Personally I dislike Blender, but it's inexpensive and jME imports from it well, which are two of the requirements that not much else meets.
See new modeling apps table that I just made in the User Guide.
Please fill in details for the ?'s. Please read the notes to editors at the top, the main goal of which is to keep the table concise.
Rather than ***'s perhaps write in the actual number? Hard to tell the difference between ********** (10) and ********* (9) at a glance.
Starnick said:
Rather than ***'s perhaps write in the actual number? Hard to tell the difference between ********** (10) and ********* (9) at a glance.
I agree with your cricism, but I think I'm like most people in that I prefer a more graphical representation. I prefer it how it is. It's very obvious when they differ by say 4 stars. If they differ by only 1 star, I think we can depend on the reader's ability to count.
But I've spent far more time on that page then I wanted to already, so I leave the debate and resultant change to others.
UPDATE: Actually I can't tell if you are recommending replacing the stars or adding the digit. If the later, the problem with that is, it adds up to 12 more characters per record. I would not do that due to line break, scrolling, etc., but do it if that's what others want.
Nope, just replace the stars with a number.
Honestly I'm not entirely sure if there should be a rating though. On the extreme, e.g. something is given a few stars vs 10 stars, it may be helpful…but it's not that helpful when two ratings differ maybe by one star.
Edit: At least on power, stuff like blender and 3ds are very feature rich compared to a lot of free editors out there, but most of their features aren't supported or used when using those models for jme. E.g. if the tool has ray tracing or not has no relevance.
I do agree on at least some rating for jme-specific applications (e.g. are most materials easily exported with the model, can the jme importers import animation from it?). Although, those ratings are really more about rating JME's importer system than the actual modeling tool (perhaps rather than a rating, a link to a review page can be provided for limitations and features of the converters and any third party tools out there.)
Rough "stars" are okay, we have no objective way of meassuring it in numbers anyway.
I added a bit of info to the table about ArtOfIllusion.
New version of Blender is coming, by the way. Allegedly the UI will be simplified, I wouldn't hold my breath but, on the other hand, it can only get better. 
So the OP's designer friend should maybe start out using the new version.
http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-250/
New version of Blender is coming, by the way.
I will keep a sharp eye out for that one.
blaine, I am with starnick here on the "star" rating. Even if the values are objective, it's hard (for me anyway) to visualize. Can I suggest a compromise and that you use a monospaced font and base it out of 5?
to be honest i don't know if rating the apps work…
it's very dependent on the workflow…
maybe comments on the workflow between content creation and what ends up in jme would be more useful…
ie avoid using exporter 'x' for animations in max as it uses the default max biped which is incompatible with ogre xml importer etc…
Looks like there's a consensus (or close enough). Changed from 0-10 stars to 0-5.
As that saves 15 characters, maybe it makes sense to add a boolean column for jME-supported-animation?
The table is strictly for comparison purposes. I.e. for a very high-level comparison of product X against all other products. This is one small manual page in a chapter about jME Modeling. There are all sorts of other questions one can ask about these products, but the purpose of this table isn't to answer them. The jME-suitability concerns (such as ncomp raised) are already allowed for exactly as described (on the page) for the Detail Links column. We do know how to use hyper-links, aye? WRT the 3 * columns, they give an extremely concise quantitative answer to the questions which people looking for a tool usually ask, and which I was asking years back.
- Compared to the other available products, how powerful (feature-rich) is the product?
- Compared to the other available products, what proportion of the work output features can be used by jME?
- Compared to the other available products, how easy is it to for a novice to learn?
I disagree with the people who contend that the answers to these questions are useless without being accompanied by justifications and details (which details, if so essential, should be linked to with the Detail Links column).
A page with detailed bullets about each product would be great to have. We have a wiki for pages like that. My correspondents here who know the details and have the time to discuss them could be starting such a page right now. When you do so, please add a link in the comparison-table page.
Has anyone seen Anim8tor … I use it all the time … it has all the features most of us would need to create stunning 3d models … has all the important import and exports types, really great 3d software … oh and the best part … is its FREE !!!
http://www.anim8or.com/
phmenard said:
Has anyone seen Anim8tor ... I use it all the time ... it has all the features most of us would need to create stunning 3d models ... has all the important import and exports types, really great 3d software ... oh and the best part ... is its FREE !!!!!
http://www.anim8or.com/
Please add a record at http://www.jmonkeyengine.com/wiki/doku.php/3d_modeling_applications and fill in the detials.
blaine said:
phmenard said:
Has anyone seen Anim8tor ... I use it all the time ... it has all the features most of us would need to create stunning 3d models ... has all the important import and exports types, really great 3d software ... oh and the best part ... is its FREE !!!!!
http://www.anim8or.com/
Please add a record at http://www.jmonkeyengine.com/wiki/doku.php/3d_modeling_applications and fill in the detials.
How do I do that ??? I tried but it would not accept my login details.