helicopterr

Try wings 3d. I heard great things about that program and I think I am going to switch from the Maya modeling package to that.

Maya is hard to use because it is so configurable. Plus, you have to create everything by yourself. I just made a vehicle program where I can create a vehicle rig with a specified * of wheels with a click of a button. If you do decide to learn maya, be ready to program.

I have posted on other forums about this but most effects companies uses maya as opposed to 3ds max because maya is more flexible when it comes to customization. For instance, say you want to a person to emerge from the convergence of the wet pigments on a watercolor painting. I don't know if max can handle that kind of thing but i sure can think of ca few ways where i can achieve that effect using Maya. P.S For people who argue that Day after Tomrrow was made using 3dMax, I have to say that the development team only chose 3dMax because it gives them access to Vray.

pixar uses their own animaiton program called marionette. I think Dreamworks uses maya with their own proprietary plugins. I think a good start would be learning maya because most professional visual effects companies uses maya because of its configurability for all kinds of jobs.

YOu might want to get a Gnonmon DVD on rigging if you want professional guidance. Go google gnomon school of design.

Maya 6 also has a nice feature where it can use photoshoop files with layers to act as multipurpose textures. So you can put several layers of textures (specular, color, bump) in one photoshop file

Blender is good and bad because it is free. Although it is free, it lacks a lot of features that other 3d packages like maya has. For instance, blender's animation package is mush less sophisticated than maya's. If you want to pursue your idea as a hobby, blender is more than enough, but if you are one of those people who has a very specific aethestic vision, you might be better off learning maya. P.S Blender does has a very sophisticated UV mapping feature that facilitates the mapping of organic surfaces.

You might want to get a Radeon 9800 pro. It was a top of the line graphics card before the xt's and Gt's came out but it is still good for playing games, 3d modelling and everything else you might want. It is also well within the price range you specified.