Cheap/Free Reliable Studio Program?

[Shankifer]

Is there anything out there like Maya or 3ds that is cheap? or free?

I haven't looked into ordering 3ds much, because I Worked with Maya a lot in school. But looking at Maya prices it's insane.

I have downloaded google sketchup but it doesn't have nearly the same quality, doesn't even seem to be for the same purpose.

If anyone has anything that they use, suggestions would be great.

Not just for me, but for other cheap noobies like me too ^.^

[obesebear]

Blender.

[Shankifer]

Thank you!   

[Bosola]

Always remember to use OSALT to find Open Source (and therefore free) ALTernatives.

[Furzball]

You always get what you pay for. Blender is good but maya is more user friendly (at least to me)

[Kudistos Megistos]

You always get what you pay for

This seems to be partly true for content creation software, although the best content creation software tends to be free. Even when it comes to content creation, the difference in price is usually not justified by an increase in user-friendliness.

[Shankifer]

Actually, I've used Maya a lot, and you really don't get what you pay for if you pay full price. Blender is a little more complicated but for free, I'm willing to sacrifice some time to learn it to contribute to the forums on here with something other than idiotic questions lol.

Maya is great for those who can get it cheaper from a school or something, but paying full price is crazy for a side-hobby.I don't plan on making a living with my model-making ability, but I like to play around with stuff.

So thanks for the feedback, but unless there is a more user-friendly program like blender for free, I think I've found what I'm looking for 

[Kudistos Megistos]

I'm going to make a guess and say that the creators of Maya might be like Adobe insofar as they make most of their money from professionals who are prepared to pay huge amounts of money for a program that they're going to use all day. They don't really expect amateurs to pay full price for the software (for which reason they tend to turn a blind eye to piracy, not that you should be doing anything like that )

[Shankifer]

Trust me. Autodesk is so much bigger than adobe now lol. Mainly because Autodesk made Avatar possible. And their security is effing TIGHT. lol

Adobe definitely turns a blind eye xD

Autodesk makes money from a lot of things, they sponsored the latest highschool worldwide robotics competition lol. =P

[Affenhirn]

Hello everyone,

I have been reading the forums for some time now without really participating until now, but because of the recent progress made in the Team Avalanche Project I have become more curious if I would be able to do some work too.
Problem is, I have no Idea about modeling, but I decided to try some tutorials to learn it.

My Question is: Which Program would you recommend for starting? I am lucky, because I have access to student versions of all Autodesk programs for free, so I can decide between Maya, 3dsMax and Blender.

[sl1982]

I prefer maya, millenia prefers max. Its pretty much up to you which one you like better.

[Affenhirn]

Ok, guess I will go for Maya. Any good Tutorials out there? If I remember correctly, you started learning modeling not so long ago, what did you do to get started?

[sl1982]

Experimented. I never really read used any tutorials (it probablys shows)

[Affenhirn]

Alright, I will have to find them myself then, shouldn't be too difficult I think 

So, wish me luck, hope I will be able to contribute some stuff in the distant future.

[Shankifer]

Tutorial-wise, Youtube and Autodesk have some great tutorials. Also If you search for some .PDF tutorials using Maya and Autodesk as keywords you can find some good stuff. The program also comes with a few video and text tutorials, kind of like a monkey-see-monkey-do scheme to work with. Hope you figure it out, It didn't take me long with Maya. Practice and experimenting is really the best tutorial.