Hey all,

I'm interested in working with 3d graphics, and I figure getting POVRay 
is a step in the right direction, but what else do I need?  Any 
recommendations?

A couple of caveats:  I'm just looking to get my feet wet here, and, 
being a working Joe with no budget to spend on software, I'd especially 
like to hear about any relevant freeware.

Thank you for your time.

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Almost forgot:  I'm running a AMD K6 500 Mhz PC with Win98 and 256 MB of 
SDRAM,


If that's relevant, anyway.

Thank you again.

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The Damned Yankee wrote:
> 
> Hey all,
> 
> I'm interested in working with 3d graphics, and I figure getting POVRay
> is a step in the right direction, but what else do I need?  Any
> recommendations?
> 
> A couple of caveats:  I'm just looking to get my feet wet here, and,
> being a working Joe with no budget to spend on software, I'd especially
> like to hear about any relevant freeware.

That's kind of a hard question to answer specifically. I think the most
important thing you can do as a newbie is take the time to read through
the POV-Ray documentation and really learn what the program can do and
how to use it.

Once you get the basics down and you have a good idea what you want to
do with the program then you can start looking for resoures to help
accomplish those goals. I maintain the links pages at povray.org and
I've spent considerable time gathering links to free resources that
work with POV-Ray. Of the 900 plus unique sites listed in the collection
I'd guess 85% of those sites offer something for free. In most cases,
those resources that will cost you something, are clearly identified as
such with a discription for the link that says shareware or commercial.

http://www.povray.org/resources/links/

-- 
Ken Tyler

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The Damned Yankee wrote:
>Hey all,
>
>I'm interested in working with 3d graphics, and I figure getting POVRay
>is a step in the right direction, but what else do I need?  Any
>recommendations?
>
>A couple of caveats:  I'm just looking to get my feet wet here, and,
>being a working Joe with no budget to spend on software, I'd especially
>like to hear about any relevant freeware.
>
>Thank you for your time.
>

To get something that's not limited (the amount of time you can use it, if
you can save or how many you can save etc) in quality CAD will be difficult
to get for free.

The best values are student verions where most are under $500  (I think
www.Rhino3d.com is $199)

The best place to go is the cad user groups
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=comp.cad
and search thier archives for the free stuff

Posting the same question in the more active groups of
comp.cad.autocad
comp.cad.pro-engineer
compt.cad.solidworks
may prove productive.

Tony

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