3d dealies

[ndchristie]

i actually never could figure out blender, i thought the interface was the most awkwardly arranged thing id ever seen, but perhaps i never gave it enough of a chance.  thanks for the suggestions everybody, though im afraid the programmer talked me into going with handdrawn before i had a chance to really look at them

[goat]

Blender has a steep learning curve, but you definitely can't argue with the results.  I come from a 3dsmax school of thought so the first time I used it I was confused and frightened, but once you get used to it (I'm still not) you can pull some amazing visuals out of it.  If you're going for prerendered graphics you want to avoid the "prerendered look" as much as possible, which imo excludes a lot of the less developed free 3d apps out there. 

If you're going to be rendering out to 2d images and not distributing any native format files, I might also gingerly suggest that just because a program is sold commercially doesn't mean it couldn't be a 'free' solution :p

[ndchristie]

id take your last suggestion except in that its illegal, and even without a trail its more the spirit of the act that id prefer to avoid

maybe i should give blender another chance, ive seen some people do some great things with it, and even i can figure out the basics (animation was beyond me, but i dont really need animation....soo.........)

[Conzeit]

hm. I think the most annoying/complicated thing about blender is the fact it relays on "modes" for everything.

when you have to stick a figure to a bone, you must go to a mode, when you have to animate, there's another mode.

but you're pretty ok once you know that. I took a small course that touched every subject from rendering to animation very lightly, so maybe I could advice you a little bit.

also, be aware there's a community wiki in blender's main site

http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Main_Page

[NyanNyanKoneko]

The best part of Blender is that the import / export scripts are written in python.  Most professional tools require you to download their SDK and write a C / C++ importer / exporter.  With blender, you can open up nano / notepad / emacs / whatever, and write your python script and save it in the plugins directory.  On the plus side, if you mess up your code, it'll let you know what's wrong with your script instead of crashing the application or writing bad data.