3ds max, maya, bryce, etc.

[DavidP]

How much experience do any of you have with the following programs?

3ds max
Bryce 4
Lightwave 3D
Maya
Blender

I have all of those except Maya (which I plan on getting soon...since it is the best of them all), but it is hard to figure out any advanced stuff in them like texture mapping. I also want to know how the heck professionals do stuff like cinematics for games in those programs, because I know they dont go in and move each little object in a big movie one by one.

Anyone have any experience with these 3d modeling programs?

[no-one]

LightWave 3D, is the best in fact a lot of companies are switching over as it is one namely is SquareSoft. their render is highly advanced.

try the newtek messageboards.
http://www.newtek.com
I don't use any so i can't help but they probably can.

[iain]

Caligari Truespace 4 is a very very nice prgram, i had a demo of it, its quite expensive though. So unless you use it very frequesntly or professionaly its probably not worth it.

[valar_king]

I have quite a bit of experience in Blender, and I'm ........ed off that people keep calling it's interface 'clumsy!' I mean, it is the best interface I have worked with to this date. All it takes is a few clicks and you can create great things! 3ds MAX has a very, very clumsy interface that relies on you to fill in those darn textboxes! And it lacks the ease of Blender's extrude tool! I learned that modeling in Blender goes WAY WAY faster because of the extrude tool.
Anyway, get blender here (http://www.blender.nl) they have the BEST community I have EVER seen!

[Eber Kain]

Blender all the way, you can do anything with it.

Oh and being freeware is nice.