Now I know that many don't deal with 3D modeling at all, but...

Blender - Free 3D Modeling Software. Newer versions UI are somewhat saner for new folks. See Blenderartitsts for some user work.

Pixologic - ZBrush - Just ... good. Really, really good. Blender has a "sculpt" mode, but ZBrush beats everything else (Even Mudbox - though if you're a Maya person, the integration of Mudbox and Maya may win you over). ZBrush Central for user work/tutorials, etc...

xNormal - Create displacement, normal, specular maps.

For some 2D stuff...

(Since r0o reminded me of it):
Sketchbook Pro - Good "sketching" software. From r0o asking about the Copic Version.

Meh... nuff rambling,
-J

Blender is good. I'm just glad they finally implemented the exporting of OBJs.

Zbrush is best for sculpting. Period. In my opinion anyway. The only problem is you need a really powerful computer to handle the RAM usage, because the more detailed sculpts will require heavy decimation (which can crash your comp, and you can't get a good transfer into other programs without decimating the sculpt).

xNormal is beautiful <3

I noticed you didn't meantion "Roadkill" or "3D Coat".
I like Roadkill because it makes making UV shells for models SOOOOO much easier. This saved me many times in my classwork.
3D Coat isn't free, but you can download the trial for this 3D modeling program. The retopologizing process in this program is so much better than Maya, TopoGun, or ZBrush (before the most recent version came out).

....yeah, I'm done rambling, too lol

Kitten wrote:
Blender is good. I'm just glad they finally implemented the exporting of OBJs.

Blender has always been able to export as OBJ format. The *text* OBJ format anyway (vertex, face layouts, etc...). If you want one of the specific binary obj formats, well, there have been lots of different scripts written for importing, and if you're lucky, exporting.

Kitten wrote:
Zbrush is best for sculpting. Period. In my opinion anyway. The only problem is you need a really powerful computer to handle the RAM usage, because the more detailed sculpts will require heavy decimation (which can crash your comp, and you can't get a good transfer into other programs without decimating the sculpt).

Hrmm... I never had a problem with ZBrush. I haven't every done anything *major*, but comparatively ZBrush would handle a few million polygons fine on a 2GB system (Can't remember exact graphics card, but it was some older nVidia Quadro with 1GB RAM). The same model in Mudbox would crash my system (or just make it unusable).


Kitten wrote:
I noticed you didn't meantion "Roadkill" or "3D Coat".
I like Roadkill because it makes making UV shells for models SOOOOO much easier. This saved me many times in my classwork.
3D Coat isn't free, but you can download the trial for this 3D modeling program. The retopologizing process in this program is so much better than Maya, TopoGun, or ZBrush (before the most recent version came out).

Hrmm... never heard of either. For UV shells, I'll a lot of times use ZBrush and the UV Master script. Other times I just fight with Blender and pin the UV layout that way. I mean really, where's the fun if you don't bang your head against a wall when doing UV's?

-J

Mitharus wrote:
Blender has always been able to export as OBJ format. The *text* OBJ format anyway (vertex, face layouts, etc...). If you want one of the specific binary obj formats, well, there have been lots of different scripts written for importing, and if you're lucky, exporting.

Blender's OBJs had some issue with Maya 2011 (then again...EVERYTHING had an issue with Maya 2011. lol), and for 5 full months I had to do crazy go-arounds with collegues who were modeling in Blender while the main animation was done with Maya. :/
Thankfully, Maya 2012 is nicer to Blender this time around~ (Blender wasn't too nice about importing into ASCII files for some reason with Maya 2011)

Mitharus wrote:
Hrmm... I never had a problem with ZBrush. I haven't every done anything *major*, but comparatively ZBrush would handle a few million polygons fine on a 2GB system (Can't remember exact graphics card, but it was some older nVidia Quadro with 1GB RAM). The same model in Mudbox would crash my system (or just make it unusable).

I run off 6GB RAM with a GeForce GTX 570 Graphics Card (graduation gift w00t!), and I have to be careful with sculpts that go over 1 bil polys....which is a medium-to-large sized sculpt in Game Modeling (I'm a freelance animator). :/

Mitharus wrote:
Hrmm... never heard of either. For UV shells, I'll a lot of times use ZBrush and the UV Master script. Other times I just fight with Blender and pin the UV layout that way. I mean really, where's the fun if you don't bang your head against a wall when doing UV's?

OMG 3D Coat was a life saver for this one project I had! If you want to retopo any model you make, I recommend it or ZBrush. TopoGun is good for retopology, but it's more slow-going than ZBrush, but just a tad faster than Maya.
Pfft, I had a couple projects where I was working as a texture artist and I got some crappy models with hilariously bad UVs. When you're in a time crunch, Roadkill was my saving grace!
I can't afford to bang my head against the wall. xD Efficiency with the best possible product is my thing. ;D

Kitten wrote:
Blender's OBJs had some issue with Maya 2011 (then again...EVERYTHING had an issue with Maya 2011. lol), and for 5 full months I had to do crazy go-arounds with collegues who were modeling in Blender while the main animation was done with Maya. :/
Thankfully, Maya 2012 is nicer to Blender this time around~ (Blender wasn't too nice about importing into ASCII files for some reason with Maya 2011)

Ahhh.... They used a wonderful custom extension for saving the normals IIRC, that wasn't "exactly" the standard 'vn'. See Wavefront .obj file format. That and I remember one .obj file I looked at had the unit spaces different, so some were in world space, where others were local and it was specified in a comment what it was. Autodesk has screwed with Maya sssoooo much after they bought Alias it isn't even funny.

I remember around that time trying to read Maya obj files into a simple OpenGL program for display and having normals being reversed, missing faces, etc... Autodesk just doesn't know when to leave things alone. =/

-J