What is the best 3d program to build with ??

[Alexandra Barcelos]

Hello i am looking for a 3d program to build structures, texture and apply lightning and shading in , other then the second life viewer , so far i am aware that 3ds max is good but i am looking for a more friendly one .

 

Thank you for your time

 

Alexandra Barcelos

[TriJin Bade]

Second Life

But seriously... I enjoy 3dmax and Blender.

 

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

There is a comprehensive comparison at http://wiki.cgsociety.org/index.php/Comparison_of_3d_tools

Not listed there, and free, is Google Sketchup http://sketchup.google.com/ which is fairly easy to learn.

Partly it will depend on personal preference, and partly on what you want to do with the result.  If it is just to make photographs, most any software will do.  If you want to do photorealistic renderings, animations, or export to some other program, your choices will be more limited. 

[Pussycat Catnap]

That list is also missing Hexagon, which can directly make sculpty maps as one of its toolsets.

 http://www.daz3d.com/i/3d_art_resource/interests/sculpted_primitives

http://artzone.daz3d.com/wiki/doku.php/azproduct/4222

http://www.daz3d.com/i/shop/itemdetails/?item=4222

[Luc Starsider]

The *best* program is the one you know, feel comfortable using, you can afford, and so on. You should look around, try out the ones you find seems worth it (if you can), and find the one that fits what you are looking for. The one you end up with is going to be the best 3d program for building.

You know of 3ds Max. There are also Maya, Blender, Wings 3d and SketchUp to name a few that I can remember at the moment.

- Luc -

[Josh Susanto]

The best one for doing what I do is the one that I use.

But I don't do most of the normal things people do well; I do specific things that others seem to do mostly rather badly.

[Rolig Loon]

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TriJin Bade wrote:

Second Life

 

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Yup. SL's edit tools are easy to use and flexible, and the price is right.  It's fun to make sculpties and mesh objects, but that's overkill for a lot of things.  You don't always have to use power tools to build stuff.  Sometimes a hammer and a saw are the tools of choice.

[Luc Starsider]

Actually, that is a very good point! To illustrate; this video is about the Nemo trilogy, which I believe, sadly, does no longer exist in world. (If it does - whole or in parts - could someone post the slurl?). Nemo, I think, was built using the in world tools. I'm not sure if *any* sculpts were used in the build? Perhaps the odd one. This is just one example of what can be achieved using a hammer and a saw.

- Luc -

[Poenald Palen]

For structures? Many use prims and I think that is for a reason.Prim Composer allowed people to build in 3ds, prim.blender allowed building (but no texture mapping directly on those shapes...they are sort of representative of SL prims but lack the UV mapping ect.) and I think AC3D allows build export to box prims or triangle prims. Once again, not sure of AC3D's ability to export textures with that build, I am almost sure it does not do that bit though.

So, for textures with lighting...um, many use photoshop and use the lighting effects and basically make it up. That is why you see EVERY single floor 10.10 rim with a light under it and no light or window up above lol. GImp has a lighting effects filter/plugin thing right out of the box as well. Um, it is harder to understand and you need to think of light and how it is entering the room and where each texture will go ect. So, this is not for everyone.

3D renders might work. You model whatever you want that will translate to prims (one way might be to basically make the build in world in prims, take pics and use those as references to recreate the look and add some details etc.) and then render from all angles you need. Maybe remove or make invisable (cast sahdows only in blender) or whatever in order to get all the images for all of the faces of the prims you are working on. Um, ortho camera settings might help for some stuff. I mean, there are lots of details and each build might be unique. I tried this and I will say one word. Tedious.

I never did get the build done. It didn't look so horrible, the parts I got done at least. But it was hard to sit and wait for renders and try not to get all the bits mixed up and being restricted to boxes because I didn't want to mess with unwrapping textures for sphers and trying to make the work in SL. I can't figure out the mapping and there is a reason why I have never found a set of objects in a .blend file that have SL's prims texture mapping. I think it has to do with how the mesh works in blender or the UV options....I am not sure. But throw in a face cut or hollow in a prim and you are totally getting different mapping and ALL of those things would have to be made into a set. Then you would bake the textures and use nodes to get diffuse and then again for specular layers, combine those two layers. It is tediuos unless you have the workflow down and down right impossible to get a texture mapped to a hollowed sphere baked out...well, I say this but I spent all of like 20 minutes trying to figure it out...so, you might have more luck and be a hero. prim.blender will not bake textures BUT will make objects you can paly around with if you shut down the prim.blender script and work on the object as a normal mesh object. The rest is tediousness until you are happy. The results can be nice, I got a few walls and a floor with a post in the middle of the floor....um, it was alright! Throw in suclptie furniture you made and baked with teh shadows built right into the floor and you can maybe make a dramatic scene.

The reason I sort of don't play with all that is two fold. One: to tedious for a non selling product. Two: SL has new shadow, shine and lighting that are becoming less and less buggy to the point they are very usable for many peoples GPU's. So, the bynamic shadow and lighting sort of clashes with existing shadows. But I will admit....the textured in lighting does have the advantage of always working for all GPU's and does add a nice touch, if done with the right contrast so the avatar does not look as it spot lights surround it with no shadow ect. from those spot lights. Hard to explain, but you know what I mean.