, big question! Importing - when I import something how do I keep the model from spawning way far up off the grid? I think it was metaseq that did that last night - it might've also been Wings....actually it's most of the modelers that I've been trying out.

Select the model and scale it. Depending on how you have your setup you may find the perspective runs out of control. Polys dissapear, all manner of mayhem.
solution View>set view> and move the perspective slider to the right

Attached Link: head modelling

 Awesome. Thanks for the info and the tutorial! I know the tut can be translated to use in metaseq but also, where can I find Mirai? I searched the net and found the home site that also does nendo. Is Mirai a strictly 'buy only' program or is there a freeware version somewhere on the net?

The latest news was from 2005 so read into that what you will.

MidnightCarnival, as it says at the Wings3D development page at SourceForge-"Wings 3D is a subdivision modeler inspired by Nendo and Mirai from Izware. "  I've been using Wings for a long time now, and I like its straitforward simpleness. We have a Forum here at Rendo, with a lot of nice people in case you have any questions about Wings, or modeling in Wings. Best part is that it's free. http://www.wings3d.com/

 Thanks 50 Parsecs. I might start messing around in Wings as well. I have played with it a little bit and the interface is a bit - awkward - compared to the environments that I'm used to (mostly used a borrowed version of 3DS Max ten years ago when I first tried my hand at this).

But I do like how clean it looks.

The most difficult one by far has been Blender - I can't even figure out how to adjust its interface properly but with Metasequoia and Wings along with CB and Sculptris, Blender is on my back burner for now.

Quote - The most difficult one by far has been Blender - I can't even figure out how to adjust its interface properly but with Metasequoia and Wings along with CB and Sculptris, Blender is on my back burner for now.

Now imagine if you paid good money for Blender.  A lot of unhappy campers they would have.

 Oh, I definitely agree. Back when I taught myself the general principles I PURCHASED the books and borrowed the programs. Good thing too because there's no way that I could've justified paying several thousand for 3DS Max and Cinema 4D with the little that I did with it back then. 

I'm so happy, now, ten years later that a lot of this stuff is freeware. This way I can find out what I can and can't work with.

I had a book  that was written especially for the first or second release of Blender but even with the book it was a bit of a struggle back then. I think Blender is freeware for people who REALLY know what they're doing and have had a lot of experience in a lot of different modelers.