Hello everyone I'm new here, I hope this was the best place to post this topic. Anyway, I'm a third-year in college and would like to get into the video game industry someday so I wanted to start getting my feet wet now by learning how to design and animate 3D models now and make little indie games. So I wanted to ask people here who have experience with video game development, what are the best beginner books and software to buy and start with if I wanted to learn on my own how to create 3D models and create little games of my own to help me get into the video game industry? I know very little about modeling and programing so I wanted to start with the basics. Does anyone have any suggestions from personal experience? Thank you everyone for your suggestions.

OKy if you are new in the video gaming as you know this is the advanced world of 3d games for designing and modling the most famous software these days is i think Maya where you can drew your own character and along with it you can animate it so give it a try toutorils for this engine are availeble too!!!!

Personally I'm extreemely impressed by Blender. It's free and it has more functionality than a commercial product today like 3D-studio (you can easily just add free plugins for things you'd normaly have to pay large sums of money to get if you used a commercial product.). Most importantly it's fast and it has a lot of community support. You can also find free official videotutorials on their homepage.

I'd recommend you get the program here:
http://www.blender.org/

and the best videotutorials to start with here:
http://cgcookie.com/blender/get-started-with-blender/

Personally I'm extreemely impressed by Blender. It's free and it has more functionality than a commercial product today like 3D-studio (you can easily just add free plugins for things you'd normaly have to pay large sums of money to get if you used a commercial product.). Most importantly it's fast and it has a lot of community support. You can also find free official videotutorials on their homepage.

I'd recommend you get the program here:
http://www.blender.org/

and the best videotutorials to start with here:
http://cgcookie.com/...d-with-blender/

I agree I would start with blender personally. I used it years ago only to find it was difficult to understand, but it seems that they have made an overall to the UI and it's much easier to understand. AND there are more tutorials.

Personally i have used 3D Max and Maya and i think these softwares are best for modeling and animation and also it easy to use for beginners.

Regards
Funique