Blender is very complete and powerful and even more so for a free program, omg. But it's not the easiest to just pick up and learn. I've dabbled with many and learn a few, and Blender is not the best at just trying things out. Especially for me with poor vision, those small buttons and menus are killing me. But I'm getting there and discovering lots of very cool shortcuts and tools everytime I try things. I'm gathering some thoughts in a tutorial for newbies:
www.thebest3d.com/pdp/tutorials/blender
- hopefully to help others. With links to more complete and serious tutes too. Plus there is another tute in the making by 'criss' who's used Blender for a few years. See the Terragen tutorial he just posted one level up.
My favorite entry-level tool so far is still Carrara, and you can find cheaper versions than the latest version 5, such as 3 or 4, which will do a decent job for many things. You may still need Milkshape for rigging and creating some animations. Well, Carrara has bones too, and texture painting etc but you need it in a format for FPSC, some game format, and Milkshape rocks in that sense.
Milkshape exports/imports are in fact also found in other products such as GameSpace if I'm not mistaken, perhaps also 3D Game Studio? Look for GameSpace at Caligari's website
Look for Carrara 4 at www.thebest3d.com/carrara and the latest at www.eovia.com or daz3d.com
There used to be also a free tool from the makers of 3DS MAX. It was called Gmax, but they canned it. One place where you can still find it though and I mean legitimately so, is on the first of the 4 CDs of Microsoft FlightSimulator 2004, "A Century of Flight". Problem is, there's not much to export to from Gmax, so all it will teach you is how to learn and then justify 3DS Max later.
There are numerous other modelers for quickly creating models. I have a few listed at
www.thebest3d.com - for example Archipelis Designer, where you can trace shapes from a background image, and it builds 3D blobs to mimic the 3D shape behind it, and it shows them carrying the original image as a texture - sweet. It's not the state of the art of modeling and uv mapping, but for many things that fly by and either go sploat a fraction of a second later or that kill ya before you know what it ya, it'll do fine.
2D, 3D, games and other natural disasters
