Thanks for the thread and the explanation, that's extremely useful for us newbies! Especially since I got a task that's a little bit out of my league at work: do some 3D models for some of this Cannes real estate, while I'm glad if I can do something like an ice cream cone or a basic child drawing house...

Great job chedda, it looks quite awesome! Regarding the vegetation and fog, it reminds me of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game trilogy... Makes it feel quite comfy

I do dig it as well, this is definitely going to make my work easier. Thanks!

I do learn the basics by myself, but some outside help would have been useful.
I'd say that the main reason why people learn by themselves is because it's free, and they don't want to pay for lessons if there's a free alternative... Sure, it's far from being optimal, but for most, free beats optimal.
Now I could be interested, but once again, according to the price (and time zone).

I'll take a look, but well, I did manage to come up with something relatively decent (although it was a relatively simple model, a basic miniature house for a model train exposition)

Great, thanks for the recommendations, I'm starting to get used to Sketchup (I got it a while ago, but lost hope after a couple minutes, now I'm back at it) and it's as awesome as I wanted it to be, but the cluttered screen was definitely annoying.