If you are interested in 3d animation:
Get it at www.blender.org for free.It's free becuase it's still software that is under construction I think.It's not cracked software..this is legal.
Powerful 3d software.

Blender is open-source software that's been in development since the 90's. I love it. LOVE it. I used it to develop several games on weather.com. Just for building the models and stuff.

It's very powerful and is pretty competitive with the high-end software. The biggest challenge is the learning curve. The interface is insane - since it was developed in Europe, the key-commands and the overall interface is unlike anything else on Windows (OR Macintosh). Also, as soon as you've started to get a handle on the basics, they come along and release a new version with more improvements. ALL FOR FREE, but the downside is that you really have to stay on top of the software to get good at it.

Here's a link to the gallery - this is some amazing stuff. But it's not just for modelling.
http://blenderartists.org...iew/15/34/

You can also do animation. THe higher-end 3d software is usually dedicated to one or the other.

Here's one of the few things I ever managed to finish - just trying to get the gestures and mouth to line up.

Hi beauhall!

That was cool!Great animation!Cool that you do that!
I think blender is dutch.
One time I could get a job but they said I had to work with Blender instead of lightwave.
I stuck with lightwave.
But I believe if you stick with blender and all their updates it is just as great.
They have great particles too.