First Model - Mushroom!

[TheBadger]

Sculptris is a way to get people to by z-brush.
Free practice of the fundamentals of z.

There are several threads in open all about free modelers. I don't remember which titles. I think at least one of them was titled free model or free 3d software. There are some reviews there, but google will be faster.

I did not use sculptress for a long time, and forgot about all of its limitations. But without a modeler, a sculpting program is not very useful anyway, does not mater which one. zBrush seems to be the least limited, and Mud was built with having maya in mind.

Personally i think based on what you have written it sounds like you should stop with the sculpting and start with a modeler.

Wings would be one. Of course you know of blender. but there are other basic modeling packages too. http://blog.123dapp.com/2015/09/123d-design-1-7-a-really-solid-release this may be ok for you? To model and map only, you don't need a big package.

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/25-free-3d-modelling-applications-you-should-not-miss/
http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/best-free-3d-software-1131630

Basic box modeling is where you should start.

[AP]

I agree, there does seem to be a persuasion to have ZBrush with Sculptris in mind. Zbrush is neat but for a market based on real professional work and studio use.

It has been a while last i looked at 123D Design. Worth investigating again. It looks like it might work for simple organic shapes.

Wings i have not looked into for a very long time.

TopMod3d looks to be the most easy to understand judging by it's UI but there are plenty of others on that list. However, some of the UI's look old and messy, CAD modeling could get complicated though.

[Matt]

This is another reason I want a Position Function ! Cause then this wouldn't be a issue and I could make a TGO of a positioned patch of single objects based on a simple Constant Vector that is the XYZ of the patch, and vary the position of each based on that vector.

Ah, now I understand! You want a position function for objects. In the other threads I thought you wanted to position shaders.

What about using a population and moving the instances around by hand?

Matt

[WAS]

This is another reason I want a Position Function ! Cause then this wouldn't be a issue and I could make a TGO of a positioned patch of single objects based on a simple Constant Vector that is the XYZ of the patch, and vary the position of each based on that vector.

Ah, now I understand! You want a position function for objects. In the other threads I thought you wanted to position shaders.

What about using a population and moving the instances around by hand?

Matt

The only instance I wanted position on shaders is shaders with positions (crater shader, SSS, etc).

I can't seem to do much by hand in Terragen, even on this computer with 8GB RAM, a few populations become too much and the program will either crash or become extremely slow. I'm not sure if this is exactly RAM or the way the Xeon X5450 is using TG since it is a Server processor and missing ExecutionSet128 or w/e that makes it incompatible with Virtual Machines Virtualization (even though this CPU has virtualization). Basically a lot of programs that have multi-threading don't recognize my CPU as compatible. For example, I can't even upgrade to Windows 8, or 10 with my quad 3.0ghz CPU comparative to a i7. -__-

Most all I do in TG is procedural because of these issues and crashes. But in the long run these simple additions in the future to positional-able shaders and objects would make it pretty dynamic in settings worlds up without having to traverse their terrain as much.

[Oshyan]

Strange, the virtualization features shouldn't have an effect on TG's performance. What's your graphics card/chipset? That's going to have the biggest effect on performance in the 3D Preview, especially with populations and complex objects (it's all OpenGL).

- Oshyan

[WAS]

Graphics card is R7 Series HD7770 OC Edition. And chipset is P45 running a Xeon X5450 Quad Core at 3.0Ghz. Not to much.

[Oshyan]

I'm not directly familiar with that card, so I'm not sure how it "should" be performing. But large populations can certainly be demanding on OGL performance. Without a modern card it will be slow, and it may crash if the OGL memory use gets too high for your available VRAM.

- Oshyan

[inkydigit]

Great stuff WASasquatch!
Gonna try to make me some mushies too!
BTW is your avatar Jethro Tull?

Cheers
J