I think Blender is still free. I'm not an expert on either program, but Blender seems to be very useful/powerful and easy to learn for being free. 

http://www.blender.org/

Indeed its still free, and seems very feature complete.

I've only been looking at it for 20 minutes, the interface is very alien to me so far but im sure it will fall into place with time and practice. 

of Max nor Maya. I have older versions of both on disk but haven't bothered to install on this system as Blender suits my needs. Blender is easier to use than any of the previous versions of Max, and the tools set is modern enough for what I want to do with it.

There is a learning curve with animation, but modeling is easy. I'll give you a quick lesson now that will be useful in 90 percent of what you do in Blender.

See that cube up in the middle of the screen at start up? Notice the interface beneath, it says object mode on the menu bar. Press the tab key, now it flips into edit mode. Press the little hand that you see on menu tab. Now the green and arrows surrounding the cube are gone. I get rid of these first thing for no other reason than they annoy the fuck out of me.

Look farther down the menu bar, and you will see a triangle. Press that, and you are now in face mode (vertice manipulation is the starting point in edit mode). Now press your alt key down and at the same time press the left mouse button. The view point rotates around now. Play with it until you get a good view of the top cube face. Now move the cross hairs over to the face, press the right mouse button. It will highlight that face. Press the E key (for extend), and then you can move the mouse up and down to extend the new poly you have created. Pressing Y, X and Z will alter the direction of the extension.

Other buttons that are useful, 's' for scale, 'g' for get and 'r' for rotate, and space bar menu-ed options. Master these functions and the work flow will flow.

To manipulate the perspective use the 1, 3 and 7 keys, and you will get top, front, and right views. CTRL key + 1 or 3 or 7 will show you the back face of each of those perspectives. The other numbers have similar functions worth exploring.

CTRL + alt + LeftMB will allow you to zoom in and out. CTRL + Shift + LeftMB will allow you to slide the screen like a sliding bar. 

(Sorry for the lame attempt at a joke. Was spoilt be the other guy and blah)

A few minor things I noticed:
There's a portal issue (two missing faces) in the lava near the lower SNG.
Some misaligned textures: lava hole (Quad), blue light trims. It would look better if the textures on the 45� faces were scaled to 0.75, though it would probably mean too much additional work to make their edges fit with the adjacent ones.
There's a hollow space under the upper RL.
Not really necessary, but what about sky textures behind the teleporters to remove bullets?
I like the way the Quad is placed, it's much better than before - reduces the chances of permanent Quad rape. 

just about gotten this badbwoi to the beta stage and could use a couple of volunteers to steer it in the right direction. only needs a fullvis (which i'm gonna do tonight)

http://isoterra.co.uk/stuff/e2m5/e2m5rmx.htm

(as you can probably tell from the screenies it doesn't follow the original too religiously, but the base layout is there) 

Ijed Im working on yours 

i was going to add... if anyone fancies volunteering then let me know what email address to post it to. 

dan.naumovATgmail.com 

a bit Insomnia.

Sorry, but can't test.

Look forward to the map though. 

oh god yeah. The original is one of my favourite original maps, and that looks amazing.

Not testing though :) 

click my nick (!) 

looks fantastic! 

 

I will test - my listed e-mail address is the one to use. 

are you critiquing my texture alignment under the lava? 

here is a small botdemo
http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_netquake/frogbot_lundm1g.7z 

rj, those shots look pretty bad ass :) i like your use of trim and the semi-circlular room (top right shot) looks sweet 

fankoo people :D

jago, sielwolf, lardarse.. email on its way :-) 

Btw, you'll need DarkPlace to view my firstrun demo. Hope that isn't too much of a problem. 

Lovin' the look of that rj! Should be interesting to compare to the original :)

Some more of my UT3 DM map http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/4326/attachmentid6.jpg 

Yes, it's a place players can and do reach. I meant some of the rivets on the slanted edge of the hole. 

no clue what I am doing whatsoever: http://jago.pp.fi/images/UED.jpg 

That red brick wall is the staple. 

Hey, looks like a start. To something. :) 

Run with it. If nobody ever did nothing would ever get done.