3ds max alternatives question

[Lionsmane]

Hey guys, I'm an art major and long time addict of ff7 and Id like to get into making custom models, but definitely cannot afford 3DS Max.

My question is, Will a free program like Blender be compatible with the Lgp-related tools and what not that are on this forum needed to import models?

Thanks in advance for any insight!

[Timu Sumisu]

all i ever did was in blender. You'll be fine. I look forward to seeing your work.

[Lionsmane]

Sweet! That's encouraging because your barrett is amazing.
It will take me awhile at first I'm sure because I'm new to the process as well as art through software. But I have the free time and the artistic mindset though so hopefully good things will happen!

[Timu Sumisu]

if yer majoring in art i assume you have a good sense of space, volume and geometry. mash that with a bit of anatomy and you're set. The longest thing to get used to will be polygon topology.. thats just practice

[Lionsmane]

Thanks for the tips!

should I be using the lgp/ unlgp tool to obtain in game models to alter and such?

[Timu Sumisu]

i used to use lgp tools + biturn to extract, not sure how popular that is nowadays

[Lionsmane]

yeah, lgp tools seems favorable to me just because it has a GUI.

[obesebear]

yeah, lgp tools seems favorable to me just because it has a GUI.

LGPTools has problems repacking and subsequently unpacking LGPs in a lot of cases.   But if you're just using it to extract a model, you'll be fine.   

For any consistent unpacking and repacking, you better use LGP/UnLGP, else your files can get very very messed up.

[Lionsmane]

So, I didnt want to start a new thread as this one has taken a turn towards modeling questions in general. 

But do all textures need to be done in a 2d program like gimp? Whenever I try to apply a texture brush to the imported models in blender I get nothing.