CompuServe Thread

You'll be getting a lot of feedback from others on this issue, I'm sure <g> As for my stand on "advanced training" I have done many courses including university studies and when I thought about what exactly courses are, I came to the conclusion that I could do more on my own with a good well-written book than I could ever from a week/three year long course. Take for example "Inside 3D Studio", this book is written by three experts in 3D Studio and you will find many hints and tips that you will never get in a course. I consider a book a way for these experts to give me all their knowledge when I want it and how I want it and how many times I want to redo it. A course can never give you this. I am a self-taught 3D Studio user, I have never attended a course, though this forum could be considered a virtual classroom of sorts. I have simply read the manual and the tutorials and bought "Inside 3D Studio" and then, and this is most important part, spent hours working with it. The most important thing is to spend heaps of time with the package, since you can only gain this experience by actually doing something rather than hear someone else talk about it in a lecture. So my opinion is, if you have the drive and the will, I'd suggest you dig into some of the quality books on the software and stay tuned to this forum. As for the package itself, 3D Studio in my opinion represents the best quality/price ration animation and modelling package on the market, workstations included. With the announcement that 3D Studio will be ported to Windows NT, the package is and will still represent the best tool for the long-run. If you want hard statistics on how many people use it and for what purposes I'm sure other people could fill you in. I do know that 3D Studio is the most used package for game developers, even here in Paris. Since you have never used 3D Studio I'd suggest you buy 3D Studio Release 3 since this is very complete and having a good understanding of this release will set you up for the future versions. Will it pay off in the long-run? This all depends on what you intend on doing with the program. For a hobby it is a *little* expensive, so I'd suggest cheaper products, but if you want to do high-quality production work you can't get better. I may sound like a 3D Studio junkie but this is my experience and not my fantasy. Mind you, I have fallen desperately in love with Fractal Design Painter so maybe I am in too deep <g> David "Tell it like it is" Gould