Cheetah3D - 5.1

The user interface is highly modal, which is a bad thing, but show me a 3d package that isn't initially confusing. Once you're over the extremely small hurdle of the modality, everything else is extremely easy, intuitive and well laid out. From the end of the market I can afford, I've tried this, Carrara and AC3d — this blows the other two away and I highly recommend it. It's probably worth three or four times the price.

I've been using Cheetah3D for 3 months now and I have found it to be a very accomplished piece of software. I had looked at other 3D applications for the Mac and also tried a few. I have to admit, the big selling point of Cheetah3D was the price ($99).

Since buying Cheetah, I've shown it to quite a few people, and they're amazed at the quality of renders that it creates. Even people who use 3D Studio Max have commented on the power and render quality that it offers.

Probably the only one thing Cheetah3D is lacking at this stage is simply support. There are only a handful of tutorials out there at present.

That said, I would recommend this application to anyone looking for a 3d solution on the mac. For the price, you simply cannot go wrong.

In response to the previous poster, while I've not found a group command per se, you can drop all the objects in a folder object and achieve the same effect.

I've found the developer quite responsive. I wouldn't rail on a man because he doesn't/wont implement every feature under the sun.

I recently decided I wanted to try making a 3D game, so the first thing I needed to find was a 3D modeling program. After trying a few (very expensive) programs, I stumbled across this one. It's amazing how many useful features there are! Almost everytime I need a specific feature, I can whip out the in-depth documentation and find exactly what I want.

When I first started using version 2.1, I was experiencing intermittent crashes using the point slide and scalpel tools. Fortunately the developer was VERY responsive to my problem and sent me a new version which works perfectly!

My only complaints are that Cheetah 3D seems to be missing a way to "unwrap" selected polygons (for easier texturing), and any support for bones (although technically it isn't vital for what I'm making).

Overall I am VERY satisfied with Cheetah 3D. I use it all the time!

Just downloaded a 3ds from the web file and Cheetah was the only app that would open it, I converted it to DXF and imported it into VUE.

Other apps should do this, but they don't.
This is worth the cash, and it looks like the author is updating it frequently (I Hope).