Best 3D Modelling Software For Beginners?

Hey guys!

Here's the deal, I've tried numerous times over the span of 4 years to just open up Blender and not burst into tears crying as I uninstall it but I've never been able to budge. I always cried from the horribly messy and complicatedness of the program.

With that I've been looking into Cheetah3D, the issue is that I don't have a Mac so that's out.

As I type this right now however, I have the student version of Maya installing (well trial if you count the fact that I get an error every time I try to get a serial code).

With all that in mind, what's the best 3D modelling program you can recommend me that does modelling, animation and pretty much everything I would NEED for a game yet still manages to be simple?

P.S. Please don't say Sculptris or any other program that doesn't have skeletal systems and animations.

 

When you have money then i would go with Maya or Cinema 4D as the base software. When you are short of money, then Blender stays your best bet. There is no alternative to Blender really in the hobby sector.

That said, there is no shortcut into 3D. 3D is complicated, and will always remain complicated. And you may need more than one software for the job. Sculptris is a nice free tool for doing the sculpting job.

 

start with 3ds max or maya, both have student versions. blender seems pretty good as well.

 

It sounds to me like you're trying to run before you walk. Blender is a little hard to get into, sure, but the very basics of it aren't really that hard. Go through some tutorials (BlenderCookie, BlenderGuru) and just follow along step-by-step. Then after watching the video, do it again without watching. Refer to the video as needed when you can't remember things. Then, if you can stomach it, do it a third time, again without the video. Then move on to another tutorial.

This will get your mind to actually remember the things you're doing, rather than just flowing through and not sticking.

I'd also recommend focusing on just 1 simple thing at first. Don't try to learn simple modeling, sculpting, human modeling, nurbs, animation, and texturing all at once. Start with just the simple modeling until you're comfortable with it. Then move on to texturing. That will allow you to make simple objects and actually get some pride in what you're doing. Later, move on to more complex topics like sculpting and baking high-poly to low-poly.

 

Nevercenter Silo

 

Yup, cool for modeling. But the TO searches for a complete package with animation abilities.

 

Carrara 8.5 Pro, Hexagon 2, Silo, Cinema 4D, Modo, Lightwave3d, 3DS Max, Maya, Milkshape3D, Fragmotion, Ultimate Unwrap3D Pro.

Check them all out.

Basically if you pick for example Silo and your charcter model after tutorials galore, 2 months of dedication to the art of 3D, ends up looking like a wardrobe, switching package or thinking that the most expensive package will make a difference then don't bother. Save yourself the time and the money.

There are other solutions out there e.g. Mixamo Fuse. Or you could buy template base models and work off them.

Hope that helps.

 

Softimage Modtool 7.5 is an option to consider. It's a few years old now and for non-commerical use, but it's free, easy to use and it'll do pretty much everything except sculpting. It was aimed at amateur mod makers so it's about as good as it gets for beginners.

 

Give Mirye Software's Shade 3D a shot. It is a full, commercial product, with Pro, Standard and Basic versions. But there is also a FREE Shade 3D for Unity version. Shade 3D for Unity has modeling, animation and some texturing tools. What's especially nice too is you can grab the script in the Asset Store here, which allows you to interactively open models in Shade 3D for Unity, animate / modify, and then see them in action in your project.

It is available for Mac OS X and Windows.

There's also a sale going on now for Shade 3D Basic for only $49 (51% off) via Mirye Store.

 

wccrawford said it right, you should definitely focus your efforts

if you are having troubles with blender you aren't going to get much better results with any other 3d software, i don't want to sound like a fanboy here but blender actually is pretty friendly for modeling, maybe you are getting too confused with everything else, you should pick a beginner series of tutorials to guide you through the interface and basic modeling tools, everything else is gravy from there on

 

Not true, People are different
I have tested many application about years, but the only one I don't feel not firmly with the usability is Blender
I'm a designer and not a techie.
Fact is, all the application do the same main things ,only the workflow is varies. From easy to very awkward.

Also to create assets for Unity you need not use expensive applications

 

obviously everyone is different, i've also used almost every single other 3d software, and if you care to know the best two for modeling in my opinion are blender and modo, but thats not the point i was trying to make, the thing is, blender is very simple interface wise and even simpler for modeling where most of what you use is mapped to shortcuts, i'm pretty sure a lot of people will prefer any other workflow and thats okay but, the point i was trying to make is... if he can't dedicate a few hours learning a few shortcuts to model something simple do you really believe he will do any better in any other (probably more complex) 3d software?

in today's age where there are tons of great starting tutorials to every software he still can't get through blender in 4 years, in my opinion he lacks will... thats all i'm saying, i'm not trying to put one piece of software over another, every single one of them has strengths and weaknesses

 

I disagree. 3D software by both its origins and also its complexity has defied some of the standardizing we've seen in other software applications - many originated before there were Windows or Apple user interface guidelines. Along with trying to innovate the underlying technology, the same vendors have tried to come up with ways to build a GUI around those features.

Blender has both a gift and curse of fanboys who gush over it without actually explaining why its so great, or explaining why its better than some other tool for a specific task.

The first thing you should do is do a better needs assessment.

If you are a lone developer with Unity 3D and you are also going to do your own modeling (and hey, don't forget texture tools too!), narrow down your search of applications based on producing rigged animated models compatible with Unity 3D. Decide what your budget is for tools. Don't just pick Blender because its free - because your time is not free - a free app that isn't productive to you costs you money.

Grab 3-5 products that fit your criteria and spend up to an hour with each; its likely you'll need less time than that to actually eliminate some from consideration.

 

For beginner, start with Sculptris. You don't need to worry about topology when sculpting there.
It is a light version of ZBrush. However on Windows 8 is hard to get it working.
If you start with poly modeling ( blender, Maya, Max ) is a good bet you end up building broken topology. The reason many ppl around these forums don't understand why their model won't import in Unity, bad poly factoring.

Oh, and it is free.

 

Not a bad advice at all to start with Sculptris. But please keep in mind that you cannot use the result of Sculptris directly in Unity. Too poly heavy.

You need to build a low poly version at one point. This is usually done by so called Retopology.

Another possible workflow is to build your low poly character before sculpting, use it as the base character for sculpting, and reuse it then for baking.

I personally would directly start to learn polygon modeling. You can use a low poly character without sculpting. And it's here where you learn about topology. But you cannot use a sculpt mesh without corresponding low poly mesh.

 

Scuptris is a really nice intro to sculpting, and since you already have the student edition of Maya, that's a no brainer.

Once upon a time I may have discouraged newbies from starting with Maya, but it's a very different package now to what it was ten years ago. Mechanically it's the same, but it has a terrific user base and pool of learning material.

My only advice is... Maya complete (vs Maya LT) is a big package with some very powerful (complex) tools. Try to avoid the fancy FX stuff as you can get lost quickly... start by focussing on poly modelling, topology and UV mapping (a great experience in Maya 2015) and watch lots and lots of tutorials and training videos and hang out in forums to get the most out of the learning process and other users' input.

 

Personally, I highly and respectfully disagree with most of the posts here. I've worked in the archiviz and animation industry, I've used Maya, 3ds Max and a little bit of Cinema4D in the past, for modelling, I'd say 3ds Max is a good software, however, for beginners, you simply can't beat C4D imho, of course there are other packages, intended to be 'easier' (Sketchup is an example) but they all lack something important that won't allow you to achieve a professional quality in all disciplines without an immense effort.

From my experience, beginners love booleans and bevels, which allows them to make complex models easily and quickly. Last time I've checked, Max had the best boolean tools in industry and C4D the best bevel tools, the boolean tools from Maya are simply all glitched and practically unusable, unless they fixed that later, Maya is totally focused on animation and rendering, it's awesome for that (that realtime viewport rendering stuff is simply fantastic and there are complex physics and stuff) but it's not that good for modelling and recently it's full of bugs (at least the versions I tried). I definitely wouldn't go for Maya unless I were working in the animation industry and grossing substantially from it.

I never checked XSI but I remember a big hype in the gaming industry some years ago (for modelling), so it might be good, can't guarantee it's worth after Autodesk bought it though. Modo seems to be a quite good modeller also. Last time I checked some tools were broken but that was a LOT of time ago.

With that said, and I repeat that I recommend C4D for beginners because it's easier than the competition, more reliable and has (almost?) everything you can possibly need, you must also be aware that most pros use 3Ds Max (afaik) and it has a bucketful of plugins for pretty much everything, flatiron is an awesome plugin (must-have for games) and there are some quite decent LOD generation plugins, that's both a positive and negative point, the good part is that with the right plugins you can turn it into the ultimate 3D package for games, the bad part is that you'll seriously need a lot of plugins, because sometimes the built-in functionality of Max is too basic and disappointing, it's full of serious issues (including viewport navigation) and you'll need plugins to 'fix' those problems, it's a real nightmare to manage all the plugins, specially when you're updating the version (most plugins take time to update or some never update at all, in this case you have to look for alternatives or simply give up on that extra functionality)... not to tell that the 'professional' plugins are all paid and some are extremely expensive.

I'd recommend Max only for a professional 3D artist focused on games, because surely it has its benefits, but unless you dedicate your life to it you won't be willing to go through the process of setting it up, tracking all the plugins you use, it's just too much stuff for a relatively small benefit, for specialized professionals it's surely worth it because you'll end up with the best tool on the market, but it's just too much hassle if you have a life to live and specially if you have other things to do than creating art for games.

And last but not least, after working almost 10 years in the animation/archiviz industry I dropped out and of course I didn't have the money to buy none of these professional softwares mentioned so I began using Blender (I started using it non-seriously 9 years ago, so I had experience with it when I began using it for production and perhaps the learning curve was shorter for me because when I starter learning it I was working on 3D), and so far, it scratched all my itches, of course it lacks some stuff, but for some things it's even better than the almighty Max itself. The fact is, after you get used to the keyboard shortcuts and the general workflow, it's the fastest tool for modelling (fast != best) that I've tried and it has all the stuff to get the job done. I'm doing 2D stuff nowadays but last time I've used Blender seriously (a year ago or so) a 'standard' plugin called looptools were essential (for bridging functionality) but it weren't enabled by default.

LTS:

Code (csharp):

1. Have money:        Cinema4D
2. Are/wanna be Pro:  3Ds Max (+ tons of plugins)
3. Don't have Money:  Blender

You might try other 3D packages, however my pro-tip is: Take one that supports V-ray (and bakes to texture) if you want to have realistic architectural renderings. V-ray is simply quintessential for that purpose. It can't be beaten in terms or productivity and quality. Blender does have a V-ray exporter...it's not actually a plugin so if your scene is complex there's a delay after you click "render" because it has to export the whole shebang, but it's valid though. Of course having the bestest renderer is not that important for games...just a heads-up so you won't regret in the future. Most professional archiviz artists use V-ray, the unbiased renderers are somewhat popular also. I'd stay away from MentalRay nowadays, it used to be quite popular in the past and it's still used nowadays, but it's much slower than V-ray and the quality is noticeably worse (even on professional renderings (just take a look at the gallery on cgarchitect.com and you'll see that the mentalray renderings looks like CG more obviously than V-ray). Again: V-ray is only important for baking realistic textures on architectural stuff.

I hope this wall of text could help.

 

Hot damn this thread may be a couple of weeks old or so but it feels REALLY old.

I ended up going with a Sculptris / Blender workflow considering you cant use student licenses for commercial stuff. If a game goes well enough (low chance) I'll consider upgrading to more professional stuff.

To be quite honest though, I cant see myself sticking with Sculptris for very long. I'll probably use it for final touch ups but box modelling seems so much more flexible, if that makes sense.

Also I cant draw for crap so I cant imagine I'll be able to sculpt very well either (I'll work on improving my drawing though, concept art seems important).

Thanks for all the help and suggestions guys but I gotta make do with what I have at the moment. Maybe if I get a Mac in the future I'll look at Cheetah3D but I'm more than happy with the workflow I'm working on ATM.

Besides, once upon a time I thought Unity was the most complex thing in the world. Put my mind to it and I got the hang of it. Hopefully the same happens with 3D

 

I never really sculpted seriously in Blender, but last time I tried, that dynamic mesh stuff was 'decent', if that evolved I don't see why one would use Sculptris to date...

I forgot to mention that C4D has a version with decent sculpting also, which doesn't compare to the cheapo sculpting feature of Max, so, for organic modelling that's a huge plus for C4D because in Max you would need an external tool to do that.

Personally I really love 3Dcoat, of course something like ZBrush seems to be more powerful but I can't stand the workflow of ZBrush... The way 3Dcoat works is very different from any other sculpting package because it (can) work with voxels, meaning that you're actually 'sculpting' the stuff, like 'adding' matter to it, which is very different from ZBrush for example in which you're actually just manipulating vertexes. The downside is that 3Dcoat needs a damn powerful computer to run properly, like 16GB of ram to do anything decent and a high-end VGA, but once you have that it's simply fantastic.

For games, box modelling is quite useful also, however, it's mostly useful for low-poly stuff, for better graphics the technique used nowadays is creating a very high-poly model (sculpted in most cases) and mapping the details to a lower-poly model in bump/displacement(parallax for rt) maps. Afaik Blender does that fantastically with the multires modifier, and for that kind of stuff, for a character for example, you hardly have to bake more than a simple AO pass, so Blender is by far the best tool for the job considering the cost.

If Blender does the job for you, just stick with it... once you get used to the workflow and the keys you won't be able to find any package that provides more productivity.

Seriously, I'm yet to find a 'serious' caveat of using Blender for game development... it has all the features I could possibly want for:
-modelling
-basic sculpting
-uv mapping (incl. decent auto unwrapping)
-render baking (incl. vray and cycles)
-rigging
-animation
-basic texture painting
-basic fluid and smoke
-physics baking (bullet -> awesome) (incl. rigid and softbodies)
-multi resolution stuff

Personally, I would get 3Dcoat for more serious sculpting and stick with Blender for life... it's very capable of delivering professional quality stuff... the next step would be to hire a professional artist to do the stuff because of course one person simply can't produce professional contents in all areas efficiently. That's why there's a bunch of 'getalife' artists out there for us to hire hehehe

 

Because Blender sculpting is still not where Sculptris is. And it is unperformant. It goes down to a crawl already at poly counts where sculpting usually starts.

This counts unfortunately not just for sculpting. There's always a commercial tool that does the job better. This doesn't make Blender a bad solution really. Because, as you pointed out, you get your job done. But there is better stuff.

3D Coat is a good recommendation. It does sculpting. It does retopology. It does unwrapping. It does painting. You can do a whole character just in 3D Coat. You may nevertheless need something for polygon modeling. And 3D Coat is of course not free.

 

It seems the sculpting thing is progressing slowly then... yes, I agree that there are specialized tools that does the job better, however, Blender does a little bit of everything, and most of them in a decent way, it's a 'complete' package, it does even image tracking and composing, of course none of these features are comparable to specialized softwares for each of these areas, but we're talking about 5-figures here and years of training to use all the commercial packages which generally are simply a pain to line in a decent workflow.

Blender is a great package for the 'generalist', it provides all the tools and features, with different levels of usability and quality, but the good part is that once you get used to it it's quite staightforward to learn them all, for example, "G" grabs a vertex on 3d for modelling, on 2d for uv mapping, on animation timeline for keys and grabs stuff like nodes and other 'grabable' things, so, it has these 'universal' hotkeys and after you get used to them, it's quite straightforward.

About 3Dcoat, of course it's not 'free' but it's cheap enough and has decent upgrading policy and overall it's a 'poor-friendly' app, as opposite to Autodesk stuff that pretend to be pocket-friendly but in the end you have to break the bank. Even small fixes are being postponed to other major versions in order to pretty much force the user to upgrade, I gave up on 3ds Max after seeing the disappointing feature list for Max 2014, I mean, an 'usable viewport' is a new feature? That's stupid and a total disrespect with the consumer imho.

Autodesk products may be the best for their specific areas (although Mudbox is a pile of sheesh imho) but it's definitely not for the faint of heart. For companies it's okay, but for individuals you have to be pooping out money to be happy with their solutions.

Overall I agree with you. I just want to make clear though that it's possible to achieve professional quality using Blender.

 

I disagree , I use 3D coat since version 3 on my modest machine(8Gb), it works very well.
I use 3D very often, because I create all my organic model with
Also in Version 4 now is Live Clay, surface sculpting with dynamic tessellation.

I start with sculpting from a sphere and end up with a full textured model .The workflow is very smooth for me
I agree , Amazing what you get with 3D coat for the friendly price.

 

In my work the things i can't use blender for is sculpting and and texture painting, there's something about the zbrush brushes that "feel" to work better, but besides some advance stuff the sculpting in blender isn't bad, just not "there" yet

Texture painting is simply frustrating, i would rather paint in photoshop and not use 3d software at all than using blender to paint textures in models, we use mudbox and substance designer for all our needs

I've seen tons of discussions about 3d software before, when people start to argue which one is better it never ends well and goes anywhere, people like their software a number of different reasons and thats exactly why these softwares have their pros and cons, i tried many times over the years max and maya and i can relate why people would like maya but i really cannot understand max, but then again, it's not for me so my opinion on it doesn't really matter, i always recommend blender, modo and maya even though it's blender is usually my one stop shop, if anyone is interested in why i prefer blender (in most cases only) i'll happily share it with you

 

Well... in fact the VGA is more important than RAM and I bet you have a high-end one . When I had 8GB of RAM I had a mid-end VGA and 3Dcoat were somewhat slow. I mean, not unusable, but certainly it was not comfortable. In any case I highly recommend 3Dcoat.

Well... perhaps I'm too oldschool but I remember Maya being good back in the Alias days, after that it became a piece of crap for everything but animation, unless they somehow managed to fix it... anyway, the last version I've tried were 2008 if memory serves and it definitely wasn't a good experience. Max always was good for modelling, and specially the modifiers which allow you to modify stuff in a non-destructive and flexible way are incredibly useful... I remember when I had to make thousands of books once; I just made one with lots of modifiers and a bit of scripting so I could simply change their appearance easily... the proportion were imported from the cover image and after that I just needed to configure the width (i.e. number of pages), the overall size and some other small adjustments I made, like how much 'worn' out it were. That way I managed to make all the books in a couple of days, they ended up unique and very convincing.

Anyway, I have some facts here:

1- The commercial solutions are highly overrated by Blender(/free/cheapo) users. People forget these stuff are simply tools, not artists, the artist is the one between the chair and the computer, not the software inside of it.

2- It's perfectly possible to produce professional-quality assets for games using Blender.

3- The only people I know who are happy with Max (and I know a LOT of Max users) are the ones who didn't pay for it, either because their company provides it, they are students, or because they simply pirate it.

I think the Blender development focuses too much on superfluous things (like the GUI appearance) and I highly disagree with the development of Cycles, I mean, it's cool and stuff, but it's hardly usable for production, not because of the quality and features, but because it's too slow, even for the most powerful PC you can buy.

Unbiased (or kinda) renderers will surely have their space, but in the far future, nowadays they require a very powerful cluster to be usable in production. It's simply unpractical, unless people think rendering one archiviz perspective per week can be called 'production'; I call that 'déproduction' .

Blender lacks a decent 'internal' renderer. Vray is there, but if it had a decent alternative, I doubt anyone would need it, if instead of Cycles they'd made a decent GI for BI, or perhaps adopted/forked Yafaray and worked on it, it would be much more useful. Some unbiased renderers may be usable nowadays for small studios (*cough* Arnold *cough*) but that's a very minor part of the users, that's surely not even 1%.

Luckily, for most game assets Cycles should be fast enough.

I just think it's quite contradictory that Blender, which is focuses on hobbyists and small studios have a renderer that only large studios have the infrastructure to use in a productive way, and no, renderfarms are not the perfect solution.

Blender have the two extreme solutions in terms of 'internal' renderers, BI is too simple, can't deliver the quality, Cycles is too complex, can't deliver in time. Rendering is a matter of balance, it's about delivering some quality in some time. Vray has that, experienced users can fine-tune it perfectly to deliver the best possible quality in the required time, or vice-versa.

 

I really don't follow the different distros from blender but i believe there are people trying that already at http://graphicall.org

I understand where are you coming from, i haven't done much work for rendering purposes but in every situation i had the problems you are describing.

The times i used maya was indeed before autodesk, since then i've only used for very specific tools or importing/exporting, nowadays even the most recent iterations lack any relevant updates

 

if you find Blender is too hard you should try DAZ Studio first, it's free (for now), it's not a modelling tool though, but you will learn from it basic knowledge about 3D, like vertex, polygon, texture, material, lighting, frame, animation etc. and you can get nice 2D render images which you can turn them to sprites for 2D games. --> You go.

Then, you can switch to something higher like Blender (harder to learn but free) or 3dsMax (easier to learn and more powerful but fee) - 3dsMax is into game a lil more than Maya (but Max is a lil weaker) from my point of view, Maya is more into cool animation video clips. Since you're making game so i think 3dsMax is best suit for you. --> Then you run.

 

I'm not a professional modeler, just a hobbiest. However, I used 3DS Max for several years. I really liked the modelling tools for doing polygonal modelling. I tried switching to Blender and couldn't do it. Then, Blender updated their UI and made it much more friendly and I made the leap.

There are only a couple of things about Blender that I found difficult. The first was "unlearning" some of the things I learned in 3DS Max because Blender's toolset is different. The second was the user interface which was still different. Once I figured out how the viewports worked it was a piece of cake so the only real restrictions are at the user level (how well you can model, which for me isn't well but enough to get my way around).

I did play with Daz Studio but it seemed to me like much less of a tool and more of a way for Daz to sell more stuff so I didn't find it terribly useful. I got much more use out of looking at models on sites like Blendswap to see how they were constructed. In that regard, Blender also makes retopo pretty easy... I like to sculpt out some shapes in Blender or Sculptris just for fun, then retopologize them in Blender itself. The grease pencil works well for drawing some basic topo lines and then the snap feature allows you to start creating new geometry and "snap" it to the surface of your sculpt so you can retain shape and get the exact topology you want.

 

I seems to me do you not know DAZ content Creator Tools ?

DAZ Studio is not only a Dressup Doll Toy.
It is under the Hood also a professional Tool for 3D creator

It is Pity because lack of dokumentation , the prejudices and unawareness do not show how powerfull DAZ Studio actually is.

I love to rigg, since my workflow changed to DAZ Studio.

 

I got sucked in by Daz with it's extremely pretty models and promise of FREE software and productivity. However, when I dug in and found out the truth, I very disappointingly left without even bothering to download the program.

This FREE software really comes at a COST, as the license REQUIRED to use anything made with DAZ in a commercial project, even if you opt for the INDIE license (less than $100,000.00 income per year) they want $500.00.

Five Hundred Dollars is not very INDIE friendly as far as I am concerned...

Why should I bother even playing around with it if I can't USE any of it?

Which is quite disappointing to me being an artist that is trying to learn how to develop a game with NO experience in 3D (or C++ etc. programming) at all.

Like the OP, I will just have to suffer through trying to make the best of learning Blender for now. I can't see dropping money into programs like DAZ unless you are already EARNING money off of your works.

That's just MY opinion though.


Oh, but the thought of opening Blender again is making me want to go hide under the bed...

 

Don_Panic you are the best example what I mean with

Maybe you should inform you better before you say false facts The licence is only if you want to use a orginal DAZ MODEL


BUT I write about the Content Creator Tools.
A professionell Toolset for serious 3D Designer The CCT are included with the free pro Version.

I mean Rigging, weightpainting, Face/surface Grouping, UV Atlas, Texturbaking morphing and animation .... your own Mesh

 

I spent awhile playing with the tools. I was able to import my own mesh and that's about it. I really couldn't figure out how to do anything else. There was a "content" pane on the left with a giant context sensitive tooltip that kept telling me to select items from the left... however it was always empty. Nothing, no content. At a tertiary glance it seemed to me that my options were to import my own ready made content or buy some from the Daz store. I could not figure out how to do more than create primitives in the editor.

I'm sure the toolset works fine for some people, but the interface is so dumbed down that the feature just get lost. I may give it another chance but it's on the backburner for awhile as I can be far more productive with Blender.

 

What I say lack of dokumentation is a problem,but if you understand how it works it is super easy and also logical.

if I could better english, I would write a book, how easy it is rigging with DAZ Studio.
included with a bone facial rigging guide too .

 

Go for it. I tried to load the interactive tutorials and the application errored about missing files.

 

I
I have never try this,because I have no interest to an interactive tutorial that shows how to dress a DAZ model
Sorry, but the CCT do not have interactive tutorials.

 

Dustin the point is Pjde said Blender too is hard for him to start with, so I suggest an easier tool like DazStudio which is free and he can learn the basic from it, like what are vertex, polygon, uv, texture, material, how camera, animations work etc. then with the basic knowledge he gains he can continue his long strip into 3d world with learning Blender or 3ds Max. So Dustin no matter how wonderful you find Blender is it has nothing to do with this (I myself agree with you Blender is an amazing tool it even has sculpting features which the expensive 3ds Max doesn't offer)

 

Rinoa, I would recommend a simpler polygonal modelling tool like Wings 3D.

 

Blender

 

http://Wings3d.com

No animation support, but if you want to get going on the basics like environment etc, for free, then you can't really go wrong.

Either that or jump to the $800. Before you do that though, you might want to get a Mac and Cheetah3d

 

Hexagon has a Bridge to DAZ studio, so you can rig and animate your Hex mesh too.

 

95% of your success is not going to depend on software - but your knowledge/skill as an artist. The 3d program is a tool at the end of the day. It's like asking which brand of shovel is best suited for digging a ditch. Things like sculpting, retopo, UV layout, rigging, painting textures, and animation are all transferable skills between programs.

Blender is a free and works well.

 

I have heard of zbrush but it is not cheap and neither are the assets for painting your own custom textures to the models, and applying joints but other than that it can be everything your looking for and more.