General Model Questions

[Paul]

I've just spent half an hour wrestling with the UV tools and achieved a grand total of nothing

Oh yes, Gmax's UV tools suck big time, unfortunately.
And the rigging is extremely time consuming, but when it comes to the interface Gmax takes the cake. I tried Blender something like 4-5 years ago and the UI was such a maze that I ended up removing the thing from my HD. Perhaps I could try learn it today... maybe.

[DaniJ]

UV tools suck big time, unfortunately.

Compared to what exactly? They are far better than every other free modelling app I've ever tried other than Blender (but as mentioned several times in this thread, the UI makes this program unusable for me).

Considering its free, GMax is superb. You get much of the power of the 3DS modelling toolset without the cost.

Personally, I'm a devote Silo fan but thats not free.

[StrikerMan780]

Sorry to bump, I just wanted to let you guys know there is an existing MD3 import/export plugin for Blender that DOES support MD3 Tags and Animation.

http://xreal.sourceforge.net/xrealwiki/BlenderExportMD3
Has both Importer and Exporter. I do believe this is the one I found and use. If you have any trouble, let me know and I can zip up the copies of the MD3 Plugins I have.