What should I use?

I want to use Unity, but I don't know what modeling program I should use, I have Blender, but I haven't really tried using it as of yet, I want to know if Maya or 3dsMax are better to use.

I am looking for something that would be easy to created levels on.

 

I'd say whichever you find easiest.
For me that's 3DS Max, but that's the program I learnt on, all of those options are perfectly capable.

 

Why not try each one? Each one will do the same basic thing. I personally just use blender because it's the only one I learned. But skills are transferable, so what you learn in one you can apply to another should you find you dislike it and would like a change.

 

The first question should be which one can you afford...

Because 2 of those options cost several thousand dollars.. I do wish they would release a cut down version of 3DSmax at a resonable price.

 

Don't forget the licenses. 3ds and Maya are quite expensive, while Blender is FOSS.

Also, what do you mean by creating levels? If you're mostly interested in creating stuff like building interiors/exteriors, NOTHING beats Sketchup.
However, note its license terms. It may be free to use, but it's not FOSS. You can not use the free version for commercial projects.

I work like this:
World Machine for terrains.
Sketchup for level geometry.
Blender for UV mapping (texturing).

 

Blender... free.. nice.. its what i use... but i learned it because i was going to use its game engine before Unity had a free version.( but its gameengine is subpar, really just for interactive physics stuff)

for making buildings, i use GtkRadiant 1.5 (1.5 has .obj exporter bulit-in) and export it to blender... couple extra steps... wouldnt necessarily recommend it, but its a possibility
but does what i want... I know gtkradiant by heart, because i made wolfenstien and call of duty maps
has a good snap to grid system...
id assume sketchup is better since its newer...havent tried it.. (and gtkradiant is level design tool for quake based games, not really a modeller)

 

You could debate which software is the best quality, but Blender is the best value because it's free.

 

I myself was wondering about this. Keeping the price factor aside, which one out of 3dsmax, Maya and blender is the best to use? I'm not really an artist but I'd like to have the best tools of trade.

 

Just use whichever you don't suck at.

 

And open-sourced

 

Amongst the industry opinion tends to be divided between 3DS Max and Maya, though I'd say it swings towards Maya certainly.
There tend to be a lot less outdated and deprecated features remaining in Maya, whereas Max keeps almost everything ever added to it, which causes a big mess essentially...

 

Use the force...........

 

you could make use of HACD for your plugin..

I myself use 3dsMax but that's because it's what i learned and got a subscription from a previous employer; sub has run out by now but i still got the licenses. So while stuck on an older version it still beats learning a new dcc tool.
With the 3 choices you listed there is no better or worse; especially not between max and maya, since you can do the same things in all of them.. just comes down to which one's workflow is closer to native to your own thinking process.

You might think it a waste of time to try out the top 5 dcc tools but considering that you'll be using that for the next n years.. investigating each one for a week is nothing compared to an "alien workflow".

 

Well, the point of my plugin is that Unity's built-in sphere-, box- and capsule-colliders are way more efficient than mesh colliders.
I just wanted a way of telling Unity:
"Hey, you see this prop here? Although it's not exactly shaped like one, it's basically just a box. So use a BoxCollider here."

It's not meant to do all the work for you, just to automate this process whenever possible.
This got me thinking...Should the colliders be affected by LoD? I think not, because swapping the colliders could result in objects moving/rolling/falling when you go away.

 

the colliders should certainly not be affected by LOD since they are supposed to represent the original mesh. you may also want to make sure to not scale them once physics is active.. not only is it a big draw on performance to scale a collider; they also tend to fall through "paper" when scaling up.

i'd generate the colliders on asset import depending on user defined properties .. but thats me