Advice on 3D Modelling Software
 

I'm looking for a program to make 3d models of some of my artwork, and then also to make models of exhibition spaces to integrate art work into.

Preferably the program should also allow for the creation of small "videos" in and around the space or model created.

I'm a fast learner but would prefer something relatively straightforward, due to my lack of time for something fiddly that will take me months to learn to work with.

Anyone have some good recommendations?

I have looked at Google Sketch Up and don't yet know if it's going to do what I want.

I'd like to know other, better options.

Thanks for any help :thumbsup:

Look into finding demos of Blender, Rhino, and Bryce. There are 'heavier' packages also, but those are good starts. Rhino is strictly a modeling environment, but it has many sister components to do rendering and movies. Bryce is a good render and has some simple modeling capabilities, but is a really easy rendering/movie environment. Blender is free and I haven't used it, but a lot of people really like it.

Milkshape is a small $20 shareware and it's a nice low poly modeler. it exports into alot of file types for work in other apps.
chUmbaLum sOft

my choice in this would depend alot on what types of shapes I wanted to make and what materials they were made of. how it's textured, how sophisticated the rendering...?

I want to be able to make rounded complex shapes, texture I can live without, rendering I'd like to be relatively high quality.

Thanks for the advice so far!

There's a lighting and staging design program I use called Wysiwyg that would make creating your studio spaces and adding video elements very easy. It also renders quite nicely.

It may be a bit crude for creating your organic rounded shapes but it does import from Sketchup.

wysiwyg

I use 3d studio max. This will give you the overall best quality that I know of. Maya is similar and zbrush and mudbox are really nice but strictly modeling. 3dsmax will give you everything.

I believe you can do the art spaces in Punch

Punch! Software

in that case I'd look into Softimage XSI, Maya, maybe Rino...if you can get your head around Mental Ray, it's suposed to be a great renderer. it can (I think) generate geomitry using texture images as a kick off point. I don't know the technical language any more. all the 3D apps I've played with are pritty huge. tons of ways of doing things.

If you don't want to pirate 3D software, or pay serious cash, I can recommend Blender, it's a bit of a steep learning curve as the UI has it's own philosophy, but once you've learned it you can do pretty much everything you requested to do, everything from modeling to animating.
If you want to see what this open source program can do I recommend googling for Elephants Dream which is an open source movie made in blender and other open source software.

If you need a raytracer for Blender, Yafray is a really good one that is also free.