OK, I don’t want this to be a vs. thread, I’m just interested in hearing if anyone has used the other open source 3d apps(aside from Blender of course :)).
The 3 main ones I know of are:
Are there any I haven’t listed?
I just want a discussion on their strengths and weaknesse; how they may do some things similar or not, if they’re better in any areas or not.
Thanks
LC
there’s wings - great modeller - but hard to learn
OH that’s true. Forgot about that one 
Actually, I meant full featured…
You can only model in Wings right?
So it doesn’t really count for the purposes of this discussion…
(Full featured as in; modeling, animating, lighting, texturing, etc…)
You can only model in Wings right?
oh, well I guess so, never really took the time to figure out everything,
ahh, Blender is so great…
all the above are cheeze filled…
Blender has many many more tools… the others are very early in development.
Wings 3d is verry cool, because you can add dynamic hotkeys…
press the insert button while you hover over the menu item you want to bind the hotkey to. and then press your desired hotkey combination!
I have mine programed exactly like blender 
wings has a couple of neat tools as well…but like you guys said… it is not an animator…
you might want to add anim8tor to your list, I think that application went freeware…
ppmodeler just got some basic animation stufff too
enjoy!
K3d is good I hear, but I know that none of them could ever come close to blender’s quality, I know.
Blender is the only one i know that has ever made professional looking art. It’s not biased it’s the truth, but I will say that k3d does come far. kinda reminds me of a young blender, but it’s interface is just so limiting after working with blender. You just kinda wish everything was like blender after working with blender.
Also almost nothing beats wings3d’s modeling. It just makes it so fun.
Also k3d doesn’t even have an option for split views! It’s ALWAYS perspective!!:eek:
Which is bad, right?
You just kinda wish everything was like blender after working with blender.
exactally!!!
Major minus, but not totally impossible to work with.
these are all great apps and i know i couldnt code anything near as good as these, but hey, blender is the best 3D software package i have used, i nevefr want to use another interface, its sooooo simple once you get the basics…and its awesome just to mess around with nodes and compisotors and animations…and…and its really easy, no fancy names, no menus that expand to 10000000 pixels long, it just works 
there’s wings - great modeller - but hard to learn
er… respectfully, but I must disagree…Tho I know that most Blender users think of this with a lot of software for the so different UIs.I have noted this step everytime a company or own home project need, required me moving to another 3d or 2d package…But every jump is easier, and easier…Yet tho, imo, not all UIs are fast. Blender is one of the fast ones, imo.Not the only one, though.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/73017587@N00/
That is really old stuff of mine(and wings now is much complete than it was…)…The very first photo in that album of mine is labeled as my first ever done wings 3d model…it was my first 30 mins with Wings, trying to find where the commands and modelling tools were, as I just came from Metasequoia LE…With which I already had done several human characters…and objects… A certain feature I guess was inspired by a sugestion I made, hehe…Which was already in Metasequoia…well, maybe a pair fo features.
I’ve made this point before; while is handy, and rocking to have such a jack of all trades amazing tool like Blender, some of us like to have -also- the option of specialized tools(in my case, Zbrush, Ultimate Unwrap, Deep Paint3d, Wings). I often used to use Hamapatch for curve modelling…For this same reason I moved from IE to FireFox. I dont mind if is open source or comercial,(well, I mind, some years ago my pocket got trembling, but i dont regret it…the free softwares werent as evolved as they’r today.Years since my last purchase, and I doubt I’ll do any more) if it is really good.
I personally use Ultimate Unwrap for Uv mapping, and Wings 3d for modelling. While I animate in Max or Blender…
But perfectly could model in Blender (have modeled is such load of packages already)
There are certain modelling possibilities not present in Blender which are in Wings, and… in Wings, besides specializes “only” in modelling, hasn’t got many modelling tools that are present in Blender. No that I need them, but usually an extra feature, is extra power–> extra speed. But reason why I even use Wings in companies is …speed of workflow. And yep, as someone said, is fun, actually.
I am using Blender 2.43 rc1 (and must say it rocks even more than I expected) for our next game, to animate and render my characters…and yup, such a jewell. (thanks all developers once again)
[ Oh, btw, has in the 2.43 rc1 the viewport rotation improved?..I am noticing to be more confortable to handle (counting on my viced ways) than it was before… ]
wow, i just tried wings3d for the first time for about 20 minutes or so and I have to say that its inclusion of N-gons is just fabulous. Almost brings tears to my eyes.
Why doesn’t blender have N-gons again?
OK, I don't want this to be a vs. thread, ... I just want a discussion on their strengths and weaknesse; how they may do some things similar or not, if they're better in any areas or not.
Sounds like a vs thread to me…
life is dictated by wish-lists
looks like a useful thread
Wish-list threads are already in existence. Go to them. You can almost never have a rational discussion of strengths and weaknesses on this board. 
if you don’t like it don’t read it =)
lol
the thread is here. deal with it:o
I have been wondering about that as well…
Something to do with recoding Blender’s core or something.
the thread is here. deal with it:o
I’m not a mod but I’m sure one will be along soon enough to deal with it
However, my previous comment was not so much to condemn the thread as to point out the contradiction in LC’s opening remarks. Any thread which asks for comparisons of strengths and weaknesses is a versus thread whether the original poster wishes otherwise or not. The very moment one person says something like “SoftwareFoo handles gringlebinding better than Blender” someone will likely respond (respectfully or not) with a reason why the other poster was completely wrong. And it degrades from there on - it has to, it’s human nature to defend one’s turf.
It further seems that any thread which asks for comparisons of strengths and weaknesses of 3D software will also become a “we want n-gons” thread and we need more of those like I need more hair in my nostrils 
Fine. Close it. Better yet, delete it.
LOL!!! Those N’gons are little buggers aren’t they? 
blender needs Ngons…my arse lol…
it would be nice to have them (i would really like to have them in blender), but you can model perfectly fine with out them. end of conversation.