I noticed comments re 3DsMax, Max itself is a very powerful program and very expensive, time to learn at least a couple of years, for simple gaming stuff have a look at the following;

Blender, Milk3D, Poser, Lightwave, Maya is in the same league as Max. Also have a look for gmax, it was a spin off from 3DsMax, but essentially designed for gaming.

The biggest problem is making sure you can get compatibility, import/export from the 3D program into the Map Editor without loosing textures, shadows, lighting, especially difficlt when playing with animation, lip sync etc.

You will find that some programs are good in one area not so good in another, i.e. Film work, Gaming, Commecials, Architectural Design etc. it is all according to what you want to do. Have a look at 3D cafe lots of info. There are other good 3D sites around on the Web.

Hope it helps a bit.

P.S. unless you really want to learn 3D it may be better to look for Models that you can just import into a game. Sadly the FarCry Editor doesnt come with a SDK so no Import. Maybe in the future. Who knows?

To add to what Reegs said it's typically a good idea to start with one of the free ones such as Blender, G-Max, or Open GL mainly because most of the other ones are expensive as hell.
For me I use Blender for stuff with the XNA. I will say that if you want to learn one of the bigger budget software suites such 3DS Max it may be better to use G-Max because it is essentially just a stripped down version.

In the 'how we map' thread, I posted a link to a 30 day free trial of z-Brush. Its a pretty good modeling program and there are a bunch of tutorials for each feature on the site.

quote:

Originally posted by zeeEVIL1:
In the 'how we map' thread, I posted a link to a 30 day free trial of z-Brush. Its a pretty good modeling program and there are a bunch of tutorials for each feature on the site.

I LOVE z-brush!

Is 3D Studio Max still sold separately? Last version I had was after the Maya and 3DS merge.

I use XSI for creating my soft models (organic stuff). 3DS was always better at hard surface modeling (architecture and vehicle). But my favorite is going to have to be Maya because I love to animate! I can model and texture and animate pretty effectively all in one application. Some of the scripting is pretty easy to do also. SSX was made using Maya and I remember it being a huge breakthrough in the gaming world at the time.

They are all great programs but I haven't found anything that unwraps UVs for texturing better then XSI.

Mudbox and Z-Brush are incredible programs. The best part about Z-brush is that you can model with it also (although it is kind of difficult) and the tutorials take control of your mouse and show you everything onscreen. And its only like 500 bucks. That is unbelievable when you see what it can do.

Ahhh, the college days.

Here are a couple of examples of Z BRUSHwork that were done by a guy in another community I belong to.

Here is an armature of a human he made.



This is a Velociraptor being constructed with orbs



Here it is with more detailing.



This is just a minor sample of Z BRUSH.
If you are into this kind of thing or want an easier way to learn how to do this type of thing, I recommend going to the other thread and hitting the link.

That is really good, well worth while looking into. I think I will look into it myself.