What program should I use for easy, no nonsense 3D modelling?

Question

I'm looking for a program for easy, no nonsense 3D modelling, preferibly one that is not too expensive but still covers the basics. (e.g. exporting to vertex pointers)

Which should I buy?

Answer 1

Have you tried Blender yet?

Answer 2

For easy and no-nonsense, I love Google Sketchup. I found it (as a non artist) the most intuitive interface for creating 3D objects.

Answer 3

Rhino3D is quite a nice (and relatively cheap) solid and surface modelling package which has various export options. I believe they also do a trial edition too (this has a limit on the number of saves/exports you can do).

Answer 4

Blender is packed with features, free and open source. The API is easy to pickup and it supports a lot formats.

For:

easy, no nonsense 3D modelling

I would suggest Wings3D. Here are some of the things I like about it:

1. Free/Open source, works on win/osx/linux (like Blender)
2. Slightly *Light*er than Blender (~7MBS)
3. Excelent for easy box modeling. It has a minimal and intuitive interface. A lot easier to pickup than Blender.
4. Easy camera navigation: Wings 3D already has camera presets to match other 3d packages like maya,3dsmax,blender, sketchup, etc. Also It even has a one mouse button navigation mode, which makes it easy to use without a 3 button mouse(e.g. on a netbook/on the go)
5. It supports most major 3d formats(obj,stl,3ds,fbx,lwo,lxo) for import and a lot more for export(like direct x,2d vector(.eps), collada, render ouputs for povray,renderware,kerkythea,etc.)
6. Nice Shaders and Ambient Occlusion, supports materials, textures, UV, etc.

The only cons I can think of are:

1. Doesn't support animation. It's just a modeller, so that's cool.
2. It's written in erlang, so you need to pickup a bit of erlang before you can write your plugin, while the Blender Python API is easy to pickup.

Here are some abstract models I've done in a few minutes using Wings3d:

Answer 5

Blender is a good, free, cross-platform 3D modeling tool. Unfortunately, the learning curve can be a bit high.

For Windows, TrueSpace and XSI ModTool are free to use for non-commercial projects.

Answer 6

I'd recommend AC3D which also have a plugin SDK so one can write specialized export or vertex manipulation routines.

Answer 7

If you're looking to avoid a huge learning curve or expense, Google Sketchup isn't such a bad way to go. It is fairly intuitive, and comes with plenty of tutorials to get you started.

There are plenty of plugin exporters for it. Check around their website.

Answer 8

for simple models / very easy to learn? .. Milkshape 3D - tons of importers exporters

Answer 9

It's not GUI tool but if you want highly flexible modeling and rendering features look at POV-Ray. Sorry no export.

Answer 10

Blender is a very powerful modeling and animating suite.

Even more fun, it's free and open-source!

Answer 11

Rhino3D is a very capable app. Apart from almost unmatched NURBS (and I'm taking competitors like CADDS, CATIA, Solidworks into account) it provides very powerful scripting capabilities, making it ideal (well, in my case) for "programming modeling".

Answer 12

I like Silo3d for simple 3D modeling. That's all it does, it's very streamlined, and it does it well. Since it just does modeling, the interface is very specific to modeling, and doesn't have a lot of extra stuff to wade through.

It won't do animation, rigging, or texturing (but it does do UV layout). It has some okay sculpting tools (with a modeling emphasis, rather than a surfacing emphasis like ZBrush).

The free version is limited to a low poly count, and the full version is relatively inexpensive.

Answer 13

Google Sketchup is, in my opinion, the best, simplest 3d modeling program available right now. I have it, and it works well for modelling almost anything.