So I just really love doing Photoshop related things as a hobby. It gives me something to do and whenever I'm done it gives me a small sense of accomplishment like most hobbies would. So now I want to get into 3D modeling and so I want to conjure the forces of SENs resident 3D modelers for sum halp.

A long time ago when I used to own a non legit 3DSMax I got to the point where I could make low poly guns. Well really something like pistols and they were pretty bad so I knew a little bit less than the basics. I never learned how Texturing works so whenever I tried to apply a texture the whole object was on thing. Like I'd make a Chrome gun or an entire gun made out of wood . I forgot why but I stopped. Probably because I had blue screen of death and had to reinstall windows and lost everything.

[Current day]

So here I am with Blender (15 mbs? lolwut?) reading some wiki books ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro ) and have un legit Cinema 4D on it's way to me for future use if I get there.

So here is what I want from SEN:
-Tips
-Declaration of your ability to model
-Posting your works
-posting your 'story' (about modeling)
-Links to communities that are noob friendly
-Links to tuts
-Links to resources
-Telling us how long it took to get to where you are now (your skill level)
-Opinions on software
-Plugin suggestions for blender (using default renderer so yea...)
-Answering one (or all :3) of the following for Blender
--What the shit is up with Blenders camera for rendering? I remember in 3Dsmax wherever you were looking was the 'camera' for easy rendering. I dislike having the default camera having to be manually moved all the time as the model your are working on gets bigger or moves away from the center. Can you change this or some sort of plugin that changes this?
--I remember in 3DSmax you could change the default rendering setting to make the renderer make things in 'clay mode' or whatever you would call it. Is it possible to rig the renderer to do that too? The default rendering um... settings look pretty ugly. I dislike the blue background and this ... ugly shade of grey. Plugins lul? It's just a vanity thing and wouldn't kill me to not be able to have things rendered in clay but it does give it a better look (and makes me feel like a sculpter :3)


Pic is what the wiki book taught me so far. By the time I'm done with this book this guy is going to look like FFXIII/Avatar cat it's still crap ;_;, most likely.

tl;dr Tell me what you would tell your uninformed self back in the day if you could time travel

I hate 3d modelling -- with a passion. I've used anim8or, 3dsmax, blender, wings3d, gile[s], and google sketchup. Anim8or was a great starting point for me, but now I prefer google sketchup since I have been modelling buildings lately.

If you need to model buildings, cities, or interior, sketchup is the way to go. It has a built in tutorial, the website has advanced tutorials and videos, and it has ruby plugins.

For blender renderers, there's this lot: http://www.blendernation.com/blender-rendering-engine-options/ I personally prefer YAFRAY (or YAFARAY, w/e) and Indigo. Both are very nice.

Lots of tutes for blender on google, also check out blenderartists.org, it's got a great community and can help you a lot.

As for changing the default blue background, try http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=67575 Changing the default grey isn't possible AFAIK for Object mode, but Edit mode is changeable via “Go in Blender preferences > Themes > 3D view and play with aaaall settings. Face transp and Face selected change how polygons look like.”
You can make your renders look like clay if you give the model a clay texture there's a bunch of texture settings here: http://www.blender-materials.org/ and http://matrep.parastudios.de/ (search for clay, the site's being redone but there's a few clay textures there)

For camera, it doesn't seem to be a feature in 2.49, but in 2.5 you can do this http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=109041 . Try these for 2.49: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=14031 http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=43418

Build your own 3D software! I used open office, but it sucks.