Fortunately I managed to solve my immediate problems and produced this small work. It’s pretty basic, and yes I do know there are lots of flaws, but I managed to get my textures to tile properly and actually show the right way round.
Haha…does that mean Blender is starting to grow on you?
I’ve been using Blender for nearly a year, and I’m a bit ashamed at how little I have achieved in that time despite spending quite a lot of my free time on it. I teach courses in the Computer Science area, programming mostly, and have a lot of experience with Photoshop as an amateur photographer (and a bit of semi-pro microstock photography), so I’m very interested in exploring why Blender is so hard to learn.
Basicly because is sort of different to other softwares, specially windows ones, and also, because something sometimes overlooked, is a complex, full blown general 3D package, and lately it is aiming higher in scope than some commercial highend tools: Hair, certain simulation, etc, are even external companies plugins for other packages (which they don’t code, despite having a crazily enormous and paid dev team. ) In that perspective, absolutely no tool is easy. You’re learning the equivalent to what was in my olde times learning all Max corners, plus shag hair, simcloth, havoc, Final Render, Brazil, etc plugins… each one could be considered a full software alone… (unfortunately, often having also its own UI philosophy…)
That is…imho, Photoshop has not the complexity to do main tasks that you find to do any medium complexity 3D project. But of course, also the UI is more different to others than the diferences you find among many win apps… (speaking bout win platform now)
Yet tho, I found hard the first time, back in 1.x versions time, when c-key was around. But after working in 3D in jobs, getting back to try blender again, was as easy as not really needing to touch the doc… (2.28 version)
Edit: If is your case, my very first year in 3D (was not blender nor max (max hadn’t born)…was Trusepace 1 and Organica (edit: probably was 3d Studio 3 for MSDOS), I think. ) was extremely hard. I would never ever believe I’d get to work in any place for doing 3D. I saw it as an slow (probaly was at the times) tedious and frustrating activity compared to just drawing…
If not your case, and you’ve been doing 3D 12 years, excuse me… 
ooops wrong thread
Ehm. I did 50% (with Max) of characters of a highend mobile game that got published worldwide, I even rigged all of them (also the ones done by other person) .Also did all the hi res models for the intros and VR backgrounds. Not counting handling all sort of cloth, hair plugins, for the main characters for intro movies in other game(pc) also distributed world wide. When say so, nothing super important, were serie B games… But hey.
It had crashes, but crashes are not as random as ppl thing. The tool has many unstable points, but once you know them, you just learn to avoid them: to me the speed of many procedures well does worth that thing…
The memory use, yep, crazy. Specially noted in high poly counts. Of course, what studios do is just have more powerful hardware (when there’s money,which is in games companies, not an issue.)
But I made too many tests to know that Blender can eat heaps more polies than Max with same hardware.
With all those drawbacks, I still love the tool, hehe. 
Been also at two other more small game companies, and was allways Max the tool used.(many clever bosses let me tho model with whatever I prefer if exports well.)
Today I like more Blender, but I really like Max’s power, and specially, Max character studio for fast rigging, and for animation…
I was approaching that post from a humorous angle. I’m sure Max is a great program, it’s used in a LOT of game studios! I have heard that it does have a habit of bailing out on you unexpectedly.
The main thing about Max is the interface. I’m sure I’ll learn it given a chance (or with a few decent tuts!). But its one of the few programs that I opened up and literally had no idea on where to start. I taught myself Blender, Maya and Photoshop, but on each of those occasions, I could get something done on opening the app. Not Max.
I’m not bashing Max (I intend to learn it soon, as I too want to work in the game industry) but thats just my first impression.
EDIT: Would the Max users here recommend using G-Max to learn Max, or is it too antequated compared to the current product?
I was approaching that post from a humorous angle. I’m sure Max is a great program, it’s used in a LOT of game studios! I have heard that it does have a habit of bailing out on you unexpectedly.
Oh, don’t worry. I hear around so much critics to the software that I don’t get surprised anymore… Even better if it was only a bit of joking…
Yet tho, I admit one of the main reasons I always convince bosses to model in wings or whatever is I neither like the UI for modeling. Just for everything else, yep, not a very fast UI, but one gets used.
Don’t worry, despite the fact is extremely different to Blender, the UI is one of the easy ones. It’s tho not surely the most functional/fast.
Still, you can do it fast throu key shortcuts, configurable, and configuring your custom context-related pop up menus where you click in viewport.
Anyway, Maya is a good route too. Maybe is a very good idea to play with both (even if concentrate in the one you think is gonna be demanded more in the future, learn deeply one of both, and have some handling of the other’s UI would put you in a position where whenever you’re asked to use th eother, you just transfer knowledge. To me, is way easier to transfer between Max-maya, than from Max-XSI or Max -Lightwave.): if you plan to get into that world, sooner or later you end up working in a place where they focus in one or the other package.
As I said the other day, if you totally want to focus in animation, I’d go maya. If wanna do a bit of animation but more focused in other profiles, I’d go Max and as I say, have some handling of Maya.
I am pretty uncertain on what’s gonna happen with those two, and stablished base in game companies…
The main thing about Max is the interface. I’m sure I’ll learn it given a chance (or with a few decent tuts!).
There’s good luck there, while there are a lot of old and crappy ones, there are also some very brilliant.It’s been many years in the market…
But its one of the few programs that I opened up and literally had no idea on where to start.
Curious, I found it very intuitive myself. While found a bit harder Blender. I guess depends on to what you are used. Anyway, having learnt both I am sure you will have no probs.
I taught myself Blender, Maya and Photoshop, but on each of those occasions, I could get something done on opening the app. Not Max.
The brain has less limits than we think… Don’t put yourself a barrier, Max is one of the easy to learn ones, really.
I’m not bashing Max (I intend to learn it soon, as I too want to work in the game industry) but thats just my first impression.
It can take yo quite a time to get used. But like with blender or any pakage, all is about catching the UI philosophy, the ways of doing. Later on you will teach your self on any new module or feature, like already do with Blender. All packages are like that.
EDIT: Would the Max users here recommend using G-Max to learn Max, or is it too antequated compared to the current product?
By no means, don’t use that. Is a nice tool for free, but is based in…4.2 ! While We’re now in Max 9… (2010 version just released, I think…) The improves since then are so huge that is totally another tool.
Ok, you can learn the very basics with it, but will end up hating max more than you’d ever do.
There are learning editions, or even download the trial, I’m pretty sure at the moment you do, if can block a month, in 30 days if you’re already expert in 3D, you’ll put your self up to speed. As i say, 3D knowledge is transferrable.
I don’t know if there are student learning editions non limited in features, and up to date with latest Max versions…
I fully agree with your answer.:eyebrowlift:
i hope ur joking pafurijaz, if blender was able to handle higher poly models, then it would be an incredible program. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better than 3ds-max, 3ds and maya r just incorporating proportional editing, while blender has had that since i became a blend head (back in the 2.44 days). the interface is extremely simple once u stop thinking aobut how hard it is and actually try and learn it.
I learned maya when I was 13,
when you get the hang of it it’s great.
Still miss some of it’s features,but blender has some cool tricks.
Blender’s rendering quarks,UI,Materials and it’s no so simple particle system,
Ha! Maya can’t render quarks, so Blender is better!
if blender was able to handle higher poly models, then it would be an incredible program. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better than 3ds-max, 3ds and maya r just incorporating proportional editing, while blender has had that since i became a blend head (back in the 2.44 days). the interface is extremely simple once u stop thinking aobut how hard it is and actually try and learn it.
proportional editing, “O” key ? I don’t get fully the sense of the paragraph…You mean that Max is just incorporating it now? No, it is not true. I used intensely for modelling high detail heads for press hi renders for a game, back in 2001, Max ver 3.1. (now is at 10 version I guess…) …it was called Soft Selection, and you can trigger on off too. I don’t how they call it now, as don’t use it in a job since ver. 7.
edit: btw, I totally love blender, shouldn’t be appearing in a thread with this title, lol…
3 things about the “Why I hate Blender”:
1- The number of new features increases at lightning speed!
Once I Learn all the features someone adds a bunch of more features and I have to learn it all again… Just irritating!
2- The UI is too much fast!
Sometimes I finish to do something that I was planing to do during the entire day in just one hour… and then what? I got to do more work in one day… simply annoying!
3- The Live Unwrap UV transform is such a pro tool that I can’t find a reason to complain!
Theres pretty much noting to point to this thing, I just want to complain and say something bad about it, and I can’t… makes me mad!
:evilgrin:
So do ya’ll think they might eventually give Blender the ability to handle higher poly models?
what is your problem about hi polys?
it doesn’t handle as many as z-brush so it’s obviously not as good as Max or Maya for example (which don’t handle as many polys as z-brush either and choke far sooner than blender at high poly counts anyway)
sometimes people make no sense!
hahaha…
but “blender haters” can render cubes and monkey heads with interesting lights! why they need many polys???
You ask a simple innocent question, and they start to circle the wagons.
Get the rifles out now, the Natives are attacking.
Geez, never mind.
Yep, repeating my self(tested inside cmpanies)… Max handles way less polies than blender…Maya handles quite more… (btw, Metasequoia LE is the only free one handling more polies with same hardware than blender, in my tests… but indeed, it handles WAY more than max) …still wasnt a problem for the hardware/needs ratio there…
(and getting more and more in love with the just some mb download, fast install, anywhere, any os… it’s been there since my almost beguining in blender in '02, but liking it more, lately)
Anyway, if a company have bucks for a project, is relatively cheap for them to have very good hardware compared to crazy licenses that are spent, for example, in games production (an yep, you need outsanding poly counts there now… ) …sure you know what i talk about…