Modeller advice please

Advice ???
I would like to get into using sculpties. In the main I would like to se if I can create parts for buildings which up to now I have to use a large number of regular prims. In other words more complex geometric shapes as opposed to organic. I have a copy of Wings3D which seems to get a good press here, but I don’t want to invest a lot of time if that is the wrong tool. Any advice about the best modeller to use would be greatly appreciated.

I think Wings is probably the best choice for you, unless the shapes you want to make are regular enough that they can be made with a dedicated sculpty program like Rokuro or Sculptypaint.

Disclaimer: I'm not a skilled 3D modeler, so I don't have the experience to really appreciate the more sophisticated tools like Blender or Maya. Basically, I'm biased toward simplicity.

I'll assume you're looking for a free modeler that can output sculpties.

Wings3D is a very good free modeler but it lacks symmetrical sculpting/tweaking and the sculpties it outputs are lacking a row of vertices.

Blender is a far more powerful free modeler that supports symmetry and yet it can be very difficult to learn. Its best sculpty convertor hates me too!

The other freebie programs are very specialized and while they make some tasks very easy to carry out, like making steps or a vase, they're quite limited overall.

So when it comes to freebies, you're better off with either Blender or Wings3D.

One thing to keep in mind when deciding between polygonal modelers is that the basic modeling theories are the same in all of them, and the basic practices will tend to be similar. The point being if you invest the time into learning Wings and then decide you don't like it or that it doesn't meet your needs, the time invested won't be wasted. The knowledge you gained will make it that much easier to move to the next tool.

I ave to agree here.

Wings 3d is quite wonderful, though it has some small problems, and blender is amazing, but.. I can't use it for anything cause its evil UI hates me.. I'll learn it sometimes.

Wings 3d, when used in conjunction with something like sculptypaint, or Yuzuru Jewells tools (Rokuro, tokoroten, and nomi) can do just about everything you'd need. But if you want to get into really high end sculpties, texture baking, all that, you're going to want to go for blender or buy an actual commercial modeler such as 3ds max , maya, or rhino.

Maya and 3ds max are the favored non-free tools for sculpties, followed by ZBrush.

I recommend you start with learning the specialty tools (sculptypaint, ploppsl, rokuro, tokorten, nomi, etc) just to see how to work with those, as they will always be useful in making simple sculpties. Then try out wings 3d or blender, see if you can handle either or both. I still recommend wings first as its easier, but if you can do blender right off the bat then by all means do that.

Everyone has their favorites, and everyone has their style, so.. thats about all the advice I can give.