I'll save you guys a bit of trouble:
Quote
Sprinkled liberally around the board: **
POV-Ray (free), Wings 3D (free), Blender (free), Alias Maya 5.0 Personal Learning Edition (free - not full featured w/ watermarks), Softimage XSI Experience ($19.95 - not full featured w/ less obtrusive watermarks than PLE), Eovia Carrara Studio 3 ($399), Maxon Cinema 4D 8.5 ($595), Strata 3DPro 3.9 ($695), Eovia Amapi 7 Pro ($799), Rhinoceros 3.0 ($895), Softimage 3D 4.0 ($1495), Newtek Lightwave 3D 7.5 - soon to be 8.0 ($1595), Softimage XSI (no price quoted, but probably more expensive than Lightwave), Alias Maya Complete 6.0 ($1999), Discreet 3D Studio Max 6 ($3145), Alias Maya Unlimited 6.0 ($6999)
Start with Wings, Blender, Mechanisto, or basically anything free, and work with it until you figure out that you aren't getting the results that you want with it. For instance, if you want to make a complex shape that you simply can't make with the free programs. It's at this point that you want to move on to a more expensive program. The "Big Four" programs are Maya, 3DSMax, Softimage, and Lightwave. If you plan on going into a graphics career in the gaming industry, then 3DSMax is your best bet, because it's the most prevalent program. Maya, Soft, and Lightwave are more widespread in the movie industry. Strata and Carrara are still good, but basically choose a program that fits your modeling style, etc. It'll be a bit easier to choose which expensive program you want to invest in when you have the experience to know what you want from the program. Pretty much all of these programs are available for all platforms except for (to the best of my knowledge) Softimage, Rhinoceros, and 3DSMax, which are not available for the Macintosh.**
There are going to be other smaller third party pieces of software, but they generally use non-standard file formats, or are otherwise unsupported by more common packages.
Matrix
------------------
"Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought -- particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things." - Woody Allen
(url="http://"http://htf.mondominishows.com/valentine/main.asp?seed=7375&serial;=214877")The funniest valentine I've ever gotten.(/url)
(This message has been edited by what_is_the_matrix (edited 08-08-2004).)