I started 3d animation as an autodidact when I was 11 years old (now 24). I've spent over a year each in about a dozen different packages, with the majority of

I started 3d animation as an autodidact when I was 11 years old (now 24). I've spent over a year each in about a dozen different packages, with the majority of my time and effort poured into 3D Studio Max, Maya, and a little-known Mac-only package called Pixels:3D Studio (anyone else here use it, back in the day?). Just this past week, I've started on Blender. I've been following it loosely since the late 90s, but this was my first real go at becoming proficient. I first tried 2.49, but found it extremely aggravating. Moving to 2.5 was a tremendous improvement, making Blender's unusual workflow slightly more obvious, but there's the rub. Blender, in its origins, was designed with a very different set of basic interactions than the leading 3d animation packages. In time, as they've added more features, they've slowly moved the experience to be more in-line with Max and Maya, but these alignments apply pretty much exclusively to the newer, high-level features. The core interactions for moving/rotating/scaling, viewport movement, selection, and other "basics" are completely different. If anyone else is just picking up the program, I'd encourage you to share any good resources or tips you've found for overcoming the initial grind. Here's what has helped me most: Take notes of all the keyboard shortcuts you encounter. Sure, there are existing lists and cheat-sheets, but writing them out has really helped me memorize them. As I'm following the BlenderCookie videos, I watch for the interactions I don't yet know and immediately jot down the details. Don't forget, many of the commands are highly context-sensitive.