Quote: "buy MS3D to learn all the baseics (20 bucks isnt much)"
Last time I checked, Milkshape costs $35.00USD. That's what I had to pay for mine, at least.
I would also suggest Blender, Cormorant5. You're going to have to take the time to learn how to use
any modeling software; and having 0 modeling experience stepping into it isn't going to make anything easier for you. As far as "
Blender is not easy to learn"; the same can be said about any other modeling program. It was already stated;
Quote: "It's more about the artist, not the software. "
Some people can pick up on Blender fairly quick, while others, struggle. The only way you'll know for sure if
you can or cannot work with Blender, is to give it a try. Granted, it does have a higher learning curb than the less capable softwares out there (Milkshape, Wings, etc), but it's worth the extra time and
then some to learn, IMO.
Personally, I have both Blender and Milkshape; but I stuck to learning Blender and now, it's second nature to me. I still use Milkshape for it's exporters, but just trying to model a simple table in Milkshape takes me 20 minutes. I also find it
incrediblly unproductive that in Milkshape, you have to toggle between 'select', 'scale', 'rotate', etc, by moving the cursor out of the modeling window, over to the toolbar, and then selecting your preference from there. Petty? Not at all. Those small incremints of time away from working with the mesh add up in the long run.
I also picked up on animating and rigging in Blender in about two weeks. I recently downloaded the trial version of Fragmotion to work with FPS Creator animations, and again; it confuses the hell out of me. The bottom line is,
You get what you put in. If I spent two weeks reading up on Fragmotion, I'm almost certain I would get the hang of it down the road.
Spending $3,000 on 3DS Max when you don't even know if modeling is something you want to stick with, makes Blender the better and obvious choice. I will say (for reference),
3DS Max > Blender. But Blender, is the closest you're going to get to Max and Maya in terms of capabilities; and it's
free.
And just for the record, AC3D
is not on par with Blender
Kravenwolf
