What is the best 3d modeling program that is free (Or low cost)

#1 Blender

#2 milkshape 3d

#3 Blender - It does need some "getting used to" since the interface does not conform to "Windows" standards, but it's really powerful and you have access to the source (so writing custom modules is not that hard). And the community can be pretty helpful when you're stuck.

#4 Blenders the best, but you'll still need milkshape if you want to export to torque

#5 What kind of file do you export it as to move it from Milkshape to torque?

#6 I just got the free version of trueSpace 3.2, I love it, never got the hang of Blender myself...

#7 I like to make milkshakes in the blender.

#8 You export the file to a .dts to get it from milkshape to torque. Truspace is another good one if blenders to tricky.. I think they are offering v4.2 for 90 bucks (thats dirt cheap for a modeling program). Either way you will still need milkshape to export to torque

hope that helps

#9 @Neil:
HAHAHA!!! I love it!! Blender, Milkshake!! HAHAHA!!

There is a blender manual v2.0 online at:
http://download.blender.org/documentation/NaN_docs/

It's new and I can't find many places that point to it. It should help a little with the Blender UI hurdles. Unfortunately there still seems to be no way to use Blender for Torque... but people are working on it.

Blender have used the open-source model in a very intelligent way and I suspect we will find more Blender resources as time goes on.

#10 I just tried Blender, and it appears that my GeForce FX 5600 doesn't like it. It starts up and . . . just sits there. When I move the mouse cursor around, I start seeing buttons and menu items appear. I guess it's the OpenGL drivers :-(.

BTW, just for the halibut, I tried the version of Mesa from the Milkshape site. The screen came up, but the menu bar didn't appear.

#11 Weird, doubt its a video card problem though

#12 I was having the same problems (but with a different NVidea card). I worked around it by running in a window, see if that works.

i eventually fixed the problem by updating my drivers to the lated build and also re-flashing my video card, though i get the same problem every now and again for reasons i cannot tell.

#13 I figured out the problem: I was running with 4x antialiasing "on". When I set antialiasing to "application controlled", Blender worked fine!

#14 Thanx for the help