piano-sam on 21/7/2007 at 20:58
I don't know for sure about 3DS4, but 3DS5 is still very much a game design industry standard. The later versions [6 - 8] add mostly extraneous things, redo the UI, or add something that was previously included in another program. It is a little dubious on Autodesk's part, in my opinion and more than a few others, but they have a unique monopoly not necessarily in a legal sense but definitely in a practical sense. Before you go and get 3DS though, you may want to investigate Milkshape. Actually, somewhere here could probably tell the word on Milkshape for Thief. Milkshape is an appreciable modeling studio with semi-open source so there are very many third party add ons. Of course if you wish to stand by the opinion that "homemade" is bad, then you are certainly entitled to. It just may cost you extra, an example of the gap: last time I checked Milkshape was 20USD. Max on the other hand, can be thousands, unless you get an educational version, in which case it's only hundreds, but you still need to upgrade your license to the thousands dollar variety if you ever want to do it professionally. Personally, it's my opinion that homemade is better and when I need a new piece of software the first place I check is a place like sourceforge.
Nameless Voice on 22/7/2007 at 21:41
3D Studio Max 5.0 is perfectly acceptable for making Thief models.
The later versions have improved UV mapping tools and a few other features, but bear in mind that LGS probably made the original models in 3D Studio Max 4 or 5 (I'm not sure which was current back then, probably 4.)
Schwaa2 on 23/7/2007 at 01:42
I've used Max 4 and 5 for all my stuff. And Shadowspawn's/NV's conversion programs.
