Newbie Modeling 101 - Update in First Post!

[TheGlove]

or save the cob in the same geo/peo directory w/ the textures

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theory

[fructose]

yeah, are you saving all the meshes in the same directory? That's how I do it until I save the .pdo.

[TheGlove]

the theory above works ?? good to know...

[paladin]

Greetings, I was hoping to get a little more info regarding programs for designing models. It seems most of the links in this section are old, and no longer work. My question is: what is the least expensive program, yet easy to use for designing models. It seems most programs I have found online cost several hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. If it is that much, I'll keep trying the old fashion way, cut parts out, and glue them until I get what I want.
Any suggestions?

[yessmasster]

Blender is free 3d modelling program, but i never was able to learn to use it, therefore i use 3-day trail of 3d studio max whenever i want to do something (and i do ever less frequently)

[shiftdel]

paladin said:

Greetings, I was hoping to get a little more info regarding programs for designing models. It seems most of the links in this section are old, and no longer work. My question is: what is the least expensive program, yet easy to use for designing models. It seems most programs I have found online cost several hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. If it is that much, I'll keep trying the old fashion way, cut parts out, and glue them until I get what I want.
Any suggestions?

Metasequoia is free and easy to learn, but saves only in its own format (mqo), which is, however, compatible with Pepakura.

You can download it here www.metaseq.net/english/index.html

[paladin]

Thanks for the help. I remember trying Blender, but it seemed very confusing to me. I have downloaded Metasequoia, and it seems to be much better. Another question: Is it better to clean up a model in Metasequoia, then import to Pepakura, or take the model over to Pepakura, then clean it up? I seem to be having a hard time getting Pepakura to work how I want. Trying to delete, or merge edges where it split them apart, and I don't want them, or to creat an edge where there is none.
Thanks again all.

[conand81]

You definitely want to use Metasequoia to clean up your models. I'd say that you only want to work with already 100% completed models in Pepakura, even if Pepakura have tools for working with the model; those tools are very much inadequate and will only give you an headache before you've accomplished your goal.

Also, if you're not already doing it, try the shareware version of Metasequoia. You'll get some more neat functions like UV-editing, and it has no trial-period or such, really handy stuff. But as shiftdel said, it only saves models in it's own format... but shiftdel had also already concluded that this is not a bad thing.

Oh, here's a little thought I just had:
One thing with the really "free" version that differs from the shareware-version is that you can actually save your models in other formats than its own .mqo format, albeit nothing really useful, besides the .cob format perhaps... but you could use the shareware and free versions to work around the shareware-limitations. Unless there's a restriction of some sort so that the free version can't open shareware-created files.

[keeleybest]

Thank for link