Malevolent-Gaming

So I'm looking into 3d editors to puts around with for a little while now. Anyone have any experience with 3d modeling programs? I used 3ds Max pretty heavily back in high school, but that was....10 years ago....oh god...so old.

I've narrowed down what I think I may try to Blender 3d.
Anyone heard of this program? It's open source, and free as in beer.

Did you say free beer!?!

To be honest, it depends on what you're trying to do.

If you're trying to make something organic (characters, animals), better to go with a 3D sculpting program. They work better with a natural art workflow, they have some standards art programs would have (layers, painting on the model, tools similar to that of real sculpting). Also, they work a lot better with high-poly stuff.

If you're trying to make something mechanical\architectural, something like Max (or Blender) is good and geared towards that. That works well for individual highly complex rigid objects that may interact in mechanical ways. They're also decent with creating small scenes.

Finally, if you're looking to do level editing or something, work in a native editor for building levels, but build assets in something like Blender\Max. Don't try to create a huge scene in Blender\Max. It's just not geared towards that.

Last but not least - if it's animation you're going for, most are somewhat comparable. Max and Maya have the best breadth of plugins, but they're pricey. But remember - animation is only as good as the assets that go in to it. Choose your package based on asset creation.

Thank you for the info! I wasn't sure 100% what I was looking for...

I'd like to get into some OpenGL programming and was wondering what was a good app to create some sample objects. No level editing yet. I'm not sure how that all works out.

Still just scratching the surface.

If you're just making some sample objects, go for the cheapness!

What do you want to eventually do with OpenGL? This will define what you'll need to learn.

I created a donut once in Maya and then dunked it into coffee. It was sweet! It was still all grays because that's as far as I got into the lesson, but man I can create a mean donut.

The end result is to make some Android apps. From what I've read, Android uses a slightly modified version of OpenGL's API. But I could easily start with just Java+Open GL.

Honestly, I'm only looking into the 3d part for a passing understanding. I'm going to start with 3d first...

But that's the idea. =D