SketchUp. It's the easiest one to use, but it has a pretty bad UV mapper so texture in another program.
Thanks for the suggestions, guys. Still not sure which one to use, though.
I don't think you can convert SketchUp files to .3ds, though.
I dont think you can convert SketchUp files to .3ds, though.
However, this has potential of making very precise meshes, with very precise UV-maps, and very precisely defined materials. The downside is that you write the definition of all vertices, faces and their texture coordinates, as also material definitions by hand, and you need to imagine how the mesh looks like while you're doing it. To start with that you just need to read about mesh format in "Doc/OrbiterConfig.pdf".
If you don't have any experience with 3D modeling programs then I guess the best option would be to try them all and see which suits you best. For making Orbiter add-ons any of them will be sufficient, the differences will be in theirs interfaces and workflow plus you should check for easy .whateverfileformat ->.mesh format conversion abilities.What meshing program should I use? Should I use Wings3D, Anim8or or something else? I'm new at meshing so I need an easy to use one. Thanks in advance. :thumbup:
You can easily fix your normals in Blender just tab to edit mode and in the mesh tool window(the one on the left side of the main window in Blender's defoult screen) scroll down to normals. There will be two buttons there, one called "recalculate"(the one wich will fix screwed normals) and the other one called "flip normals"(this one as it's name suggest will flip normals).... the normals on some objects sometimes get flipped and I can't seem to get them pointed out. To solve the normal problem, I open the 3ds in Wings3d, flip them, then import it back into blender.