Good FREE Modeling Program?

Not sure if this is the correct forum to post in but whats the best/good FREE modeling program?

Blender.

The correct section would have been External Tools.

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I second @DanielQuick . the best and most robust free modeling program would probably be Blender. If you’re just getting your feet wet and find Blender to be a bit intimidating, you can try Wings3D.

I second the vote for Blender. It pretty much does anything and everything you need, and generally does it well. Other things either cost much more, or simply don’t compare, at least in my opinion.

Blender it is. :smile:
Also, Merry Christmas everyone.

I also agree Blender is the best route to go. Although the learning curve is pretty aggressive for first timers. It takes a little to learn it; but once you do it all ‘clicks’ and is an amazing peice of software.

A super easy way to get into 3D modeling is using Sketchup Make. It’s great for beginners since it has a quick and easy interface and it’s actually quite powerful once you bring in 3rd party plug ins.

Most probably Blender is the best one to go with. Anyway, here are some comments from hobbyist point of view. Also, I would highlight that I don’t have extensive knowledge about 3D modeling because this is just a hobby for me.

I started with Sketchup about 8 years ago and 2 years ago started learning Blender because I wanted to make sure that I can use my models in Game Engines. It took quite some time to learn Blender and I am still having major difficulties to remember how to do things in Blender that I used to be able to do. From my point of view Blender is definitely the best free modeling tool but it is not user friendly at all like Sketchup. Nowadays I see that people are getting amazed when somebody creates some Addons to Blender when these Addon functionalities have been part of Sketchup already for years.

Anyway, it seems that Sketchup is not build for creating 3d models for game engines because its UVmapping capabilities seem to be very limited. Therefore, my current workflow would be to model in Sketchup and finalize the models in Blender in order to bring them into Unity. Also, I am eagerly waiting that there would be more Unity and Unreal Engine people visible in Sketchup forums so that somebody would see the potential and created Sketchup plugins that would make it more game engine friendly (UV mapping, etc.). Nowadays Sketchup is made more for quick and easy but also for professional architectural 3D modeling.

@mk1978
You can always create a texture atlas prior to modeling in an image editor with all the textures you will be using on that model(s) and then import that texture into sketchup and while modeling just map out the texture to the model. Export out and import into unity; import that texture atlas into unity and apply to the mesh. That way you can texture within sketchup and still use one material and not kill performance within unity

Thanks for the tip! I never thought about this kind of workflow.

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Blender 3d man

One more vote for Blender