Yep, the I/f is daunting at first but I remember feeling the same way with 3ds max when I first started using it. The best tip I read is that the controls are totally reliant on having one hand for hot keys and the other for the mouse, as you start learning all the keys it becomes very effective. I was also caught out at first by really simple things such as the fact you right click to select things and to be able to drag a selection you need to hit the b key to create a bounding box.

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Toolset: Blender, GIMP, Indigo Render, LuxRender, TopMod, Knotplot, Ivy Gen, Plant Studio.