"I am learning the ins and outs of Carrara 5, which attracted me because of its feature set,its price, and because it is Bryce-like in a lot of ways." Yes Carrara and Bryce have a lot in common thanx to "metacreation" who edited them. Concerning Blender, that's quiet easy for the moment I've learned Vulcain at school, didn't you? lol , no, I've simply followed a tutorial that give the bases of what you should know to use blender. ;-p