About a month ago, I downloaded the trial of 3DSM and Halo CE + the HEK with the intention of learning to make maps for Halo. Since then, I have gotten as far as making a box and adding textures to it.

I am now totally freaking fed up with it. It's been a MONTH and that's as far as I've progessed. 3DSM has an eff-ing awful interface. I completely hate it. The tutorial for making Maps that came with the HEK sucks badly. I've found myself re-reading the same 5 lines AND looking at their badly labled screenshots 10 or more times just to figure out how they did, what in the end, is a simple task.

I just spent the last 2 hours trying to texture my wonderful box. TWO HOURS. Oh, in the end I managed to do it, but I have a ground texture in three places it shouldn't be. Of course, they tell you have to resolve that. But in this tutorial designed to teach you how to do these things, they act as though I should know how to drive the freaking program already.

In short, I'm pissed off, lost, and giving up on trying to work with 3DSM any more.

So post your fun expirences with software. Oh, and does anyone have an alternative program that'll work in 3DSM's place? Something that's about 60 times easier to manage and will still work with the rest of the HEK?

Right. I need to go kill something now...

Blender

I have no idea if it does what you want, but it's free and worth a shot...

Blender is really spiffy, I browse elysiun.com all the time to look at what people create with it.

Max is about the worst thing you could use for making levels. And it's not too good for models either..

I was the same way with 3dsm but many tutorials later ive gotten the hang of it. As far as low poly creation I still use lightwave as its tools are much more cad like and can be more technical. Now I gotta learn maya...

I got Lightwave one time. I found out it was the easiest and most powerful modeling software i've ever encountered. Fun story.

Blender is definately most awsomeness. Though the interface may be a little overwhelming if you've never dealt with it before. This year at Uni I'm taking a Maya series of courses, and it's really fun. Though sometimes I miss features that Blender has, but then again, I'd like to see Blender do some of the things Maya can. Good thing about that though is that since Blender is open source, development proceeds pretty quickly for it. The next major thing for Blender is supposed to be the integration of soft bodies. True, Maya already has soft body and physics solvers, but it's still exciting to see Blender getting all these features.

GMax, which is basically Max but stripped of all the confusing things made for 3DSM, and more geared towards gaming, may be what you're looking for. Don't get me wrong, I've toyed with it, it's insanely difficult to do anything. Personally, I think you should learn basic modelling tutorials, then go through the Halo thingy you were doing. I mean people have been doing it for years, and still have problems accomplishing things. Maybe there's a reason doing it for 2 hours didn't make much of a dent :p

I personally don't have much of a problem using 3dsmax. Sure, it is a stad complicated at first but you'll eventually get the hang of it if you keep at it. Trying to make levels with 3dsmax is indeed a joke though. The only one program that I prefer over 3dsmax is Maya because Maya give you bit more freedom because it doesn't use any stacking modifiers (which 3dsmax suffers from greatly).

Oh yeah, and one more thing I have to say. In comparison with 3dsmax, Milkshape 3D absolutely SUCKS. If you ever only used milkshape 3d and nothing else, you REALLY need to get a better modeling program. The biggest reason ms3d is so bad because there are no qwerty keys set up for selecting, rotating, moving, etc. It is all mouse driven, which makes it a pain in the *** to use. The only thing good about ms3d is that it has some really good plugins and import/exporters support and it only costs $20 USD.

Oh there is no question that 3dsmax is better than Milkshape. But 3dsmax often proves to have small, annoying bugs and to be counter intuitive.

I've been working on and off for a month.

Today I manged to slap some textures in it.

See, the problem is Max is what the tutorial was written for. And Max is not freeware. I'm working off a 30 day trial. If you ask me, that was a freaking dumb move by Gearbox, and a shot in their foot. "Yes! You can now make levels! But you need to pay for this piece of software to do it!"

I'll rephrase my question a bit better. I need something that is FAR easier than Max to use. Something I can at least get a handle on within a week or so. See, if I haven't at least mastered the basics, or understand some of what's going on within a week, I become greatly disinterested. So. Something easier to use, and it also helps if the functions I need to use in Max right now, could be easily translated over to the new program.

If I can get that, the only other problem that would remain is how to get the map into the provided Map Tools. Something I think is easy enough to figure out.

Maya > Blender >>>> 3DSMax.

Not that Blender counts in any way, since its definately not any sort of commecial product, and in the real business world, your knowledge of Blender will get you absolutely nowhere.

But anyway, I thought there was some tool that allowed people to make maps in GTKRadiant and then port it over...

I've had trouble with all of those 3d modeling programs. It's sort of depressing.

Like I said, GMax is available, and free. It's 3DSMax stripped down. But Blender is supposedly quite good (my friend uses it in his college courses). Meh.

Kind of like Linux?

So... if 3DSMax == crap, then does gmax == a smaller serving of crap?

I'll let you know in about 20 minutes. I'm downloading it now.

3DSMax isn't crap, it's amazing. But it's got a learning curve that's reminescent of a right triangle.

I don't doubt the fact that it isn't crap. I'm sure it's a hellova a program. But for what I need it for, it's too hard to use.

Gmaz is done in about 90 seconds, then I need to install. I think I'll reply again in about 30 minutes.

Max used to be nice and versitile... until people decided they wanted a good program. Then they started using stuff like Maya, Soft Image XSi, and Lightwave.

So far, Gmax is better for me than 3dsMax. I started my level over again, and it seemed loads easier. Though I'm having trouble deciding if that's due to the fact Gmax is slightly easier to navigate it, or if I just know my way around both programs slightly better. I'm going to settle for a point inbetween.

Oh, and if I ever get somewhere with this level, I will be showing it here.

Oh god. Shut up, please. It's all about how you 'click' with a program--Maya and Max are arguably about par as far as features and usability go.

Yoshi I think it was you emailing me a few months ago with praise about how great my models are. Wouldn't you think that I might know just a LITTLE bit about this stuff?

Will you two take your *****ing contest elsewhere.