Hi, Ive been looking at some of the stuff on the site and I have become interested in making models for source engine games. I was wondering if anybody had some good tips for beginners such as, good places to find tutorials, good modeling software that’s easy to use and friendly to beginners, and wether i should start modeling in a different, easier game engine first.
If any of you guys can think of any other advice/hints please tell them to me.
I’d greatly appreciate that. 
If you want friendly-to-use software, chances are you’re going to have to buy some.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-check it out:
• models in sauce
• what you need to read
software you ought to look at
I thought Valve used XSI anyway…
yup. xsi mod tool is decent and free, but look at blender. free, open source, and it’s more feature-rich than mod-tool.
Mod tool is better since with the Valve plugins you can compile out of XSI directly into Source.
I would also suggest working with an industry-standard tool (Max, Maya or XSI) if you are serious about learning modeling; it will save you time learning their work flow later if you want to model in these tools, and there are usually more plugins for them as well which will help you out for Source/game engine exporting, and low-polygon modeling.
I use both.
Blender for modeling and XSI for exporting
Hey thanks! i really apreciate it!