Alrighty then, I've tried using Blender, (and am still having problems with it). I now have some questions about 3dsmax for those modellers who use it. Is it user friendly?

More or less, I'm looking for the public opinion of one versus the other, and yes I am open for debates about the two programs as long the debate stays civil.

I don't think it is as fast to use as Blender, so no it isn't as user friendly. If you were asking how shallow the learning curve is, then it is definitely easier to pick up. Except it isn't because it is £1500.

Um..

When I messed around with it, 3d Studio Max was easier to use as it had a "standard" interface. The sort of thing we are all used to. I would suspect blender is faster to use when you get to grips with it as it hasn't been designed with new users in mind.


This is the Morrowind Mod forum, where we get a flame war a year max. Even then most of the time the thread just gets locked because the counter arguments tend to hit 1000 words and the moderators cannot be bothered removing all the strongly worded rebukes.

I am a Max user but I would recommend to spend time on learning Blender + NifScope (in case you are modding exclusively for fun, future professional work requires knowledge of packages like Max): there are serious differences in using Max4/5 with official exporter and Max5-2010 with NifTools plugin; NifTools Max support is on hold now (no updates for nearly a year, but a new version of Max2011 was announced recently, btw Blender 2.5 alpha with several UI improvements was also released, no nif support so far). On the other hand several NifTools Blender developers are still quite active. Probably, OpenMW project would have also better Blender support.
Max UI is definitely easier compared with Blender but it is not that standard, e.g. Maya, XSI, Cinema have quite similar UIs that are different from Max.
Real program users would not start any debate wars because they do know what and why is good specifically for them.

I am not voting.