Just curious if anyone else in the board dabbles in the 3D arts?

I dabble, but not too much need for it. I use Infini D for some animation, still art, whatever.

The member, Tommy Haupfear, and Brian (plasmaSMP) are 3D graphic artists.

I use 3d modeling extensively in my work. More recently I've begun animation, but that is SO time consuming... The bulk of my work has been with Strata 3d Pro and Bryce. Here are a variety of examples for your amusement (shameless plug: some of these are supposed to appear in a new textbook this fall, "Digital Media" by James Luciana).

http://tech.operaphilly.com/sets/trovatore/concept
http://tech.operaphilly.com/sets/trovatore/old
http://tech.operaphilly.com/sets/capuleti/sketch
http://tech.operaphilly.com/sets/perichole/sketch
http://tech.operaphilly.com/sets/werther/sketch
http://tech.operaphilly.com/sets/figaro/model
http://tech.operaphilly.com/sets/hoffmann/model
http://tech.operaphilly.com/sets/boheme/model

When I need to. I've worked in a number of packages on both Mac, PC and SGI systems over the years. The only packages I've never really touched except to check them out were Softimage and Strata Studio. I've worked in 3DS Max, Infini-D, Lightwave, Maya (and before that, Alias Power Animator). I know enough to get around so that I can put in graphics in my own projects but I'm not someone who totally loves 3D.

DV Garage (http://www.dvgarage.com) is a great community for 3D artwork in the DV realm. Very helpful tutorials on a number of techniques, and an active forum. They also develop commercial add-on products to help modeling, but there's plenty of free and useful content there.

I dabble with Lightwave. I have since 5.0 came out ( a few years now). I am VERY brand loyal so I go by the statement: 'If it can't be done in Lightwave, why do it?' I'm sure plenty of folks may disagree, but that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

LightWave is a very nice package indeed. I dabble with it every
now and then, nothing to serious though.

wow what a great response, I've worked with 3DSM, Lightwave and Truespace, and MAYA sure is appealing...but the price is just wow, although I'm sure it's worth it.

Maya has dropped in price in response to many people not needing the huge toolset that is really only used for high poly modelling (TV, film) and animating.

I believe there is another version based on Maya that tries to compete on the lower end but I forget what exactly.

Actually the price isn't bad at all. I recall when v1.0 and 2.0 came out they were around 14k-16k for a 1 user Unlimited license. And Maya complete was around the price of what the Unlimited version costs now.