Depending on what sort of level creation your going to be doing depends on the tool I would prefer to use.
I honestly can't use or stand Cartography Shop. You might think the interface intuative, however I don't. I spend a good 2hours with the trial version that came with DB/P trying to figure out how to actually make a room stay, then trying to figure out how to hollow it, then trying to figure out how to texture it.
From my point of view it IS NOT obvious what does what. It is extremely fussy just like Worldcraft/Hammer, which in my eyes makes it a pain to try and use. You have to create worlds knowing the quirks of the application. Reading the manual is a pre-requist to actually achiving anything.
As far as Quake-Style Levels go I personally find GTKRadiant far more intelligent and understandable.
You want a room, Drag-Area -> Right-Click -> Make Solid.
You want that room hollowed, Right-Click -> Hollow (Select Depth)
You want to texture it, Shift+Left-Click -> Select the faces -> Select the Texture from the side.
everything you do in GTK is far easier and more understandable.
it is also much easier to view your levels.
that said without the manual for GTK again you'd be lost for hours trying to figure out the short-cut keys. I personally ABIDE short-cut programs, that rely 100% on the user knowing 1001 key combinations for each task.
This is why I prefer Maya for basically everything. Because everything you want to do has an icon on the interface right there.
Want to create a Cube..
Polygon Tab -> Click on the Cube Icon, you want to edit it's properties before creation Double-Click.
Select, Move, Rotate, Scale are all on the left hand-sde always ready to use.
Textures are a right-click away, or you can click on the 'Hyper-Shade' view button and manually create them.
Effects can be applied by simply dragging them onto objects.
Sorry but with the visual style of Maya the only thing that isn't obvious from the get go is how to move the camera. You can do everything else by purely explorering.
What's more is Maya comes with 6 training videos, which explain the most basic functionality of the application when you boot it up. EVEN Personal Learning Edition has them. So even if you don't want to read a manual you have a quick 45-1minute video explaining how the select tools work, how the rendering works, how the movement works, etc.
Not to mention the manual itself is full of tutorials (again YES even the PLE version) to help beginners to advaced users, for what they want to do.
Quote: "Maya is best for CG, not exactly practical for 3D models for game because Cinema 4D/3DS max and lightwave are cheaper and well low poly modelling in them isn't exactly that much differant."
Bollocks. Maya has far more and intuative tools for creating low-polygon work as it does for creating high-polygon work.
The tools are designed to scale, and again your suffering from the same issue that the original poster has. You used the products for a few minutes and rather than using them for long enough to make your own damn mind up you've thought 'this looks too hard' and given up then decided to spout of exactly what the communities do thinking you'll fit in.
God I hate posts like this. So much stupid mis-information and typical fanboy diatripe comes out.
