Discret has come out with a free legal 3d modeling program similar to 3ds max, gmax. I thought it looked interesting. It takes less time to load, has all the basic functions, can create meshes, and is free to use in games. What do you think? Just go to their site and check it out.

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Original post by Built4U Games Discret has come out with a free legal 3d modeling program similar to 3ds max, gmax.

It has been out for years now.

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Original post by Built4U Games ...and is free to use in games...

No, I'm afraid it isn't. You can't export anything from gmax, unless you have an exporter from a company that has bought a licence from Autodesk to create an exporter. It is free to use for those games, but you can't use it for your own games, or for anything else (apart from learning some basic 3ds max, perhaps).

Well I have a licence, so it is free for me. I did not know it was out for years.

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Original post by Built4U Games Well I have a licence, so it is free for me.

You have a premium membership to the Sparks program?

Yes I do.

can GMAX legaly be used for pre-renderd graphics in games

I think there is just no way that they could get you if you just take screen shots of the pre-rendered whatevers, and paste that into your game. Whether it's "legal" or not -- that is, covered by the gmax license that you agree to when downloading it -- is something you should ask a licensed legal professional about. Gamedev.net is not a place for getting legal advice.

Beware, though, that the renderer and character modeling capabilities of gmax aren't anything like the real 3dsmax -- at least they didn't use to be.

Gmax has no rendering capabilities although you could still use screen captures, and Yafray built an external renderer but that involved copying the text data of your model and other stuff that just got messy and confusing.

In short, I 'd recomend getting Blender it's free and much more powerful than GMax. There is a huge comunity with lots of resource being added all the time.

cheers