I use Rhino because I have it, I'm used to it, and I've tried Wings but it just doesn't do it for me...

I'm okay with 3DS, I've worked with it before and Milkshape supports it as well.

but extra support is always nice the more the better.

Ugh milkshape, how can you work with an editor that doesn't even support selection in 3D? Especially since there is Blender, a tool that has the features of an expensive 3D editor, but is completely free! Ok I'll stop advertising now

I personally like using Maya I've always used Rhino for TA modelling though. At the time, wings didn't exist... and you're right about blender... All the suck of 3ds's GUI, and then some! All this and more for free I guess people just stick to what they know.

Don't forget to add DXF support. AutoCad can be very good for unit models if you have access to it (at work, for example).

hi, why use rhino ? maya is alot better afaik
also is maya triangle based likes max or polygonal based likes lightwave ?.
is there any basic tutorial (likes 'making box dino with maya) on the web ?.

i need it coz im currently writing '3d modeller vs spring' article and i want to add maya to the article too

so far 3 software reviewed so far but that is for 3do building and not s3o


ill wait till .s3o stable and find its true form before i published the article though

oh and about 3ds suckness in gui, even simple process like extruding constantly end up with geometry maldeformed . this problem solved 'geniously' by another bugfree 'face extrude' function added to the gui
And since MAX rendering quality is lower than maya and lightwave, being 'solved' by adding much more 'option' of material and lighting... with very view difference one another

on the goodside, some feature like spline-surface is much better than lightwave (whatabout maya ?) and animating is much, much easier than in lightwave

Maya feels a bit overpowered for TA modelling to me. Besides, I'd have to export models to rhino, then 3dobuilder to get them into TA in the first place (the obj format maya uses is newer than 3dob's). I have full intentions of using Maya to make s3o files, though, I just haven't messed with it much to figure out how yet. Of course, there's only a 3dsmax exporter plugin and 3ds file support in Zaphod's editor right now, so we're kind of limited.

I learned Maya from the 3DBuzz tutorials that came with my copy of UT2004 on a bonus DVD. I'm sure I don't know everything there is to know about it (especially with rendering and such), but I can model, uv wrap, skin, bone, skeletal animate, etc with it. Well, I'd have to brush up with animating, but whatever. I think those tutorials are freely available if you sign up at the 3DBuzz site.

Maya is cool. I would use it if I could, but unfortunatley I only have the PLE trial version. This version does not allow you to save in anything but the Maya PLE format, so no exporting for me

Does anyone know how I could get Maya models from Maya PLE to either s3o or 3do? Cause that would make me very happy indeed.

Sorry to dissapoint you guys, but Maya's gone................. Autodesk bought out Alias a couple months ago, so it's just 3ds Max now, but i'm sure it will have some new features added to it in the next release taken from Maya.

I know the PLE supports the Unreal Editor export plugin, so it would probably accept other plugins too if someone made one...

And TA 3D: That doesn't stop those of us who already have it from using it :)

I have tried some simple models with the new format, but they keep coming up textureless. They look ok in Upspring, the texture is copied to TASpring\base\tatextures_v062.sdz\UnitTextures\tatex\ what could be wrong?

Upspring saves the texture names as they appear in the box, so you have to manually chop off the path and only leave a filename. I guess I'll change that in the next version. That is the only problem I can think of right now.

Manually? It took hex editor! Upspring would not save if the path was not valid.

Sadly it still didn't work, could someone upload a model that will please.

Okay for some reason I cant find the .dds file that max dumped out. Actully, it's not outputing anything that I can find except the .s3o file. No textures. Is there a reason why?

When I get back to my house I will put here, but you can find it in any "new games" files like MA Domination,Rise of Nations etc strategic ones with several units.
Graatz

Hey I have a question. What do you have to do to make 3DS MAX output the .dds texture files? Also what do you do to fix this face issue(inverting)? Heres something I tried in spring. Note I don't have textures for it, so there is none. And its inverted. But all in all you get the gist. By the way can we please have transparency?

funky trees

I have finally found an acceptable UV mapper/unwrapper. At least one I can map with. UVEdit Pro for Lightwave. Lightwave can export UVmapped 3ds'es, and UVEdit is the most handy mapping tool I could come across. In spite of this, and the very handy layered LWO model format, could we maybe get LWO model support?

Sean: Send it over, Dragon45 at gmail . com

And it would probably be in the mods' best interest to delete that section of your post

if you are looking for a good uvmapper, you should check blender. It has one of the best uvmapper of the industry
check this :
http://orange.blender.org/blog/live-lscm-unwrap

(it is a very new feature, use the latest test-build available here :
http://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7394