Was just wondering the reason behind MED's classification as a low-poly, or basic modeler... Is it because the software is physically limiting, or is it just not practicle to make high-poly models inside MED?

As of this point, MED is all I have used to model. While I am no expert, I have never had much of a problem, feature-wise, with doing all of the things I have wanted to do, and have made some fairly high-poly models (several thousands of polys). Perhaps it is because of my limited expierence with other modelers that I do not find MED lacking...? So, simple question, just wanted to know .

Regards,
Raddaddy

med is like assembler and there are other modelers which are like high level languages.

med doesn't have any serious limits but other modelers are much faster for high poly modeling because they have stuff like subdivision surfaces, n-gons, a plethora of modeling tools, sculpting tools,... most of them basically reduce the need to handle too many vertices manually.

I see. If I am not mistaken, MED does support subdivisions... not very well, seeing as it creates gaps in the model, but theyre easy enough to patch.

I am soon going to start learning 3D Studio Max, because I can get a near-free version from school... (pays to be in the engineering classes ) How would you compare that to MED. Obviously, it is going to be more feature-rich, but what are your impressions of 3D Studio Max, if you have any...

Regards,
Raddaddy

med can subdivide (triangle) meshes but it can't keep the coarse low poly cage around to work with. that's the point of subdivision surface modeling.

i had to use 3dsmax for half a year at a previous job and my impression is that i don't really like it. (maybe because i started learning 3d with other tools like houdini and maya.) 3dsmax for sure is very powerful though and i am sure learning it will be fun and enlightening for you if you only have used med before.

Ok great, like I said, Im getting the program for next to nothing from school, so even if I dont like it, im not really loosing the thousands that I would normally have to pay.

I have looked at Maya as well, and it looks amazing. Although, I cannot afford it, and 3D Studio Max is now in my price range. I just cant spend the kind of money Maya costs. Besides, theyre both made by Autodesk, so its not like theyre made by drastically different companies.

Thanks for the input. Hopefully learning it from the start will make it a better tool to use.
Raddaddy

MED can indeed, work with high-poly stuff, it's just very limited in capabilities and many users (myself included) have requested that MED be improved. It's also full of bugs, many of which I've reported since 6.31 and still haven't been fixed yet (and some in the new MED since the first public beta came out haven't been fixed either despite reporting it two or three times).

Why don't you get blender? It's free, and it's often compared to 3ds Max and Maya. I think it's worth a shot.

Ok, I will look into blender. Thank you vartan_s for the suggestion.

BTW: Your link links back to this page. No worries though, Ill google it .

Regards,
Raddaddy

As explained in section 3.2 here, the only thing holding me back from working on my 3D game is making the UV maps. Does Blender do what I'm after? I can model things in MED just fine, it's texturing that's a pain because there's no reliable way to scale the vertices (spread them further apart in a precise way - the scale tool is very inaccurate).

I don't know that much about it, since I'm not really the modelling person, but it should. It probably should, although as I said I don't know.

And sorry, my links have a tendency to do that... I think its because in my hurry I keep deleting the HTTP part. Anyway, this should work:

Blender

And before I forget, you don't have to use MED to get your models into 3dgs. You can get the MDL exporter for blender, which probably is better.

MDL exporter for blender