I have decided I want to try and render my own skins (insted of begging other people) but I don't know what program to use. I have not got very much money so couldn't afford expensive program
Cheers

3DS Max would be the most logic buy, but it is expensive.
Though, if you look around I am sure you could find it for a 'steal'.

Blender is free but you ll have a lot of work before your first render comes out.There s a thread about it around here.

Quote from Dygear :

3DS Max would be the most logic buy, but it is expensive.

You can always download 30 day trial.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/s ... eID=123112&id=5972446

It would be silly to fork out big bucks for a 3d program unless you actually plan on using it for something other than LFS stuff. Most decent high end 3d programs like, maya, c4d, 3d max, lightwave, xsi are well into the $1000 region.

Unless you qualify for student prices, but then none of your work can be used comercially.

$1000 ?
id say 2500-3000$ minimum
at least thats the price for a 3dsmax licence..

If you don't want to spend anything, need more than just a 30 day trial and don't mind putting in some severe effort, there is always POV ray.

Using the tool from here and POV (available here) you may be able to cook something up.

I've never tried though so it's no use asking me how and I'm not even 100% sure they'll work nicely with the LFS exported meshes.

Worth a try if you don't mind some effort though.

Quote from ramtech :

$1000 ?
id say 2500-3000$ minimum
at least thats the price for a 3dsmax licence..

Yeah of course, but 3dmax is heavily over priced. Speaking personally I have a copy of lightwave, of which a full commercial version will set you back around 800 US.

So there are options, but like I said, they go well into the thousands (should have wrote instead of typing 1000 ).

I bought that to use as it should be used, not just to play around with low poly car models

same here about max

got... rhino, blender, lightwave, 3dsM, XSI, Cinema4D, Maya.. just to name a few..