A Second Life Curriculum

Hello,

I think the whole concept behind SL is amazing and I want to get more involved in building complicated structures and vehicles. I've done some searches on the forums and it seems that people are using a variety of outside applications to construct the most beautiful builds. I have the chance to take some free courses at a local university(that would normally cost thousands of U.S. $$) and was wondering which applications would be the most useful to me when building objects for use in SL?

I'm really just getting started here, so I don't really have even the basic skills needed-- though I've played around at the ivory tower of primitives. I also saw the thread about a possible future certification of SL skills which sounds interesting.

The applications that seem to be mentioned frequently are:

Photoshop (CS2 or CS3)
Maya
Wings 3D(though the university doesn't off classes in this)
Blender

What others would you suggest and which are the best?

Thanks for your help!!

Tuesday

Remember that in the case of commercial software, you'll still need to pay for the application to use it after the class is over. This can be very expensive. Check for the possibility of getting a student discount.

Maya and Photoshop are probably your best commercial software bets for 3D modeling and 2D painting, respectively. If you can't afford those, or just have a philosophical bias toward free software, Blender and the Gimp are probably the most comparable free applications.

Wings 3D is free, but hardly on the mind-share radar map compared to Blender. It's much easier to learn, but doesn't have all the capabilities of Blender. Personally, I think it is really cool. And at the moment, it is the easiest way to start making sculpties. You certainly don't need a university course to learn it.

But three months from now, who knows?

Blender, definitely take this course even if you go out and buy something else later.
Blender is suddenly a hot commodity in the SL community due to its ability to handle the creation of sculpties.

In addition being free it is like money on the floor you just have to try harder to get it.
But hey if you did you would save hundreds if not thousands of dollars depending on competing 3d programs.
I don't think very many people realize how much it can do from modeling to texturing to animations and rendering, it actually is a full on 3d studio.

In addition even if you do buy an easier program, you usually only get a license to have it on one computer. I was house sitting for a relative recently and started getting an itch to do some modeling but alas he had none of my cool tools on his computer, so I quickly dl'ed
blender and starting playing. So in that way it has a sort of universal access.

Then upon attaining some level of expertise you could if so inclined become an SL Blender
Guru and be the go to guy.

Thanks Omei and Infiniview. The costs that Omei mentioned for the commercial applications are certainly daunting--I checked them. I'm pretty sure the university would have a copy of maya and photoshop for me during the class, but afterwards I cringe at spending that much though maybe I can get a student discount. It seems that photoshop CS3 extended might be the best, but that goes for a grand--I wish it were priced in Lindens! Could I get away with Photoshop elements? (wishfully thinking) $2,000 for Maya, ugh! Maybe I would spring for a copy of photoshop, and hold off on Maya -- and use Blender. A lot of people are talking about sculpties, do you know if its easy to work with them using blender?