Free 3d-editors and models

[Bombadil]

Hello. Does anybody of you 3D experts know some good free 3d tools, like editors, viewers, etc...?

I don't need it for creating a professional scenery (which I couldn't) but to edit and control some smaller things in models I got from the net or from friends, for example. The destination of the models is to load them into a Xith based Java application.
So ideally the 3d tool(s) should be able to import from and export to a model / scene file format which could be imported with one of those (few!) Xith3d importers, for example ".3ds" or ".ase" .

If there are no good free ones: would you recommend a commercial one? I know DeepExploration but it's no editor, just a viewer (and although it knows a lot of formats it's not at all perfect with the few ones I need mostly, for example .3ds).


Does anybody know nice Web sites which offer free 3d models? Also a commercial site, affordable for small projects ?
I've seen a few which offer their ".max" or ".maya" formats but since you need the original plugins of these 3d programs to convert the models to .3ds or .ase files it's of no use for a Xith3d user...

[Bombadil]

Thanks for the hint, on a garage game dev site there's a discussion about affordable 3d tools/modellers... http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=2376

Maybe some of you think it's helpful, too.

[Bombadil]

Wings3d is very nice (and free). I am amazed at how intuitive it is (after your first mini-shock with the unusual Erlang-VM's GUI and "speed).
Unforuntately it can't yet cope with textures for .3ds models, or rather textures in general. But the autors work on the texture thing.
Is it common for you to use another tool just for texturing?

Any good 3d model resources?

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[kevglass]

* Search for free models, lots of different types, varying quality.
http://www.turbosquid.com

* Stars Wars models
http://xpi.org.uk/~swma/

* Lots of character models from popular games (quake 2 models a plenty)
http://www.polycount.com

* Average model collection,
http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/freestuff.asp

Kev

[Bombadil]

Thanks a lot! :-)  Very nice sites.