Best content creation program for a rank novice.

Any advice on which program would be the easiest to get a handle on.......mainly for creating buildings....would like to try and put something back.........bear in mind,when suggesting a program,it will be my first day at school.

I would say Blender. You can get it at Blender.org and there are tutorials here:

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?96642-New-Blender-Tutorials-for-v2-65-and-up

Kind of a little "gotcha" that I want to give you a head's up about: When you create a texture, be sure to click the Mapping arrow and select "UV Mapping" instead of the default, "Generated." You'll see what I mean if you get the program and do some tutorials. Blender is actually pretty easy and fun for buildings, once you grasp the basics, but those basics take a bit of learning and work to get down pat.

hotgrove said:

Any advice on which program would be the easiest to get a handle on.......mainly for creating buildings....would like to try and put something back.........bear in mind,when suggesting a program,it will be my first day at school.

Click to expand...

There are trade offs, at the creating simple box houses and simple scenery assets level any of the 3D programs floating around will do. I assume you're more interested in the free software. What you need are good tutorials and for GMAX I think tafweb's bank is favoured for sketchup have a look on the sketchup threads, for Blender 2.49b a detailed one on creating a simple house is here http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Trainz/Tutorial_for_Blender#Newcomers_start_here however there is a movement to Blender 2.65 currently which has a different interface and although there are some tutorials floating around in the air nothing concrete has been done. Other than a few additions have been made to the 2.49b tutorial.

Beyond that you'll find that sketchup creates models with far higher poly counts and number of textures than the other software which has performance implications. GMAX is more than 10 years old and a number of creators have moved onto Blender some remain with GMAX. Have a read of Paul Hobbs first Blender tutorial for his views. His GMAX tutorial is one of the best GMAX tutorials by the way. Pev has created software that gives GMAX some of the newer capabilities of the other software by the way.

Whichever you choose will require a substantial investment in time to create models and there is a steep learning curve which is why the tutorials are so important. Because of the investment in time I'd suggest Blender, any knowledge gained creating houses can be built on to create animated assets or rolling stock. It supports normal mapping and all the other high end things that people use to create high end assets even if you don't use them day one.

Cheerio John

RRSignal said:

I would say Blender. You can get it at Blender.org and there are tutorials here:

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?96642-New-Blender-Tutorials-for-v2-65-and-up

Kind of a little "gotcha" that I want to give you a head's up about: When you create a texture, be sure to click the Mapping arrow and select "UV Mapping" instead of the default, "Generated." You'll see what I mean if you get the program and do some tutorials. Blender is actually pretty easy and fun for buildings, once you grasp the basics, but those basics take a bit of learning and work to get down pat.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately the 2.65 tutorials are still works in progress.

Cheerio John

I would also suggest Blender. There are plenty of sites with video tutorials. I found that the video tutorials are the best way to learn this program. It actually starts to get enjoyable once you know what you are doing.

Thanks for the information......I think I will have a go at Blender and see how it goes.........will windows 8 be ok with the download ?.........reason I ask is because i'm having so much trouble with it......for instance........I can no longer post screenshots.....however, that's a problem for another day.

In theory it should work but you're probably on the bleeding edge which is never quite the best place to be.

Cheerio John