OK, so I'm a dummy...

I've got to admit that I've never found a 3-D software program that made sense to me. I spent about a month trying to come to grips with Blender and I failed miserably. I could only do things that the tutorials said for me to do, and I could only do them exactly as the tutorials did them. For making my own work, I was useless.

Finally, I decided to spend time (for about the fourth time) with Google Sketchup, and I decided to get a book to walk me through it. I like books, and I like using books to learn something new. I went to the local B&N and started diving into the books that were available. It took about 30 minutes to come to a horrifying conclusion: I needed the "Google SketchUp 7 for Dummies" book in order to make sense of this software.

I've always thought that the "For Dummies" series of books were for people self-selecting themselves as idiots, and that getting one of these books meant that you would never actually become a useful user. This one book made me rethink the entire thing. Author Aidan Chopra does an excellent job of holding my hand through the learning process, but also provides a lot of tips and ideas that made me anxious (and able) to launch off into my own.

I've got a school project that's going to have some pervasive 3D work, and I'm glad I finally found a way to wrap my head around the problem. Now, if I can just figure out how to get these models imported into Max/Jitter, I'll be cooking!

[ddg]