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Workstations For Poor 3D-artists
Peter writes: "Ace's hardware has written an 'article for the creative people, who are searching to build or buy an affordable number cruncher to run their favorite workstation application. Maybe you already have an Athlon Thunderbird/XP and you are wondering if a dual Thunderbird/Athlon XP workstation might make sense for you. Or you might be interested in an affordable dual Athlon MP 1800+ workstation.' Included are benchmarks based on almost all available 3D-animation packages."
Ok, this isn't a troll... Many graphic artists uses Macs, as most of us already know. They learn how to use Macs and to use the Mac versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, Painter, etc. I don't see many graphic artists gravitating towards the iX86 platform. I think they would prefer to stick to Macs, even if it is a slower, more outdated machine, because it is what they are used to. Just like many M$ users stick to Winblows, because they are used to it, even though Linux or BSD would be better. Just my 2 cents.
I bet this is not "First Post."
Cheap box for 3D artists?
What about cheap software for 3D artists?
(BTW - IANA3DA, but I'm pretty sure that all 3D software for modelling and such is mucho dinero)
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
You probably haven't checked the price of those 3d tools lately ... the only one in my pricerange is povray ...
;-)
... ;-)
We're not gonna copy those tools illegaly now are we ?
And btw, 3D studio 4 (the dos version) has a lot of possibilities and renders nearly real-time on an athlon 700
Life is about to get real interesting. The MPX chipsets - dual socket A support are rumored to hit the channel this week. While the tyan board had got a lot of positive press, I am really looking forward to having options from Abit, Asus, and a few others.
The original MP board needed a special power supply (due to the vid card specs) - but sounds like all the new boards will use a standard ATX PS. More important, there is a real good chance the price for the non-scsi variant might drop from ~200 to something closer to ~180 or 150 (hoping here...)
I know I have everything but the board, cpus, and heat sinks orded and waiting. Lets go!
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Out of all of the 3D Animation packages they got their hands on, they forgot 2 of the most important ones out there.
Softimage|3D and Softimage|XSI.
Those two give Lightwave, Maya, and 3D Studio MAX a run for their money, considering they're the modeling environment used by most all major CG Effects studios out there (coupled with either Mental Ray or RenderMan).
Yikes. You might want to consider changing the title of that story. I jumped all over this story when I thought it was about poor-skilled 3d artists ;)
--The space between my ears was intentionally left blank--
Man, that's nothing. A really good 3D Modeller can make a cheap PC using nothing more than $20 worth of clay and a few chisels.
The best part? You can usually find free Cyrix chips in most PC Repair trash bins.
------
Let me give you the lowdown
Where's Hash's Animation Master? This is an app that was written to be "3d for the masses" yet I don't see it highlighted in the article.
For shame - how could you look at animation for the low-end and not include A:M?
Considering the parent to this post was marked "intersting", I think "paranoid" would be a more accurate description.
... if not then your PC manufacturers are shafting you.
... it's the same FUD that holds people back.
If you are blinkered enough to follow the mighty chipzilla instead of AMD in 2001 for desktop performance then you need to smell the coffee or at least try a fair comparison.
Yes, your P4-optomised build of the kernel will scream, but when I go out and buy 3d tools to run on top of a micro$haft operating system I can't just go recompiling the application to fit the specific hardware it's running on, and that usually means it's much faster on an Athlon by default.
And Athlon-based systems should be *much* cheaper than their Intel counterparts
The sooner people start realising the desktop processor market is about more than Intel then the sooner people may be ready to consider more than one desktop operating system
Hmm, maybe I just fell comatose for the press release, but as far as I know there are no dual Athlon XP boards out there. From what I understood, that was the whole point of the Athlon MP: multi-processing capabilities.
Povray can work on 386. Blender can work on Pentium. Why could poor artist need (dual) Athlon for modelling? Poor drivers should consider buying Ferrari?
I love all that clever people who buy Pentium4 becouse they want to learn programming .
I'm not sure about you guys, but I noticed a really subtle pro-AMD bias in this article. For instance, the banner ad on the top of the page was for the new Athlon XPs and linked to AMD's page. And the author gave Intel a few token references, and then completely ignored them in the benchmarks.
The author performed benchmarks in a number of major 3D applications, and in all the AMD chips absolutely rocked: If you have a problem with the methodology, or feel that it isn't telling the whole story, then post your own site (that's the beauty of the net). I think it's fairly obvious that putting an ad for a Xeon chip on an article where it was pummeled probably doesn't make an awful lot of sense.
Well, as a very satisfied Pentium 4 owner and a somewhat satisfied Athlon owner, I can tell you that if you're serious about getting work done (not just overclocking your Unreal box), you'd be best off going with a P4
Let me get this straight: You refute an article that is packed full of actual metrics by saying that it's biased, and then you say that people should get a Pentium 4 if they're not going to "overclock their unreal box" (again an absolutely absurd supposition given that we're talking about an article where the AMD trounced the Intel chips in something much more serious than "overclocking their unreal box").
My Athlon had some heat and manufacturing issues (this is my second chip because the first one was DOA), and really isn't any faster in the real world than my P4.
The absolute definition of FUD. "Uh, sure the AMDs are faster, but they have heat and manufacturing issues!". Whatever. Metrics are all that matter, and the metrics in the industry say that the power consumption of upper end Intel's and AMDs are very similar (hence similar heat), and that major manufacturers have roughly equal DOA rates with both chips. The metrics also say time and time again that the "real world performance" of the AMDs are often faster than the Intels.
In fact, having rebuilt my kernel with the new Intel compiler, the P4 just screams and leaves the Athlon in the dust.
I see. Again please tell us when you've put up a site and posted some benchmarks with your platform and methodologies, because as it sits it sure sounds like a bunch of bullshit.
I'm going to shoot in the dark here and make a wild guess: You ran out and bought yourself a fancy new Pentium 4, spending top dollar to be the top dog in the tech arena (of course not doing any research), but now that you have your new purchase you're a little more sensitive whenever you see performance benchmarks, and everytime you see another review that shows the Athlon dominating it just burns at you, so here you are with your "real world" experience. Bullshit. I highly doubt you have an Athlon whatsoever.
I am not biased whatsoever, and if Intel comes out with something that is competitive with the XPs at a similar price then damnit, I'll be there. But I owe nothing to Intel, nor do I owe anything to AMD, so I lack "brand loyalty" and simply go for what is proven the best at the best $. If only more consumers were that way.
When I first read "workstations for poor 3-d artists" I thought great, finally a computer that recognizes my artistic shortcomings...
My observation as well. I can shave expenses on the workstation, but the OpenGL cards are murder on the pocketbook, equalling the cost of all other hardware.
But unless you're willing to fork out the cash, a GeForce 3 Ti500 would PROBABLY give you what you need, since it's polygon handling abilities are inline with the best of the pro market (though it only does a small part of opengl in hardware, and has a fraction of the ram).
This was why I paid keen attention to this article from last week.
Rich in imagination, poor of pocketbook, particularly this time of year.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You'd do well to check out Comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Look in the FAQ for more info on cheep or free tools.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I dunno, but decoding an MP3 while playing Unreal isn't exactly a punishing task for two 1.2GHz CPUs, and it certainly isn't one that offers numbers you can use to compare to other mobos.
I keep an elderly PCI Pentium 100 box around as router and to play MP3s -top sez mpg123 usually has less than 10% of the CPU at all times.
In fact, there's nothing in either Slashdot's article or Ace's that really helps poor 3D artists. This is what's keeping Slashdot's editors so busy, eh?
What's up with that?
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
Choices are getting slightly better with some free and/or inexpensive modeling tools.
The top of my list has to be Blender Creator which is a free (as in beer but not speech) and sports a very impressive features list.
OpenGL Renderer
Standard Polygon Primitive modeling (w/lattices etc)
Bez Curves
Nurbs
Multi texturing (up to 16 per object)
Texture UV Mapping
Environment Mapping
Bump Mapping
Spec Mapping
Catmull Clark Surfaces for nicely subdivding meshes
Bones and Armature system for character animation
Particle Effects
Global Illumination with radiosity capabilities
Super fast renderer
Very very low system requirements and compact size
Python Plugin Interface for extending Blender
Large and enthusiastic user base eager to answer questions
...and lots of other stuff I'm forgetting
speed bumps for Blender are as follows:
Absolutely bizarre (but incredibly efficient once you learn it) user interface
Limited import and export capabilities (import/export of DXF and VRML) although I hear that improving this area is their 'top priority' to fix
So if after trying a few of the tutorials you decide you like Blender do yourself a favor and pick up the Official Blender Guide. Chances are your local "mega mart type book store" has a copy and you'll save yourself tons of aggravation and time.
Course if you're just into mods for quake type games etc then you should try Milkshape ($20 last time I checked) but its windows only and I didn't particularly like the interface. One the bright side it can import/export just about any kind of format you can come up with.
Discreet has some freebie as well called Gmax which I've never tried mostly cos I despise 3DS' UI. Its supposedly a character designer / level editor for the mod community to play around with.
G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
Codewarrior benefits from SMP, as do typical "make -j " project builds under unices.
You are correct about the CPUs. Historically, AMD has been excellent about acheiving instruction set compatibility with Intel processors.
However, there is more to a system than the CPU. And chipsets for AMD processors are generally far below Intel chipsets with regard to stability - at least initially.
My beef with AMD setups is that VIA and SiS and friends generally turn out pretty shitty chipsets. Performance is usually fine, but it can take them several months before their drivers are up to par with Intel's on stability.
Maybe things have changed recently, but that has been my experience in the last few years.
Well, from a poor starving artist prospective, (and one who has had the terror/(privlidge?) of having to use numerous OS for graphics, the solution is quite simple.
Use paper. Saves time, saves hassle and pencils are only a buck a piece if you are going for the most expensive in the market... and Pencils don't need to be upgraded.
But seriously, I use a gig athlon machine with Debian installed, and I use the GIMP for most of my art stuff... and in all honesty, art takes patience... if you're modelling something and your machine is *that* slow, then go ahead, upgrade, but anything above 800 mhz is and 128 meg of ram can handle it... and the more ram the better. Maybe it isn't a processing problem afterall... ram helps too.
Any athlon would be a expensive paperweight without ram to back it anyway. (And cooling fans.. lots of them)
-- RJ
Well, these "metrics" you claim to trust so much also indicate that the IBM 75GXP drives have a "normal" failure rate. And we all know the truth about that, don't we?
You see this really is humorous: You see a Slashdot story with a couple of people saying that their 75GXP failed, and you're sold (obviously just like the AMD issue). I actually HAVE a 75GXP that hasn't failed, and I am prone to believing IBM that the failure rate is normal. Let me put it another way: I know lots of people who are sure that Honda cars are the biggest POS out there because they had a lemon that had 27 faults, but the industry statistics say that they're the exception, not the rule. If there was more than anecdotal evidence (or biased polling) that the IBM drives were unreliable then I would be extremely happy to listen and take action based on it.
which, by the way, you haven't even tried out
I remember back in the BBS days asking a sysop to remove a "CPU Speed Up" program that promised to "convert your 386 to a 486/66!". The Sysop refused claiming that lots of people claimed that it really did vastly improve the speed of their systems. It's called the placebo effect, and it's one of the biggest truisms about people: People are extremely unreliable metrics of anything, because most people go into an evaluation with preconceived notions. As such, I'll be a little more trustworthy of site after site after site after site giving methodologies and performance metrics that show the Athlon XP winning. Again when Intel comes out with a cost effective (meaning cost effective all around: Memory, MB, etc.) high performing chip then I'm there, but as it stands there is a clear winner.
It was nothing to do with affordable, cheap 3D workstations. It was about the latest and greatest x86 CPUs - and the latest and greatest, high-end software.
/. is a pretty sad statement about what has become of this once useful and interesting site.
There are better machines out there - SGI Indigo2s and Octanes with OpenGL (and more!) in the hardware, many decent Macs - all of which are more affordable 2nd hand than the wunderboxen on display here.
And if you're looking for a career in 3D animation/design, are you going to use some x86 toy, or would experience with what the rest of the industry uses be a bit more helpful in your career?
A vanishingly small amount of 3D work requires a fast CPU - it's about shoving large amounts of data around. It doesn't matter how many mhz your bus does - it's still a data bus, and it's inherently unsuited to this type of work.
Look at the Octane's Crossbar. Look at the O2s UMA architecture.
Apple continue to make the same mistake, and are going to cripple their G5 machines. Lovely fast processor, crap bus to the gfx, memory and disk.
And I just loved the way this compares the Shake results to a 4 year old Octane. Nice. I notice we don't see any playback information at high resolution - what's the point of fast render speeds if you can't *view* what you've just created?
Never mind that 4 year old Octane can be bought for a fraction of the price of the systems under discussion.
This was a truly laughable article that, while demostrating an understanding of consumer x86 toys, showed a clear lack of clue about 3D graphics needs.
That this article ever showed up on
I'm surprised we haven't see the Linux kiddies moaning about how the tests were run on Windows 2k.
How dare you bring facts into this - even going so far as to suggest others do the same!
For shame - what's left to argue when everything is "statistics" and "valid reasoning"?
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
fast cpu doesnt help it to be a fast workstation, without a pro graphics card, it is still a faster toy for animator.... but it could help rendering..........btw
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My VAIO, My Style ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A single P3, 512M RAM, with a GF2MX is plenty for running MAX or Maya fast enough for people not already employed by a high-end studio. You can model and animate to your heart's content, generating low-res, low-quality proofs as necessary. You don't *need* photorealistic, hi-res, 30fps proofs to get good work done. It's a luxury for the folks at Pixar.
Don't confuse the needs of an animator with those of final production rendering.
I've based a renderfarm on this little baby (Lightwave and 3DSmax), the only bad thing I can say about it is that with the new MP-X chipset around the block, it's kinda expensive (motherboard) compared to the price that competing products will probably have. Also the fact that you need to use ECC DDR SDRAM doesn't help the price tag when you multiply that by many nodes and trying to save every penny possible (for a single workstation it doesn't matter much though).
For the power it gives, it's still "relatively" cheap (especially if you're looking for a more powerful intel solution) and *STABLE* (stable being one of the most required feature for a renderfarm, with power of course). The TigerMP is a mature product, we don't know how the MP-X will perform or how stable the implementation will be (we can assume it's going to be good tho). But to do the job TODAY, I didn't see anything touching the XP1700/1800 + TigerMP combo for the price/performance/stability.
Still, the real power is going to be with the Hammer... that's a beast I can't wait for.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
wow you dont do much in computing power then do you.
:-)
povray renders 67% increase.
BMRT renders get a whopping $75% increase.
Heck I get a 50% speed increase on compiling anything on my lowly PIII850 SMP box. (I know I should trash it, it's almost 8 months old now.)
I see major increases by going SMP, but then I do things that take advantage of both processors. (BTW, make -j2 will speed things up nicely
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Um, what's XSI?
Reboot macht Frei.
Wakko Warner sez:
I ask because Linux is a very bad choice, if that's what you're planning on using. How many professional 3D packages are available for Linux?
The two most important high-end 3D packages are Maya and Houdini. Both are available, shipping now, in complete supported implementations, under Linux.
Every single high-end visual effects and animation facility is using Linux for render farms, and almost all of them are pushing it very strongly on the desktop. For example, Pacific Data Images (you know, the people that did Shrek) have completely moved over to Linux and abandoned their previous platforms.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
If you've got a Mac...
The Strata product is free. It has some disabled functions (for example: it only does single light sources), but it renders very nicely. POVRAY has a more difficult UI. RenderBoy is $25 shareware.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
The dual-BX boards might be fairly cheap, but there also rather dated, in that they've been discontinued for about a year now and Intel hasn't made a new processor that will work in these boards in a while either. The fastest chip that will work in a dual-BX board is the 1GHz PIII, which is quite a bit slower then most of the chips in the comparison article. The system itself is also limited to a 100MHz bus speed (assuming you don't overclock your BX chipset), as compared to the 133/266MHz DDR bus speed of the AthlonMP or the 100/400MHz QDR bus speed of the P4 Xeons. Combine that with lower speed memory, and the system just isn't in the same performance catagory at all.
In any case, the Dual-AthlonMP boards aren't really all that expensive. The Tyan TigerMP sells for a bit over $200, and there are a couple new dual AthlonMP boards coming up from a few other vendors that are likely to be cheaper still. For comparison, the dual P4 Xeon boards in the article, based off the i860 chipset, start at $550 and go up from there.
Now, as for stability, that's another question altogether. It would be real nice if it were actually possible to measure how "stable" a system is without requiring a few months of use. Unfortunately that isn't likely to happen. Intel boards have traditionally been very stable (and the 440BX chipset mentioned above is an excellent example of this, probably the most stable platform ever released for a PC), but even they have had more then their share of ups and downs recently. I think the fact that none of the major OEMs are selling servers based off P4 Xeons is perhaps somewhat telling that they aren't 100% certain about the reliability of new Intel platforms any more then they are about new AMD platforms.
First thing is, heatsinks are much larger today and probably have a much greater risk of falling off. Not to say that risk in itself is very high. Furthermore, the fact is that Intel does offer this kind of protection now and AMD does not. It's simply one area where the Intel chip beats the AMD, and makes it (to me) seem of higher quality.
I believe that recent AMD chips do indeed have thermal overload protection, though it does require the involvement of the motherboard (I haven't looked into it, but it could be that Intel is just the same. Anyone know for sure?). Nice feature, sure, but to call it a quality issue just seems silly : If they put a titanium case around the processor to allow it to survive 4000G impacts, would that be a quality issue or a unnecessary gimmick?
There are two reasons I'm using an Intel chip and motherboard: Stability, and RDRAM. I know everybody hates it, but some of the things I use are memory intensive and DDR RAM just does not compare.
Totally agree. Dual-channel RDRAM is expensive, but very fast. That solution scales too, doesn't it? (i.e. technically can't they easily make quad-channel, octuple-channel, etc.).
There is also Photorealistic RenderMan, JIG, the upcoming Softimage XSI. Softimage even showed a beta of XSI running under RedHat during SIGGRAPH 2000. There were rumors that Lightwave might also do a port but I don't know. Realsoft3D is also on Linux.
If you don't mind Unix, you might consider picking up a used SGI Octane. They're very fast, have multiple (4?) crossbars (instead of a bus), and very nice ones can be had for under $1500. For smooth animation, $1500 is very reasonable (and personally, I find SGI's and IRIX to be great machines).
There are a few ongoing Linux MIPS ports (though nothing solid and fully supported yet), but IRIX is very nice, and has been the defacto standard for studio graphics and animation until recently.
Just my $0.02
This seems like a silly question, but do any 3d programs use the videocard as a render processor. It seems the 3d video cards have a dedicated 3d rendering processor built in.
/// but setting up the vidoe card to do 1 frame every minute at a very high quality setting and then doing a frame grab.......
If you can get 90 + fps in quake
Maybe the cards can't handle this because there designed for games....
Blender has matured A LOT in the past two years. I'm not a regular Blender user, but I introduced it to a friend and he became quite attached to the thing in less than a month. The interface is extremely weird, but it really shines once you get to understand it. Its main purpose, I think, is to keep you focused on the work at all times, and with one hand on the keyboard and the other on the mouse, kind of what Macintosh or Linux do with their CTRL/APPLE+Left click interfaces.
;-)
One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the size of the program. It is hardly more than one Megabyte!!!!! and once you get to know how to use it, there's practically nothing you can't achieve with, say, 3dStudio that blender can't do one way or the other (considering 3dS's signature of around 300 megs, that's saying something).
Finally, for those interested, it's a free download in here: Blender site (no, I'm in no way associated with the company that makes it, I just think it's one hell of a product). Plus, there are a lot of tutorials at their site you can check out to sort out that freaky interface. (oh, and it runs on linux quite well, too)
Overcaffeinated. Angry geeks.
Try here: http://www.softimage.com/. This 'web' thing is amazing. You should give it a whirl.
Don't confuse the needs of an animator with those of final production rendering.
Hear, hear. For final production rendering, there's services like NetRendered that can take care of it for you. You don't want to run that on your own desktop, unless you don't want to use your desktop for anything else for a few days (depending on the length and quality of the animation).
The "industry" is moving towards Linux. There was an article about it a few weeks a go, btw.
A vanishingly small amount of 3D work requires a fast CPU - it's about shoving large amounts of data around. It doesn't matter how many mhz your bus does - it's still a data bus, and it's inherently unsuited to this type of work.
Bull shit. Ray tracing, for example, is purely CPU limited. On the other hand real-time animation is mostly limited by the graphics card.
Never mind that 4 year old Octane can be bought for a fraction of the price of the systems under discussion.
There is a reason for that. They are pathetically slow. Easily outperformed by a celeron with GeForce 2 MX. I know. I just took a graphics course at my university. Guess what? They will be replacing Octanes with Linux boxes soon.
That this article ever showed up on /. is a pretty sad statement about what has become of this once useful and interesting site.
That this post showed up on /. (and even got moderated up by clueless moderators) is a pretty sad statement about what has becom of this once useful and interesting site. I guess people are really gullible when they swallow any post that has words "crossbar" and "UMA" inserted out of context, but contains no information.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
I have done similar tests comparing SGI Linux boxes, HP Linux boxes, Octanes, Octane2s and my home built Linux box.
All tests were done under Maya 3.0 doing animation scrubbing on some average scenes.
The conclusion I came to was that the Octane2 was far faster than the Octane. This was a no brainer. The Octane 2 was a much needed improvement to both graphics speed and MHZ for the SGI line. The suprise was that the Intel based linux boxes were faster than the Octane 2.
This was accounted for by the raw MHZ needed by todays graphics workstations. The graphics card was being under utalized because the CPU couldn't push polys to the card fast enough. This was not because of bus speed but because of the way the software is setup.
Most animators want special controls over what they are animating. They almost never move a CV at a time, unless tweaking something. All of the CV positions are determined by a series of nodes of input. Each node needs to be computed. This takes lots and lots of MHZ.
Because the tests show that the "work" speed of a system is locked into MHZ, it is easy to tell where to put your money when buying a system. A home built system can compare to a highend graphics system when it comes to CPU power. There will be cases where a better graphics card will make some difference.
Also, not all animation software uses the second processor. Some will use it for rendering but not for the front end. If you plan on animating on the machine and rendering else where, you can again save some money. I prefer the second CPU because I have the habit of leaving Xemacs and Mozilla open when I am using Maya. A second CPU is a must for a render farm.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
I figure I will put this out there because it needs to be said. For anyone getting into 3D, this is the process that you need to take.
You need a computer, make it a x86 PC running windows 2000 Professional, this is the best way to go right now. Linux, Mac, SGI, are not options for you in terms of money and ease of use. A PC will be low cost and dynamic. If you already have a computer, there is nothing wrong with using that, unless you can't put more than 128 MB of RAM in it.
Put as much RAM in it as you can 128 will work, 256 will be comfortable and let you get into more complex projects, 512 will probably be more than you will use, but it isn't a bad thing.
Your processor speed matters, but if it can run windows 2000 you will be fine. Renders may turn out to be slow on a slow computer, but with enough RAM they will be slow and steady, and still allow you to get work done. If you can get a fast processor, good, if not, don't sweat it.
Get a good gaming graphics card. Go for a Geforce 2 MX or Radeon or a Geforce 3 if you can afford it. They will all work very very well. It will increase interactivity and minimize frustration.
Get access to broadband and use morpheus to pirate all the goddamned software you can find. Look for Lightwave 6.5b or 7.0, 3DS Max R4, Maya 4, Softimage 3D (rare), Softimage XSI 1.5 (rare), or Houdini (super mega rare). - (The magic five, 95% of studios will own at least on of these programs) Finding good 3D software for the Mac is very difficult, Lightwave and Maya are the two programs you should be concerned with, and Maya for MacOSX was just recently released and will be extremely difficult to find, if not impossible.
Look for Photoshop 6.0, After effects 5.0, and Painter (rare) to compliment your 3D software.
Get Sound Forge 5.0 and Cool Edit to mess around with any sound you might want.
Take the time to click every button in every program you have and figure out what it does. After you know the features pretty well start a project, if you are enthusiastic about 3D you will certainly have something you want to achieve.
Try to make it look good, but don't get frustrated if it doesn't. Completing something is much better than keeping your standards so high, you freak out and don't progress.
Reading is good, experience is better, make sure you have both read about animation and do as much as possible.
While you are doing all this, save up to actually buy the educational, or full version of the software, it is worth it. I am not just saying this so I don't look like an ungrateful pirate, I truly mean it, all of that software is worth every penny.
Don't believe any nay-sayers or egotists, this is the way to go. I know about Blender and other free projects, just avoid them, pirate, and save up for the real version of what you like best. The free projects won't be ready for at least 2.5 years, probably more. Blue Moon Rendering Tools is a very good renderer and is free, but works off of the Renderman standard, and it will be very difficult to get anything to interface with it.
And lastly, remember, take it further, take it further, take it further!
If you want to get into 3D, save this comment and make it a check list. Flame me if you like, but I know that this is the best path to take to enter the world of 3D and computer animation, it will take you where you want to go.
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