Okay, I bit the bullet and decided that I should really start moddelling. After research I settled on Carrara mostly because of the money factor, but also becuase many comparison reviews said it was easier to learn than some of the other more expensive packages. Bearing in mind I have never made a 3D Model, save minor constructions out of booleans in Vue, what Carrara tutorials would you guys recommend to the novice to get started. Any other advice you can give for a starter like me would be appreciated. Best wishes and thanks Jody

You can check out the backroom here for tuts and the Eovia website has a section on Carrara "Support" that includes a great page of tutorial links. The best piece of advice I can give you is just to play with the program. Don't sweat doing anything "meaningful" (i.e. for a client or job-related) for a few weeks. Just "doodle" with the program. make some simple meshes in the Vertex modeler. Don't start with faces or such. Just get used to the new tool you have now. Before you know it, things that stumped you will make sense. One afternoon, I made dozens of spheres and each one had a different shader that I created by scratch. That's how I "grokked" how the shader tree works. The bench tutorial in the manual for the Spline Modeler is a good one to work through. hth

I am intending to use it for inanimate objects, furniture, computers, gizmos and weapons etc. But yes, I intend to play quite a bit. Thanks for the advice for the links, I'll mooch around the bcakroom here. best wishes Jody

Another good start is to open up several of the models that come with the content CD and jump into the parts within the model rooms. Helps to see how they are constructed.