Well, depending upon whom you ask everything is different because of each situation being unique. I started out liking to do digital painting back in my days with Commodore and used the early paint programs for the Amiga later on. Being a programmer I got into making sprites for computer games, but hated it mainly due to the limitations of the technology back then. I did not even get into 3D art until several years ago.

Now, the difference is, the internet changes everything. People can not only get books to learn from, but advanced video tutorials that are quite detailed and even on-line internet video chat room courses that are certified. You can get Apple, Microsoft, Sun, etc. official certification courses straight from legit universities. I think the key is that learning in general has changed whereas before all this internet explosion you were much more isolated and limited.

Now, it's almost a requirement that companies have some sort of major support plan for their product for users to learn them and keep those sources fresh and current. You have excellent sites like lynda.com that covers many subjects, not just 3D art. As for 3D specific, there is just much more of a user base group out there now more than ever which means more material to learn from combined with a wide variety of ways to do so (Video Tutorials, Books, Official Forums, etc.) Companies like Maxon, Luxology, Autodesk, etc. all have much more documented ways of learning their tools now and the user base expects them too.

So I think you are seeing the results of many years to get us to the point of people being able to learn much better, faster and more efficient just about any software program they choose rather 3D or others.

Jeff

Development on: Mac Pro 2008, Duel-Boot OS - Snow Leopard 10.6.6 & Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit, 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon , 10GB 800 MHz DDR2 RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT.