What's the fastest way to create 3D worlds?

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I do sketches for some of my art in pixel format, ie, I make a skeleton with proportions and then fill it out.  I don't draw on paper, and I suspect the people who did KoF might have looked at concept art for inspiration but designed the characters entirely with a mouse, using programs like DPaint that have maximum control over color range and palette choice (plus they could animate the sprite as well).

[Anteater]

Try anim8or. It's the easiest 3D program you will ever use. The new beta version even has a built-in ray tracer.

[Ghost]

Cinema4D is my tool of choice- it is very easy to use and will serve you well. It's also quite cheap these days if you don't need the latest version; I remember Version 4 being available for free a while ago on their homepage ( http://www.maxonshop.com/us/gp/products.software.main/100/429-1227290238-2488// ). A simple Google search should help you. A nice feature is its optional "cartoon" renderer. Not the best one, and of course there are all sorts of arguments against  program creating a look for you, but as TerranRich mentioned, it is a good way to creates templates that you then sketch over.

And for the Monkey Island question- as far as I know the backgrounds were actual oil paintings scanned and adjusted slightly.

[LimpingFish]

I second Ghost's endorsement of Cinema 4D. I've used it almost exclusively since v5.0, and it covers all creative bases.

But probably the quickest way to block out a background is Google Sketch-Up. And it's free.

[m0ds]

What's it like for terrain building, and whats the free object content like, if at all? I'm interested in other "world creation" stuff, not sure if Cinema 4D is it though. I've also found it considerably hard to find free 3D objects about the place. Sometimes world/3d creation seems like Habbo Hotel, you have to pay a hundred dollars for someones model of a shopping basket, etc.

[Trent R]

If anyone wants to create a literal world (global size, or at least large amounts of terrain) check out a program called Fractal World Explorer (FWE). I don't exactly know how to use it, and I only learned about it from these two (Link Link) tutorials for Oblivion's construction set.

But it does look pretty sweet.


~Trent

[LimpingFish]

What's it like for terrain building, and whats the free object content like, if at all? I'm interested in other "world creation" stuff, not sure if Cinema 4D is it though. I've also found it considerably hard to find free 3D objects about the place. Sometimes world/3d creation seems like Habbo Hotel, you have to pay a hundred dollars for someones model of a shopping basket, etc.

There's a number of procedural "world generation" programs;  Vue, Bryce, Terragen and the like. Exporting an entire world for use in a game, though, (vegatation, enviroment, etc) isn't really what these programs are for; pre-rendered animations and stills being their forte.

As for free content, there's lots of sites with free stuff (Turbosquid, for example) but they come in a variety of formats, and good low-poly models for realtime use are hard to find. Plus a lot of stuff is program specific (.max, .vue, etc).

It's taken me the best part of five years to build a decent library of royalty free re-usable models for when I'm too lazy to model something myself.

EDIT: Cinema 4D has options for generating fractal terrains and procedural environments built-in. No option to export them though, beyond converting the terrain into geometry and saving it as an .obj or .3ds file for use in other packages.