Anyone do 3d rendering?

[enwar3]

hey, does anyone here do 3d rendering (bryce 5, worldbuilder, maya, etc.) cuz it looks fun and i wanna try, but is it really hard? like, do i need previous experience as an artist or w/e, cuz i dont wanna go out and spend 500$ to find out i cant do it..

 

[Czar]

first of all, stay clear of bryce and poser... they are not propper 3d programs

dont know about worldbuilder

but maya, 3dsmax, xsi, lightwave, all good

check out cgtalk.com for more info

 

[gentobu]

I would recommend Lightwave. To me it was the easiest 3D package to learn. It has an exellent modeling program and its renderer produces great results right out of the box. If you are actually planning on buying a program I would highly recommend that you try out the demo versions of ALL the programs you are considering so you can get a feel for the different types of work environments each program offers. I took a semester of 3D animation and the class required that I use 3D studio max. I know that 3D Studio is a great program, but I just could not stand the workflow of 3D studio, so I ended up doing all of my modeling and rendering in Lightwave and converting the mesh files to 3D studio format to turn in. Anyway, my point is that it would suck if you bought Maya (~$1600 I think) because all of the movie studios use it, only to find out that you hate the way the program is setup, or its to complicated, etc.