Discovered modern 3d animation, with DAZ Studio 1.x, looked afar at Poser and have stayed with DAZ; it is for the most part free.
Nobody will ever see my first attempt at animation, I had to watch it, that should satisfy the universe. Now if I could find "The Death of Luv" that worked nicely. It is about three or four seconds long. Have put Animation as something to do into the future though, so I work on still images. I don't own Adobe, so I don't do much post work. Gimp is still got alot of functions I just look at.
I cannot tell you how much fun 'PD Particles' are to play with, and with a bit of thinking ahead you can make all manner of interesting backgrounds. I make a funky image, then shake and bake it with something like gimp, (in my case I use the highly advanced program called "Microsoft Digital Image Standard 2006"). Ok it is advanced way beyond its years if it were 1998 today. It does its job well and has an easy interface.
I work mostly in DAZ 4 32 bit right now. Worked with the beta of 64 bit for awhile, hated the new interface for awhile, then changed my mind. It is a good interface.
Bryce 7 pro is used alittle, not very proficient with it. And have Carrara 8, it is another proficency issue.
So goes, the longest render of all time, it was sorta black, and more black with a hint of black for detail, bet nobody else watched their computer render for three days for the color black.
So my formal training is trial and error, followed by "What does that command do? What does bifilter linear lighting mean any how? You do learn quick tho, or sometimes you render black. Anyone want to post their black render?
Now back in the day when apple two computers existed I dreamed of owing one. That is why my first computer was a MAC, it had 128 k memory, and 400 k 3.5 disks. And possibly still runs. My second computer was a 386 or so, went IBM/INTEL/Microsoft and have stayed in this computer camp. Well IBM, went to PC.
Well back in the MAC days I got a Drafting Program, and this animation thing, and a game, played the game, found out 128 k does not let you draft much, and that animation thing could barely do stick figures. Then many years passed and many OS's from Microsoft, well I should say I had a small background in multi media, and hand drawn animation. I just never learned to draw by hand. Thanks to many other talented artists, I can create and show you 3d Renders.
So Enjoy my Renders.
The7thCoyote.