I'm curious about a few things. 1.) Does anyone know what modeling and animation software I can buy that is as stable and flexible as 3DS Max, but with a price tag that say,.... a human being could afford? 2.) Milkshape looks pretty good for modeling and animation for my game. But theres a few things I wanted to know about it. First, does it have a stable model, texture, and animation exporter for DirectX? Second, everywhere I read about milkshape it mentions that its "Low Poly" modeling and animation software. Does anyone know exactly how low poly it is? I appreciate any help guys. Thanks a lot.

1. I've heard good things about Blender, though it seems to have an interface that you'll either love or hate. Worth checking out, it's free anyway. :)

2. Milkshape 3D has a 30 days trial, so go ahead and check it out. I'd say that, up to a few thousand polygons perhaps, it still suffices. Beyond that, it lacks high-level tools.
I've never used the DirectX exporter, but Milkshape contains a large list of exporters and there's one for DirectX 8.0, so format-wise it's not a very risky program. ;)

Well I never used milkshape3d but I did check a MS3D file before and it by the far the simpelest file to read and understand, espcially for the bone animation. The file structre is so simple you can make your own importer for it.

I have 3DS MAX and after getting use to the interface it's really great to use for modeling :) but I never managed to make an inporter for the skeleton animation part -_- it's really complecated.

Quote:

Original post by Captain P 1. I've heard good things about Blender, though it seems to have an interface that you'll either love or hate. Worth checking out, it's free anyway. :) 2. Milkshape 3D has a 30 days trial, so go ahead and check it out. I'd say that, up to a few thousand polygons perhaps, it still suffices. Beyond that, it lacks high-level tools. I've never used the DirectX exporter, but Milkshape contains a large list of exporters and there's one for DirectX 8.0, so format-wise it's not a very risky program. ;)

Yeah blender is what I use now, but not really sure how it exports into 3DS. Basically my purpose for a retail animation package is for collada. Blender has collada but its in its way early stages of development and can't do much right now.

I had MS3D before, but I never really used it for much. If it has collada then maybe I'll get another license for it. Only $25 so that aint bad. Chances are it doesn't. meh I'll manage somehow.

Thanks for ya'lls responses though. I appreciate it.

I love milkshape. I cant stand blender. It has 2 DirectX exporters built in. It doesnt support multiple animations so u have to blend them all to together. For animation I use fragMotion(it does support multiple animation). its texture mapping isnt the best so I use Ultimate Unwrap. And thats my 3D collection of software works pretty well. Blender's UI is like hell to use. With all 3 your up to 75$ with some really good functionality....