What software should I buy?

My personal preference would be to buy a copy of Lightwave 3d from Newtek, or failing that Inspire from the same stable. Lightwave is a superb all round package that is used by a wide variety of media companies. Some strong points of this app are its polygon modelling tools, TONS of plugins as standard, metanurbs, particle systems, morph gizmo, etc, built in bones & IK, and superb render quality.

If you like cascading menu systems and layer upon layer of fold down menus, then get 3ds Max from Kinetix. It does have plenty of animation tools, and is used by lots of games companies, but I find the interface completely at odds with the freestyle way that I like to work. If you are a techno type, you will probably prefer this one. It does cost somewhat more than Lightwave though, and to get the amount of plugins that Lightwave has will double its price easily.

SoftImage, Maya, Alias Wavefront? If you are even considering these packages, then why are you reading this?

If you have no money, try getting hold of a second hand copy, of an older version (4 for instance). Otherwise, still treading the legal path, you could do worse than to investigate ray tracers such as PovRay. There are a number of shareware modellers available for this neat free package, such as Moray, and PovLab.... (see the links page).

Another nice little package, which is often overlooked is Imagine. You can download trial versions from The Impulse Web pages (see links page). It comes in DOS and Windows versions. Version 4.0 for DOS was given away in the UK as a cover CD, so you may be able to get a free version if you look around.

Another pretender to the Lightwave throne at the moment is Cinema4d XL from Maxon in Germany, or from HiSoft in the UK. This App is blindingly fast, and a very good renderer. Animation tools are superb, and spline/nurbs modelling is very good. In fact, the only downside to it that I can see is that it doesn't have Lightwaves polygon modelling tools (yet).

What about books?

Get a copy of Dan Ablans's book, 'Inside Lightwave 5.5'. Or for that matter ANY of the 'inside' series are good buys.

You can get them from Amazon.com for around $50 (Yes I know I am from the UK, but trust me, it works out cheaper to buy the thing from the USA).

So, I bought Lightwave, and the books, but I need more help

You could do worse than to download the 2 help files from the files section (funnily enough), although quite old, they do have lots of tips. The other thing you MUST do, is read the news groups at alt.binaries.3d.lightwave and comp.graphics.apps.lightwave If you are a pirate though, watch out, they know where you live!

What do you think of the Cel Shader in Lightwave?

It looks pretty good I suppose. You will definately like the super cel shader in Version 5.5 of Lightwave, but for my needs the simple version suffices. For comparison between the different types of shading, and having spent exhausting minutes researching this and setting up scenes, I bring you the good ship 'Crop Circle' from III-Soft, resplendant in her not quite as good as thos things on Babylon5'ness.

	Right then, this is a normally shaded model, with the usual generic textures. All is well, and if we make it move fast enough, no one will be any the wiser.
	This one has the normal gamut of textures, but the shading model for the main textures has cel shader applied from the surfaces dialog. Things are starting to look a little more flat.
	Now the same thing, but with cell look edges applied from the objects dialog. Now it is starting to look a little more hand drawn, or at least, airbrushed. Careful use of lighting pays off with cell shader, and the motto seems to be 'keep it simple'.
	For the final shot, I have rendered using quick shade instead of realistic. I think this looks a lot more convincing as a 'cartoon' than the shaded versions. Needless to say, I am not an expert on this. I don't even like Manga/Anime that much. One side effect of losing the textures, is of course no decals, but you need not use quick shade. I am just cutting corners here.

If anyone has any tips to add here I will gladly use them.