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What's the best program to use to make ship models? I'll be attending 3D modelling classes for school and they tell me I can ask to be tutored on a different program aside from the one they'll be teaching us, so I'm planning to buy 3D modelling software soon so I'd like to know which one to get.
3D Studio Max? Maya?
If you wanna spend lots of money, yes, I find wings 3d, which is free, is really good.
Main problem with Wings3D in terms of general modelling is that it doesn't do animation well. For static models, like spaceships and similar, it is just fine. I use it myself.
Main problem I have with it is that I want to generate a normal map for a ship I'm working on by "baking" a high-poly model into a texture, which the program can't do currently. It may gain that functionality later, as people work on adding features, but for now, it seems it can't do it.
Babylon 5: War Without End Official Site.
"I keep telling you people that it's only a build animation, NOT a hyperspace animation." - Me, about the Babylon 5 mod hyperspace build animation.
If you are actually going to BUY 3D modelling software, then, for Homeworld 2, the best is definitely Maya.
The developers made the game using Maya, and created a whole heap of plugins for it, ones for creating HOD files, for doing animations, for creating level files ... you name it!
It would be a lot easier to work with Homeworld 2 if you have Maya.
All the tools we have, really, are substitutes for the plugins, made using what we understand from looking at the plugins
And don't forget to download the RDN tools, which contain the documentation, and the plugins.
Destroying things is easy.
Creating things is hard.
Creating things in order to watch them explode is just plain fun.
Explosion Damage Script, Scripting Tutorial
Can you make FX with maya??
Last edited by Grabnutz; 6th Jun 10 at 4:22 AM. Reason: removed off topicness
And anyway, on topic, not that you probably need anymore input, if you can get a student discount for Maya, I'd go with that! But I think HW support is limited to Maya 3 or something; hopefully someone more knowledgeable can iron-out that supposition...
Last edited by Grabnutz; 6th Jun 10 at 4:22 AM. Reason: removed off topicness
yea the plugins are suited for maya 3. does someone know if they work with later maya versions?... but maya is veeeery expensive... you can buy the newest version around 4000$... or you have a look at ebay if you find maya 3 somewhere.
i would recomend using wings 3d. use it all the time and works great for me. and the biggest positive thing: its for free !
Wings 3D + gimp 2.6 has held through pretty well for me so far. Best of the deal: it's free which is a major plus as I have virtually no resources to fund a hobby.
The wonders of open source software is that you can do good stuff at no cost. Sure, it's not perfect and the tools aren't the best but they work pretty well.
@KeyBored, I don't think maya can do FX. They made the FX tool for that specifically.
Blender...
Free, all the power of Maya, it can bake normal maps, you can use it to plan out animations, and you don't have to worry about a mesh being manifold. Full uv mapping toolset as well.
http://www.blender.org/
To get the models ingame just use CFhod, and Maded for animations.
Bake? Hell Yeah! Im getting that Shizzel! ^^
He means make
And nobody has mentioned Gmax yet? It's essentially an old version of 3ds Max, which is a program that costs thousands of dollars, but it's free. Why? It's like a Demo, it doesn't have rendering and it's not supposed to export in many formats, but there's a nice little workaround if you spend a little bit of time setting it up. It took me awhile to do it right so I'll help if someone needs help with Gmax.
Oh, and it can do all the UV mapping, too. Pretty easily at that. And unlike blender, IMO, the control scheme is very intuitive and easy to use, though that may be a little bit prejudiced.
Progress: 12%
Current work: Realistic Newtonian Movement
Blender's interface is great when you get used to it. Just takes a while.
I model and UV map with Wings 3d simply because I'm more used to it, but I use Blender for animations and renders. Great programs, both of them.
What else would I need to make a working model? I read in a different thread that you need hardpoints to put guns on or something. Then I saw a few models without turrets on which got me thinking. Do I need anything special to put weapons on my models, like another program?
go look around in the tutorials, learn how to model first, after that go on to learning how to mod.
E1D, theres no plugins to OBJ...or converters...
do u know how to use GMax? because i can't find any tutorials on how to use it
If I'm going to use wings, where do I find an HOD to OBJ converter, assuming there is one?
you can use cf hod ed to extract obj files out off the hod and into it. using only wings so i can say it works great.
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