Hey, until March 31st. 2012, DAZ 4.0 Pro is free. So is a few other DAZ programs!

[Poenald Palen]

EDIT: Oh, this deal is still on. Link here: http://www.daz3d.com/i/3d/free-3d-software-overview?home_f_btn=start

Basically Daz Studio Pro is free (priced at over $400 normally) and has can do SL animation, either for one or multiple avatars. Hexagon does sculpties, worth over 100 or so. These do go on sale sometimes, but this is 100% free! Thought it was worth mentioning here.

This is the latest version, it is out of beta. Vids available on youtube and you will also need to get the SL avatar poser file, a cr2 (I think that is the name) from online from LL, at this link: http://static-secondlife-com.s3.amazonaws.com/downloads/avatar/avatar_mesh.zip or you can find the latest link, if this one dies, at the SL wiki: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/How_to_create_animations and it is at the Poser section of the how to's on that page, Daz imports Poser files, so that is why.

Bryce is for 3d terrain creation and rendering images. It maybe does not work for SL terrain maps/sim ground, I don't know. But, it does work great for making 3D art pictures or game terrain. Maybe backgrounds for skybox windows? Boxes to enclose and block out the sky in sky boxes or ? Basically, anything you can use a picture of a landscape for!

Hexagoncan be used for sculpty modelling, built in. There is a tab that is just for SL. Those shapes you manipulate, but don't cut them or extrude and add sqaures to! Just move the already provided shapes. For more detail and texturing, you can always export an obj file and edit it. It should be able to be brought back in and then export it again, as long as you didn't modify the meshes vert count or the UV mapping coordinates...I think. BUT, you can also try meshies with this, just use blender to simply convert via importing what hexagon will export and then export from blender while checking the SL compatible box in blender! Not sure if it is of great use, but seems simple enough to start learning.