I highly reccomend the VTC tutorial discs. I got it and ran through it a week ago. I reccomend it, if for no other reason than I feel the Carrara manual is the worst ever penned. However; I know that many have strong opposing views here.

The discs are, at times, childishly simple. For example: his exposition on the Vertex Modeler. He leads you by the hand as he explains each of the four shapes, loads one, then goes to the Properties Tray and shows you "Here are the number of polygons. Here are the number of vertices. Here are the..." There are times when I want to say "Yes! Yes! Get on with it!"

The compositing is a little loose at times. He'll be explaining something and the visuals have moved on to the next topic. So some segments will have to be watched over and over.

He frequently says "Speer" when he means "Sphere", and there are awkward pauses. I don't think he worked from a prepared script. A lot sounds like he was 'winging it'.

Still there are a lot of subjects, like Texturing and Layers, Mixers and Functions that are very good. Modifiers too. Bones and IK Chains get a lick and a promise. But on the whole, I'm glad I got it, and will be referring to it often.