Oh, I'm quite used to learning shortcut keys...Quark XPress had quite a few and frankly, if you didn't learn the shortcuts in a production environment, it was gonna be a slow go for you. Having said that, I don't think I've ever used a program with so many shortcut keys as Blender...lol. Quark's took me awhile until I had them down and that was from using the menus and always looking at the shortcut listed beside it...lol. After awhile they sink in no matter what you do, even if you aren't trying to memorize them ;o). I was just curious as to how long it takes until you can get around in it comfortably in most folks experience. I learned Wings very quickly (as well as it's shortcut keys, which I use exclusively), but there isn't nearly the functionality in Wings as in Blender. Blender just seems to go on and on and on...lol.

I was intending to start with 2.49 as I've never had much luck with beta and dev versions - including Wing's current dev. Buggier than an anthill (for me) and I get frustrated quickly. I was actually playing with K3D for awhile - I love the functionality and what you can do with it, but it didn't have native obj export and it was buggy as well. But it was closer to Blender than Wings is ;o).

Wish me luck. I'm a little overwhelmed with the program right now. There's just so much to it that I see a very steep learning curve ahead. I learned to use Quark Xpress in a week though while I worked for a commercial printer, so who knows?...lol.

Laurie