I downloaded Blender when I was working in Japan since we didn't have any 3D software. I couldn't figure it out. Plus my computer couldn't handle it. It does seem pretty amazing, especially since it's free. But the learning curve is super steep. I hear good things though. I should try it again.

I used blender for dealing with .obj files and exporting them to other formats but other than that no, I havent rendered or modeled in it.

Well, I might as well post the links that I found most helpful. Maybe it will help some other people learn the software. It's actually quite amazing what you can do with it.

1. I would have never given Blender a shot if it wasn't for the following video tutorials. It makes the software very easy to learn, though it took over a month to go through all the videos:

http://walkercreations.org/blender.html#Neal%20Hirsig%20Video%20Tutorials

2. The Blenderartist forum has also been very helpful. People there actually respond to questions and offer methods of achieving almost anything in Blender.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/

3. A place to get some decent 3D Blender objects:

http://www.katorlegaz.com/3d_models/index.php

4. A good lighting tutorial. Lighting is the most difficult thing to master in Blender, but practice and experimentation really do help:

http://www.machrids.wz.cz/blender/index-en.html

Anyway, just thought I'd share these in case anyone else wanted to learn how to use it. If anyone else out there has any other great links, please post them. I'd be curious to find other helpful sites.

I only ever really use the game engine which is pretty fun to experiment with.

first rendering tool ive ever used, didnt seem hard to use at all, just gotta remember all the random keyboard shortcuts since a lot of them are hard to find in the menus (or dont even appear in the menus)

are the professional ones (3dmax, etc.) a lot easier to use? i know that the renders from the professional ones are typically better quality

i tried it once. i found it to be a bit clunky.

then that was about 4 years ago when i was still rendering using cinema4d.

thanks i just got it to do some free photo realism with sketchup models on my mac using the luxrender plugin. havent been able to figure it out.. might ditch it for a better ui