cheers guys, its been a while
(hope I'm not thread jacking)

Arran - keep up the good work, I've had a look on the forums every now and again and your work is getting damn good

Jay - I'm doing good thanks, hope you are too
The little one is due the 30th of this month so only about 2 weeks to go! Then it'll be the hard slog of no sleep and dirty nappies but it'll be worth it.
Hehe, I'm right up there with python now but mel still has some nice tricks in expressions etc that its fiddly to do in python. I need to get back into it in maya to be honest.

Steve - cheers You must be well happy to get the very latest versions to play with at uni. Hope they help when it comes to your phd work.
I'm contracting over your neck of the woods working near manchester airport on government and military stuff (flash and python based at the minute but as jobs come in we'll be using different things). Some of the guys here do 3D (3ds max) and I'd like to do some of that too but the programming is the big work at the minute.

cheers LauriePriest

Si

p.s, I can see why Autodesk has limited the student version to 14 months in one way (effectively meaning that they have to rebuy every academic year) but can see that its also counter productive in keeping hobbyists going after uni when they might be doing something completey different but still be interested in 3D.