Hi everyone. This forum has been invaluable to me thus far, and I am excited to finally have joined so I can ask the questions that I have. My situation is as follows: For about the last 8 years I've loved programming. Something about the creative freedom about it just gets me. I just graduated college recently and am now a software engineer and loving every minute of it. I am not in the gaming or entertainment industry, but it is getting my programming better and better every day. I recently decided to start working towards game development. It would just be at a hobbyist level for now(although my dream has always been to work at it for a living). I've got a great IDE to program in, and have been studying up ALOT on DirectX (what I'd like to work in). I intended to start out with programming, but somewhere along the way found myself in the middle of 3D modeling which I absolutely have fallen in love with. Don't get me wrong, I'm still really hoping to take my models and throw them into some simple games to learn more on that side of development. ________________________________________ SKIP TO HERE IF YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING OTHER THAN THE QUESTION ________________________________________ Now comes my question (sorry for the long intro) I see everyone talking about Maya, 3DS Max, XSI, Lightwave, etc. and would LOVE to use those. However, I did just graduate school, and can't imagine myself EVER being able to drop 3+ grand on software for 3D modeling. I know there are learning editions on many of these things, but they don't let you export (I'd like to export to .X to use in games, so I hate to spend months getting good with a PLE only to not be able to use it when I do cause, as I said, I doubt I'll ever feel comfortable putting down 3+ grand) I started with Blender and enjoyed what I got accomplished, but ran into some troubles. The main thing I ran into was the fact that new versions seem to be coming out fairly fast. Many of the tutorials I found were geared towards old versions, so things didn't work like they were expected to. Also, it seems that the DirectX support is shaky at best, since many different versions seem to respond differently to different export scripts. I've had troubles with textures not showing up in the D3D Mesh viewer among other things such as my file just refusing to open the .X file at all. I've just had trouble finding consistency in this program, and spent more time trying to get things OUT of blender than working on modeling IN blender. I then moved on to Milkshape 3D. This program seemed pretty good, and really I just haven't used it too much. I went to 3dbuzz and downloaded some of their fantastic tutorial videos for 3DS Max and think it looks fantastic, but again -- the price. I've heard about Wings3D, gamespace, and GMax, which I just found a link to today so I haven't tried yet. I am just wondering if anyone can recommend a program to start with, or if there are any versions of the top end stuff that let you export to DirectX. I don't mind droping 200-300 but I can't do much more than that. I really just need it for simple character modeling, and would like to be able to do texturing. My main points are: -less than $300 -ease of use (spend more time focusing on modeling and not trying to get something that would be expected to be simple to work) -solid online support (tutorials, boards, plugins if necessary, etc.) -can be used in DirectX games (.X or other methods I'm unfamiliar with [please point out if you know any] ) -are solid (quality wise) for 3D character models -I will be putting in as much free time as I can muster, so if it is "intimidating" that's fine -- I don't mind putting in the time. I've also read some people who like to do texturing in seperate programs and don't mind that if it stays in the price range I mentioned. Sorry for the long first post, just really want to get started, but don't want to start with something that will lead me to a "switch software or drop a few grand" fork in the road. I'd also like to use something that may be valuable experience should I ever decide to seek employment in this industry (I'm sure just getting into this sort of stuff is valuable). Any input is GREATLY appreciated. Also, just curious who all is in the industry on here. I just can't fathom some of the posts where people have all of XSI, Maya, 3DS and Lightwave unless they're using them at work. Great board -- you guys are a tremendous resource to me and I'm sure many others. Keep up the good work.

Rhino 3D.
ZModeler (not bad, but not nearly in the class of Rhino, XSI, etc).