How are objects (like trees and houses) created?

[jbest]

Is there like a button which says "save as OBJ?" I'm terrible at Blender, just to let you know.

[airflamesred]

I would imagine file>save as>will give you a number of options including .obj. 1 cube, six quads, 8 verts and 12 lines.

[jbest]

Yes, got that.

[Henry Blewer]

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=7567.0

Search can be your best friend.

[rcallicotte]

Blender 2.5x is one of the best out there right now.  I like it.  And the community is so full of sharing you can find all sorts of objects for free and hundreds of free tutorials.  Blender Cookie is a great place for tutorials as is Blender Guru.

[jbest]

Yeah, I've been working with Blender recently. It's a program with vast abilites, I can see that.

[Andrew March]

All of the major 3D Apps have thier pro's and con's


I have been a Lightwaver for over ten years and over the years I have easily got back the money I spent in earnings and enjoyment.

If you're serious about 3D modelling and rendering then the best thing you can do is download trial versions, all of the major apps have trial versions, most of which are limit free.

Find out which has the UI that you feel most comfortable with and the toolset/workflow that best suits your style of work, when you find out which one you like, save your pennies. Don't just settle on a programme because it's cheap or free, you'll regret it and don't get a pirated copy, at best you'll have a semi functioning version without support and at worst....well you can figure the rest out.

[jbest]

I've been looking at tutorials of Blender ... gosh, I've already got the idea of how to use it.

I've heard Lightwave costs almost 900 dollars Not sure I could afford it.

Maybe I can see what else is out there but for now I'm with Blender.

[airflamesred]

As Andrew rightly points out it's the UI/workflow/ toolset that are the most important things to look at. That can range both ways from not enough tools to too many.
Best of luck with Blender.

[Andrew March]

I've heard Lightwave costs almost 900 dollars Not sure I could afford it.

Yep and 3D Studio Max costs $3,495.00 and Maya costs $3,495.00 as well, so Lightwave doesn't seem like such a bad deal when you consider the production list that it has been used on.

I'm not going to tell you which software is best, because it's what's best for me not you, what I am going to say again is that you pay for what you get and if you're sodtware is free you may get a nice community that produces some nice stuff but you won't get the professional support or expansion that you get with a pro package and you might not get taken as seriously.

If you just want to be a hobbyist then Blender is fine, and a couple of artists have produced some outstanding pieces that have led to them getting great jobs but they aren't using Blender now.

[Mahnmut]

A very nice and free plant creation software is ngplant.

http://ngplant.sourceforge.net/

Thats the one I made my alien plants with.
It saves to obj, though I import the objs once into blender, smoothen them a bit and export again.
Works fine.
If there are any questions regarding NGplant, supernovae or anything, just PM me.
Best regards,
Jan

[jbest]

Yeah I got Ngplant, it's a pretty cool program. There's a tutorial on how to create trees for Blender, I could possibly use that to make leaves and stuff. I'm not good at using ngplant, if I need help I'll ask you Mahnmut