Hello all, I'm interested in the 3d art for a long time now, but never know how and where to start. I downloaded a trail of Vue, but have no clue what to do with it. The tutorials I found up to now say nothing to me. How do you start? Is there a book for idiots on 3d art? :) Thanks, Sigal

Yes there are books about this, but first you need to know what you want to do in CG ( computer graphics), if you ant to do landscaping, then Vue is for you, and so is terragen, which comes as a freeware, so you can play with it and see for yourself if you want to go further, Vue is also fantastic, but it's not free, and there are no books, and then you have Bryce, which is similar to older versions of Vue, and there are books about Bryce, you can even find older Bryce versions for free. If it's more about general 3D, more focused on modelling, architecture, design and visualization, you'll need high end expensive software, difficult to master but very interesting, like Cinema4D, Maya and 3DS Max. They all have books about them, and there are freeware versions of Cinema 4D ( fully founctionnal older version) & Maya (up to date version, limited in functions and renders are watermarked.) Hope this helped.

Can only speak for myself, but the magic started with Terragen. It was free, it was fun and I loved the results. But, I wanted more. Trail led to Bryce, but I never warmed to the product. Ended up here and the rest is history. My advice, I guess, would be to start with a free program and see where it takes you.

A good start might be to look through galleries and find images you like - and want to do yourself. And then try to find out how they are done - mostly with tutorials in the beginning. But by asking others, more experienced people as well. Have you tried Guitta's site? www.guitta.net She has a lot of beginners tutorials there and a lot to look at.

Thank you very much, I will try to find this terragen and play with it. Thanks a lot for all the replys, will let you know how it goes :)

Terragen is a fantastic start, it was responsible for my interest in 3d, jsut like lingrif!

Attached Link: http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/artofadreamer/tutorials/3/sb1.htm

this may help an old tutorial I did, it shows HOW I built an image in both 3d and 2d :) Lot of the time it's about figuring out HOW to achieve an effect, and you pick stuff up form tutorials, posts etc by folk. You may not be able to achieve your end one way, but find another. Print out EVERY tutorial you can! very very helpful. Ask for help, post a render and info about what help you need. mess aorudn with programs see what looks cool. Come upw ith ideas write them and sketch them down in a notepad. I can't draw for crap lousy artist hehe, but if you have an idea, sketching it out with stick figures etc 1st really helps. "Man goes here, ruins here...evening, sword on ground here..." etc Save your work FREQUENLTY with incremental versions scene1, scene 2 etc, hellish when you lose work to a hard drive crash etc, make back ups! For a beginner I'd recommend Vue, Poser and Paint Shop Pro. hope that helps :)

Thank you very very much. It does help, and I can't wait to go home, download Terragen and start playing. I'm actually a photographer, also a hobbie of mine that started last year, and going very well, so I think I have a chance :) Will let you know how it goes