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I have to make some 3d expo booth designs. I worked with 3D Max before but I am not sure if that's the right tool for this kind of thing. Also I was not very good at it.
Some examples:
Is there a good and easy software for this kind of 3D design? Where can I find library resources for this kind of things?
Bonus points if the software is open source or freeware!
I think SketchUp would be a very good fit for this. It is very beginner friendly and the basic version is free.
A really handy feature that would be a benefit for this specifically is the prefab library that's included
You won't have to spend hours modelling a chair/counter/whatever if you can find something close enough in the 3D warehouse.
The built in rendering isn't anything to write home about, but there are many plugins available to produce a much more polished look
TFTUBE Management System, a trade show booth design software of Hawk Display. http://hawkdisplay.com/NewsView.asp?SortID=7&ID=139 
Sketchup pro plus a few of the more useful plugins and Vray for Sketchup = top notch, fast easy and no worries about uvs. I've been designing booths with it for 3 years now. I come from a maya background and I still use it heavily but I find that sketchup is the fastest at least imo to create tradeshow designs especially if creating custom booths. I work for a company that does a mixture of custom designs and designs using standard bematrix frames or a mix of both. I took their 3ds max bematrix library converted it into a sketchup library and it's done me well.(They offer a sketchup library but the frames are nowhere near as accurate as the 3ds max ones.) I highly recommend looking into sketchup. my portfolio has some designs I did last year. josuer3d.com
Plugins I use are: round corners, select n isolate, pushpull, curvizard, shapebender, make face, escalate_displace and taper maker.
Sketchup also helps a lot when design custom pieces sent to CNC. Plus you can export your models into a pdf doc so if using a black and white line view of your model you can create some really beautiful build docs and graphic template files. You can be as detailed as you want. True to life measurement tools. It just works well.
Using "3ds Max" will be more helpful for you but you have to learn using Max by youtube or any professional course
3Ds max is best for stall design. You do not need to learn advanced modeling skills, you need to know only basic modeling, texturing, lighting and rendering skills. There multiple tutorials available for this purpose on internet. You will get very good speed & rendering output through 3ds max. There are also free 3d models websites available on the interne, which can be used in your projects for free. Also there are stalls and stall components available on the internet. See this link: Download stalls Also this: Reception desks download This models can be used in your projects. You can download max files for stalls and reception desks. You can learn 3ds max and v-ray settings for the stalls from the files downloaded.
