The place I work doesn’t have any extra 3DSMax licenses ($3500!) and I just want to make little test models without having to bug an artist. Any recommendations? Sketchup is $500 (mentioned in another thread). I’m talking $0-50, because I don’t need anything fancy. Just shapes and textures.
Blender
Costs 0 does it all
Another vote for Blender. Works great with Unity. There’s a fair number of ex-Max users in the Blender community. May take a bit of effort to shift your thinking around to how Blender works, but once you do I think you’ll find it very productive.
If you need to maintain import / export workflow with Max users you’ll have to use .OBJ files. Blender will export .FBX but not import them. The lowest cost app that does is probably Cheetah 3D.
Wings3d is a nifty open source modeller - http://www.wings3d.com/
The app that inspired it, Nendo, is still available for around $50 I think from http://www.izware.com/ (I helped re-release it a few years ago) I like the 3D-paint feature, but the product is Windows-only
Art of Illusion, http://www.artofillusion.org/ is another open-source modeller.
And Cheetah3D, http://www.cheeta3d.com/ is selling now for $99.
Im a total cheetah fanboy but theres also a program for intel mac called “equinox3d”
also
Wings is improving lots too, you can vertex paint in it now
AC