Baffled by Blender? Why not try an alternative, open source 3D modelling tool: K-3D. Version 0.8 is available for download for Windows, Mac, and a variety of Unix/Linux environments. K-3D can handle 3DS, Collada, OBJ, MD2, Ogre, PLY, STL, and SVG files and includes many industrial-level features. From their wiki:K-3D is free-as-in-freedom 3D modeling and animation software. It features a plugin-oriented procedural engine for all of its content, making K-3D a very versatile and powerful package. K-3D excels at polygonal modeling, and includes basic tools for NURBS, patches, curves and animation.K-3D provides extensive (but not quite as complete as Blender, yet) 3D modelling features as well as animation capability. The user interface is perhaps easier to learn than the notorious Blender interface. K-3D says:Blender has a more complete feature set than K-3D at the moment, while K-3D has the more ambitious, long-term-scalable architecture. It is accepted by many (including the senior Blender coders that we’ve spoken with) that the Blender sources need a complete redesign and rewrite. On the other hand, the K-3D sources often receive praise for their good design and “everything is a plugin” philosophy. So while K-3D is lacking many important features, we feel that we have an unbeatable foundation upon which to build.
Enjoy!
Via K-3D
