Modo = modeling + UV (wow the UV rocks) + painting (rocks) + high detail sculpting (rocks) + Normal map (rocks) + export to fbx

Fragmotion = animation

well I would go with Maya 2008 then for making the base mesh of your models, then zbrush for addnig those extra details for the normal map projection.

Haven't UV'd much in Maya but 3dsmax has something called Pelt mapping which makes UVing stuff 10 times faster, I believe maya should have something like that aswell since both is autodesk now, just don't know the features name.

One thing I like about maya also is the paint skin weights tool, where you paint on the model and tell what bones to control which of the painted area, and that way you can have really smooth animations, takes no time to do, don't know if other softwares has this feature, but i'm still in high school last year and we are using maya. But yeah I cba to list all the cool features but maya and 3dsmax is ofc the leading 3D softwares atm, it's like comparing Nvidia vs ATI.

Animating in maya is also really easy once you got your rig ready with IK handles and different constrains + custom attributes for example on the fingers of a characters to rotate them.

Other than that I beleive (think) all the 3d softwares are pretty much has the same features, it's just getting used to the UI, cause if you know how to model, then i'm 100% sure u can use any software after a few days of getting used to it.

Personally I like both max and maya.

Enduriel: You are right, the tools are all somewhat similar. Lightwave also can paint weight maps and use it for shading or bones / animations. Pelt-mapping is very common. The professional modelers told that Modo has the best uv-tools currently.

Many schools teach the most expensive tools (Max and Maya, just like in your case). But this is quite old-school. As you could see in this forum thread: a mixture of Modo and Zbrush will easily beat Max / Maya in terms of modeling. But if you want to do modeling, animation and rendering for a cheap price, then Lightwave is the right way. You can even buy Lightwave, ZBrush, Modo and Bodypaint3d and you are still way below the price of Max and Maya.

There is much more than what they teach at schools.

Thanks for all the good info everyone!

Here's what I found.

Lightwave looks good. It is feature rich, and has some robust poly modeling tools, but I'm a little worried about it's UV mapping features. It seems a little harder than it has to be. Seems like the learning curve might be high, and the solutions for smoothing problems seem to be workarounds. On the other hand, it is full featured and an amazing price.

Cinema 4D looks pretty good, and includes Bodypaint which would help out tremendously. Also seems to export to common formats. I couldn't find enough information to know if their poly modeling or UV tools are any good. I'm so familiar with pelt mapping for organic shapes that I don't know if I can go back.

Modo looks very good as a pure modeler, but again I'm worried about the poly modeling toolset. It would be nice to switch between modeling and sculpting, and the UV tools seem amazing. Also, I couldn't find any information on how it exports. Does it just save to a proprietary format? Has anyone used Modo and gotton a model into Gamestudio?

I'm still looking, and I haven't begun to look into grouping less expensive separate programs. I do like working in as few programs as possible.

In the end I might just convince the company to stick with Max. Maybe add Zbrush or Modo, I don't know. I do have Max down.

The old uv-mapping tools are not perfect but I saw the new ones and they provided everything I missed so far (pelt-mapping, relaxing and so on). They will be in one of the next editions. Beta testers can use it even right now.

Smoothing is actually no problem. You can control it via materials, with additional polygons, with breaking edges or creating layers of polygons. If you use something like Max's smoothing groups then it also have to be prepared for DirectX like Lightwave it does: material parameters and groups of meshes. Your graphic card does not know a smoothing group, only polygons and shading.
It is no workaround, you just model, look at smoothing and break it here and there or change the material, it works smooth and perfect.

Thanks for the info Machinery_Frank!

I just watched a tutorial for Lightwave where the guy did a extrude to smooth out a plane after performing a boolean with a sphere on the plane? This seemed kind of odd to me, as its just correcting the shading by adding an extra face around the edges -there were already similar faces there. Im sure the shading problems were created because of odd shaped polys created by the boolean, but I would have fixed it different -I wouldn't want to add an extra extrude where I hadn't planned. So probably not really a problem with Lightwave.

Some engines can recognize Max's smoothing groups, but I get your point. Smoothing groups are very useful for renders with lowery-poly geometry.

I do agree that Lightwave seems like an incredible deal, very feature rich. I'll give the trial a go and see if I can get used to the workflow.

"extrude to smooth out a plane"
microbevels and yes, it's a common technique. the only true alternative is breaking up your mesh in several parts. but sometimes, that's not possible.
all built-in tricks like smoothing groups, applying different surfaces/materials only really help inside the 3d package you are workin with, as soon as you export it to your favourite real time engine, it will all be gone, save for the microbevels or upbroken meshes.
if max' smoothing groups are supported by some prgrammes, it's most likely an exporter thing, it probably interprets the smoothing groups as single geometry unit and exports a number of small, grouped, but not connected, meshes. wings3d does that, too, its "auto smoothing" slices the mesh open, and giving a nice flatshaded-like experience without shading errors.

Why are you thinking of moving away from Max?

Yes I use modo all the time with 3DGS - it works great, you can export using FBX and Med/Wed import work great with modo.

You can also export out of modo into lwo, x3d, dxf, fbx, obj

modo is new and does not have the baggage, all its missing is full animation but I'm sure that will come soon.

Our company has expanded, and it's mostly a cost issue, a little customer service issue. We're leaning toward a combination of Max and Modo now though, even though the extra cost.

Thanks MaxF, it's good to hear that it works fine!