: Which software to use for easy 3D shapes? I am basically looking for a software (free for students) to have mechanical 3D features (extrude, fillet, etc) and very basic animation capabilities

@Samaraweera207

I really like using Solidworks that can easily create PDF, JPG, PNG, ... And its rendering is high quality.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Looi7658678

Art of Illusion

This cross platform open source application was written in Java to run on Windows, OSX, Linux, and other operating systems.

Pros:


only very little efforts to get started
easy to use intuitve GUI
easy to use mesh editor with predefined primitives
"fast rendering" and raytracing capability
keyframe and skeleton animation
scriptable
good online documentation


Cons:


limited precision and object properties control
can be slow, depending on hardware
stability issues from Java on some platforms
limited raytracing controls
proprietary file format
object import from Wavefront .OBJ only
export to .OBJ, VRML, and Povray only

Vote Up Vote Down

@Cofer715

You can try Blender.

Blender is a free and opensource project to make high quality 3d designs.

You can also give flash a shot,But it wont produce any 3d models.Adobe Photoshop CS6 is also good for producing 3D shapes and is very simple to make too. But i dont think you can animate the 3D objects in it.

EDIT :

You can also try Google sketchup
Its a free product from Google.No camera , lighting or anything of that sort.Its fairly simple.

If you have Maya, then you can try download free 3d models available on the net and modify it according to your need.The lighting's and camera would have been already set in that scene.

Vote Up Vote Down