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Added MONKEY IN DESERT. Comes with a skydome.

Modeled in Sketchup.
Ambient occlusion in Blender.
Exported from Blender into Maratis.

The thing I like about sketchup is that you can get precise elevations. They have a very nice set of terrain tools. The precision is the main advantage of sketchup. I need to test some other export plugins however.

The biggest advantage however is the 3d warehouse. It's almost a must for quick game assets. It's good for people who aren't modelers.

Everything from terrain to complex buildings to characters can be found there. Even found that Sponza cathedral there.

I'm still searching for other software that I could use with Marstis, and will add it to my post on Resources.

Basically I have a streamlined workflow now (without Blender breaking something) haha.

I can get diffuse, ambient occlusion, specular, etc maps into Maratis intact now.

I took off the baked shadows on this one though. I just have the baked ambient occlusion.

This is a quick Sketchup model that went through Blender.

I might be using Sketchup for basic terrain, and Sculptris for detailed terrain.

Going to make a better looking city level next (and these don't take that long to create in Sketchup so it should be soon)

Wasnt focused on mapping for this one, just speed

I think I forgot to save when I put the platforms in. I included the PRIMITIVES with this project, so adding a cube and giving it physics should fix it. I will see if I can turn that cube into a character.

I am having materials issues also. Only way I can get them in is an export from sketchup directly to maratis using assimp. Also Scuptris textures work using assimp also. I would like to use blender, but perhaps sculptris is the best way to go so far.

Glad you mentioned that. The first 3D program I practically ever used was actually Daz studio, mainly because It was free and Poser wasn't, and it was a quick way to get into animation without all the technical stuff as making your own meshes and rigging them and texturing them and all the other stuff.

Eventually I was able to afford Poser 6.

Daz, at first was light and neat. But poser was bulky and complex. Now Daz studio is very heavy and clunky, and just a pain to use. I have had Poser 6,7 and 8, And now Poser 10 is out (Poser 10 is awesome now!)

Even though Daz studio is free, they make their money from content. You get basic posing features, but you are going to need to buy the morph targets and such things to actually create your own unique characters. However there are several popular open sourced models that you can download into Daz/Poser.

One such character is the Antonia model which was actually modeled in Wings3D. (There is an antonia for daz also, but the one I am speaking of is called Antonia Polygon) Also there is a male mesh called ApolloMaximus. Completely free.

Also Daz requires you to pay for all the cool plugins as well. Especially the animation ones. In that case $25 for for poser 8 is actually a deal.

Also Antonia Polygon works much better with poser than daz studio.

I am thinking of using poser to make bvh animations and then apply them in Blender. But if I could afford Poser 10 I would surely get that with the new features it has. It has the pixar plugin for optimizing meshes now. It also has a better cloth simulator for clothing. And also the models that come with it are pixar quality. Also has a better physics system now.

I'm thinking of just getting Poser 9 though.

one more trick. I forgot to mention. If you select an object in object mode then activate the 3D manipulator(looks like red,blue,green lines intersecting), and then press [shift + S] it will bring up snapping options.

If you place the cursor somewhere you can snap the 3D manipulator(center of rotation) to the location of the cursor.

Also [shift+C] places the cursor at location {0,0,0}

I will try to figure out what is causing this (tried to get a model in maratis but the center was off, so it rotated weird).

The base mesh:
http://forum.maratis3d.com/viewtopic.php?id=735

Is a very low poly model that has enough vertices to allow you to easily line up key features of the model to an image of your choice without the hassle of moving thousands of vertices.

It also has a basic topology flow that when subdivided gives a pretty good base for sculpting (or for re-defining your topology quickly.)

By simply scaling and moving these few vertices, you can form the base of any humanoid character in a few minutes.

It has few enough vertices that you can add your own edge loops as well for more detail.

All the models made on that page were all made within an hour, and I could probably get the base of about 7 models in less than 30 minutes (guessing).

If I added too many edge loops myself, people wouldn't have enough freedom to personalize the features themselves.

Example:
The Upper arm has just four edges. The crook of the arm is defined by one edge loop (3 needed for good deformation, but you can add that if that is what your character needs). It is the same for the leg. The foot is just a face extrusion.

EDIT: I added 3 edge loops to the base mesh because I thought it was too basic not to have these to define the knees and the crook of the leg. I also split the upper leg into two parts to separate the hip from the knee. 

Basically, if you prefer to model your own figures (for licensing reasons or any other reason), this is just one way to get it done quickly.

I have searched for base models over the internet, and haven't found one that is customizable with decent topolgy at one subdivision level. They either were too basic or too complicated. Also the subdivisions give strange topological results. I think the best modeler for creating base meshes for  sculpting would be ZBRUSH (z-spheres), and this ipad app called 123d Creature (Although it only is good if you are going to sculpt).

This base mesh gives a good flow of topology when it is subdivided, few vertices, and easy is  to customize.

Added a Skybox