Quote:rzetlin
I find that there are two extremes for 3D modeling programs:

Free ones: Freespace and Blender

Pros: They are free and can create decent graphics
Cons: Limited resources, documentation and community. Terrible UI especially Blender. Not used by the game industry.

Expensive ones: Maya, 3DS and XSI

Pros: Well documented and used by the industry.
Cons: Very expensive.

I don't know what Freespace is, I assume you me TrueSpace? If you mean True then well, I really don't like TrueSpace. It runs like crap on my laptop, which runs 3ds Max and XSI perfectly fine. The interface is a bit bizarre as well.

Blender has an admittedly very unique UI. You're wrong about the "limited resources, documentations, and community" though. Blender is the de facto open source 3d modelling program for good reason. It is incredibly feature rich, has a very strong community, tons of resources, and since it is open source you can easily do custom builds to fit your needs. No, it is not really used in commercial games development, but its use in the films, television, and games industry is growing.

Quote:I don't know which 3D modeling program to use for XNA.

Maya, 3ds Max, and XSI are expensive. There is, however, a free Mod Tool version of XSI available (XSI Mod Tool). It includes XNA tools and a decent amount of documentation to support them. Also note that there are academic version of 3ds Max, Maya, and XSI available for reduced prices if you are a student.

Quote:I don't want to be in the situation where I won't be accepted in a job position because I used the wrong 3D tool.

That should not concern you. If you can demonstrate talent with one tool then a studio is going to be willing to give you time to adjust to whatever they are using. Most studios have some sort of custom or proprietary software in their production pipeline anyways. Ramp up time is expected.

As far as market penetration, here in the States anyways 3ds Max and Maya are the big 2. In Japan I know that XSI is huge. I don't know about Europe. Here in the States you'll often times find Max and Maya in the same studio. A curious trend I've noticed is that a lot of smaller studios use Max whereas a lot of the bigger ones have moved to Maya. My company is Max only, but talking to some guys who work for EA, Max is only prevalent in two of their studios with the rest using Maya. Bungie is mostly Maya, but they have a mixed pipeline as well.

You might also like to try modo. It has a 30 day trial, a student license and the full version is not too expencive - well this depends... :-(

It also has decent documentation, expecially the video tutorials are really nice.

best jochen

I recently took a tour of Juiced studios, and they're using Max. We're taught max at uni, and I very highly recommend it if you can stretch to the price tag (as mentioned above, there are discounts for students).

I've experimented with Blender on many occasions, and I find the interface very fluent once you know how to use it. It's confusing and seems 'messy' at first, but your productivity in Blender will outperform any other modeller once you master it.

To address your concern as to what program you'll need to know to get hired somewhere... Honestly it doesn't matter what program you use. Once you know how to model in one program, it's pretty easy to quickly learn another. No program is going to make your model look better than another program. It's up to you to make your stuff look good.

The more expensive programs usually have more features, a larger userbase, more documentation and are just more efficient.. But free 3d modeling programs can still make the same 3d models. If you can find a way to export to whatever file type you need, then you're all set.