Reality Factory

I use milkshape and also sometimes wings3d which is very easy too, but milkshape beats them all with its simple way of use. I never understood gmax and thought "well i can have up to 64K tris in milkshape and many many many plugins so what's the problem?"
In fact i think milkshape can do almost everything imaginable because of its plugins that are ver powerfull. For example the directxmeshtools that can import directx files of unlimited size and lower or rise the poly count the much you like are really helpfull when you are creating LODs for the models.

I've currently been working with 3d max 9 at school but for any modelling I do at home I used gmax.

1. Maya 4.0 (work) (expensive)
PROS: excellent interface, excellent everything!
CONS: not very many export plugins for 4.0 was ever made

2. Fragmotion (home) (20.00 USD)
PROS: animations, conversions, simple to use, directx9
CONS: not very powerful as a modeler

3. ppModeler (home) (FREE)
PROS: subD, Maya like interface, MIRROR modeling
CONS: can't import skeletons yet, interface slightly hard to get use too

4. Blender (home) (FREE)
PROS: a good world geometry modeler
CONS: not y-up axis, interface hard to get use too, can't or hard to import skeletons worth a flip (mostly bad importer/exporters)

5. DeleD (home) (FREE/50.00 USD)
PROS: nice world geometry modeler
CONS: 'light' version lacks good results, like translucent windows, fixed lightmap size, etc...

6. Misfit Modeler (home) (FREE)
PROS: good conversion tool, like reading and writing ms3d and lwo
CONS: Limited modeling features, worse than Milkshape...

7. Truespace 4.3 (20.00)
PROS: skeleton animation, nice interface
CONS: no UV editor -only simple UV mapping

8. Max and GMax (NO) (are a piece of crap. I don't own them)
PROS: has plugins for some older games
CONS: z-up axis, biped joint crap very limited, too expensive


EDIT: Sorry for being so cruel to 3ds max users. It's just that my experience with users of max have been bad ones. In my work with low poly gaming, they are always trying to get 140,000 poly maps and models into the game and don't understand why it won't work. When I have offered to send them a file of models with animations in DirectX format, the reply was that max can't import models with skeletons, or that they need a biped, 'what the he@#?' And they say that they need to buy a separate character studio plugin to use skeletons. How lame is that? Anyway, I may have come across too badly on the program, and I apologize.

I also have Wings 3d. I have went through the tutorial on building a doghouse, but that's about it. It does do a nice job with world editing though. But has no skeleton support. It also requires a lot of keyboard commands along with typing exact coordinates often. But it seemed cool for structures in world geometry, from what I seen.

3ds max 9 all the way:)

i cant stand truespace or gamespace, they are only in it for the money and are sell outs big time!

+100 to Coty. Maya is THE application for games. Amazing suite altogether. The only downside for me is that it only runs on XP Pro, so I'd have to buy that on top of the already overpriced license.

I'm using Blender for Dungeon Hack, but it won't work for
Reality Factory, except static mesh .act files, (no RF exporter).
I'd use 3ds Max 3.1 but it doesn't export to
.mesh. Max 3.1 was the easiest (least hard) RF animator, can't
use it in Dungeon Hack though, and Blender animations; forget it.

http://terrymorgan.net/download.htm

At one time my work was done on a program called Alias.

Now I use two others, one being Gmax, but mostly my working is with Martin Hash's Animation Master, a very intuitive use program, and of low price, with versatile production.

anim8or and Milkshape.

everyone needs to check out blender now. They have a new version that incorporates sculpting tools similar to ZBrush2. This is a must have more making your high-poly detail meshes.

Yeah, it looks really cool. I have been using blender for a while, but have recently moved onto 3DS Max (i think its version 9 or 10) and I still think blender is too diferent from the rest, like 3DS Max i found was just like Milkshape but better...

3dsmax7 and ms3d ftw

i use blender.i learnt on it so i couldnt say about how it compares to other modeling programs but its loaded with features and its free.yes texturing is hard, but it looks better than truespace wich i have as well

Milkshape3d , wings3d , misfitmodel3d( for when i wanna .md2 for one of my other game engines, heh.)Anim8or is great.Very easy to understand.