3dstudio - no limitations. for pretty much everyone.
gmax - limited in functionality, no renderer etc. the whole point of gmax is that it costs a lot of money to license (usually by a company) so other ppl can develop levels / models for their game for free. if u just download gmax by itself, youll only be able to save in gmax''s format.

fenix, I'm sorry but your wrong about the exporting part(that wasn't supposed to be flaming, i know u just joined). You can export in other than .gmax and that's where it comes useful. There is a patch called tempest that will allow you to export to a md3 file format. That is the quake3 format. Using milkshape3D, you can convert that format to the format you need. Goto my site(KeycodeOnlin in my sig) and I have a tut on working with it.

[Edited by - kmsixpence on October 17, 2005 6:46:30 PM]

Discreet wants $10k for a 4 user license of GMax dev. GMax dev comes with the developer kit, and a version of GMax that you can write plugins for using their GMax SDK. It''s basically the 3DSMax SDK. For the $10K, you can develop your own exporter for GMax and use it internally. If you wish to distribute your exporter / game pack, Discreet wants another $90K for the first title, and slightly less for 2nd versions and products using the same framework. 3D Studio Max has never really been targeted at game development. It was just always possible. With GMax out now, It doesn''t make much sense to use 3DS Max.


From playing around with GMax, it is an impressive product, typical of Discreet''s work. But unless you plan on shipping a major title, I''d forget about both GMax and 3DS Max and pay your $20 for a copy of Milkshape.

The developers version is too expensive, right. The community version is free. There is a patch that will export .md3''s and then you can use milkshape to convert that file to any format. Buy milkshape and download gmax community version and the tempest patch.