I have zero money to spend on an expensive modelling program right now, so I downloaded Blender. I open it every couple of weeks, scratch my head for three hours or so, and close it again. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person.. a quick study even. But for the life of me, I cannot grok Blender's interface. Is there anyone who uses Blender to make Poser props, or am I just insane for thinking of trying? I want to make rooms for use in Poser and Bryce. That's all I want to do. :)

sorry , cant help you, but i have the same with amapilol Wanted amapi beside my usual modelling program,because in some cases ,things seem to be easier with amapi. My problem is , that i need a real book to learn. tutorials dont help me much.Dont know,why!!

I know a few guys who used Blender for FPS gaming models, but only because Milkshape imports the native blender format for 'em into something that the game can use. Otherwise? I played with it for about an hour, got disgusted, and deleted it entirely. It's too much work to get the same results I already do with what I have. /P

How about a free version of Caligari's trueSpace 1.0, instead?

It's rather old, and was written for Windows 3.1, and it doesn't export to Wavefront .obj format, and it's a little buggy (at least on my system) ...

... but you can build props and rooms with it, and it's got a ray-traced renderer, and you'll find plenty of tutorials, and Renderosity has a trueSpace forum, and did I mention that it's free?

Interested? Find it here: PC Plus Magazine

I use Blender for the purpose you ask for. It works very well for me. I use a .obj import/export Python script that one of the members of the Python & Plugins forum made. If you have any questions about Blender go to the forums over at the Blender site. Do a few tutorials and next thing you know you will have it. All programs have a learning curve some steeper than others. You can e-mail me at hardtwist2001@yahoo.com if you need some more help.

I don't know if this will help, but there is a 3rd party Blender Manual out there, I've seen it. I don't think it is too expensive and I find that 3rd party books are often better than the program's own documentation. Hope that helps. If worst comes to worst you can always use your blender scene as a background image in Poser or composite your figure into a post render Blender scene.

OK, at least I know I am not alone in Blender confusion. The program is aptly named. "Think yer smart? This program will blend your brain! Try Blender, the worst example of user interface design ever conceived!" I will look into the free version of TrueSpace mentioned above, and also check Amazon to see if anyone has written a blender book. ;) Thanks for the information, all. =) (Another option I am thinking of is turning my old computer back into a linux box and using one of the bazillion FREE 3D modellers for Linux. I love Linux.)

Hi Tomsde any idea where I can find this book you mentioned. I've taken Hardtwist's advice, there are lots of tutorials that have sort of helped. I bought the official blender manual when I first got the program, but that was no help at all. A good book written by a non-programmer is what's needed. Glad to know I'm not the only one who can't figure it out. kieraw; don't forget Wings, Nendo, and anim8or, all will do what you want for free. regards peejay

first off head over to www.anim8or.com for the free 3D modeler. easy to use, many here use it. second, you can make rooms with poser's props. third, in case you don't have get UVmapper

Well I wanted a bit more than cubes (although I have made fake rooms using the 2D faces a lot) ;) I tried anim8or, but I always worry when a program goes a looong time without being updated. Yes, I have UVmapper. I don't know much about it, but I use it quite often. Thanks all for your suggestions. I am gonna bang my head against Blender a bit longer before I try Nendo, Wings, or Anim8or.

I saw that blender book today at barnes and noble. it seems pretty good

Yep, Barnes and Nobles. I've seen at least 2 books on Blender. Another alternative night be(not sure 'cause I haven't tried it myself yet.)G-Max I think it's still downloadable over at Discreet. Since it uses a game format i've heard that you need MilkShape to convert the files to .obj. The interface looks a lot like 3D Max and books for Max should work.

I found the book at Barnes and Nobel.com and it is simply called The Blender Book, here's a link: Book:http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=69WTPFWRW0&mscssid=&isbn=1886411441 You might also want to check Amazon.com or your local Borders or Barnes and Nobels, if they don't have it they can order it.

There was a thread back on 1/25/02 (started at 15:16) that talke about using GMAX (a free "gamers/light" version of 3ds Max and MilkShape 3D (which is shareware... trial for 30 days, then it will cost you about $20.00). I've been playing around with this stuff since about then and I've already made the sample conforming skirt from JoatMon2's tutorial. So far it seems to be working REALLY well & there are a lot of really good tutorials for GMAX. I recommend checking this out.

Try Wings3D (wings3D.com I believe). A lot easier than Blender.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

I tried all the programs listed in this thread. I installed them, fiddled about, scratched my head. I'm currently using none of them. I'm pretty dumb when it comes to things that others find simple. Heck, for the first few months I didn't even know how to render in Poser! Ron

Attached Link: http://www.rocketdownload.com/Details/Grap/2106.htm

Ah yes, ze 3D, she is a cruel mistress, no? I've concluded that modeling just isn't an easy skill to pick up unless you are blessed with the knack. Find something that has as many tutorials as possible on the web and practice...

Simply 3D was the flat out easiest 3D program I ever tried. Not as powerful as the others, but a good place to learn the basics. Unfortunately the only export option I remember was vrml (and possibly dxf) so not easy to get into Poser. There was a guy who did some nice stuff though importing Poser figures into S3D and rendering there. Apparently now, it's shareware. So another possibility.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

I bought Simply3D around 1996, when I bought Poser version 1. I never learned either program. I dusted off Poser v 1 last year, and immediately discovered we'd jumped ahead to Poser version 4. I then followed a series of links that took me here, to Nirvana! I dusted off Simply3D last year, looked at it for a few minutes, scratched my head, and dumped it again. That says something about my learning abilities?! Ron

Simply 3D was one of my first programs, the problem with it is that has very poor documentation and is a very unstable software. It crashes randomly and often just from loading certain peices of clip art from the programs catalogue. Micrografx knew about the problem and although they released an update patch, the bug was never fixed. They offered a work around that simply doesn't work. I did all the tutorials in the brief S3D manual that was included with the software, but they were more stilted towards business applications: web page graphics, logos, and power point presentations. There are a few tutorials on the web, but not many since it is an old program. The online help is poorly organized. Reading the book Getting Started With 3D helped me more to use the application than anything that came with it. The only 3D file format S3D will export is VRML, which Poser simply thinks is a background picture and not a 3D model. Poser figures can be imported into S3D as Wavefront objects, they even look nice in it; but I just couldn't stand the constant crashes. Even free I don't recommend this software, but it may work better with Windows '95 since that was the operating system it was originally designed for.

I'm somewhat relieved to know I got lousy software. (Simply 3d). It makes me feel better about not learning it. I also made a bad choice when I picked Corel Draw for OS/2 v 2.5. Corel never really got this package working right and then they dumped OS/2. I've never really learned any version of Corel Draw, and I've been trying since the 1980's. I'm dense. Ron

I had the link for the OBJ im/export script for Blender, but it seems like the site is down. However, the author wrote it to create morphs for Poser, so it should work pretty well with Poser. I really like Blender, and if you work through Tutorials or a good book, the UI ain't that bad. It is a little frightening at first since it doesn't give you any hints, but since I got the basics I can work a lot faster in Blender than in C4D. Give it a shot, it's free, it's cross-platform and it has a decent list of features.

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

kieraw - Go get Wings3D. I made that shield for you with it in way less than an hour. Blender is a great program, but harder than heck to learn. There is a book on it for ~$50, but then it's not free anymore, is it? Wings3D is VERY easy to learn. Try it out. If you have any questions on how to install it or use it just shoot me an e-mail and I'll help you out. Wings is great for props, but not morph targets (yet) because there are still a few bugs on importing Poser people. But for props modeling it is great. jon

 
~jon
My Blog - Mad Utopia Writing in a new era.