Hi GreenHawke,

I got bit by the Carrara bug because of the 3D Artist magazine, I was able to upgrade for an insanely cheap price, the current version I have is Carrara 6 Pro and hope to upgrade to 8 Pro eventually.  I've been doing the same things you are asking for, which is to watch the free tutorials on VTC, experiment within the program itself, ask questions here and just dive in and do stuff and see how they turn out.