My first 3D experience was when I bought a CD on a market-place in Tallin, Estonia, on a holiday trip. The CD was a very well made pirated copy of CorelDraw 7.0 (With the booklet and silver backside and a proper face (not printed on a laser/inkjet printer, but the real deal).

In this software package, there was a part called Corel Dream 3D.
I found out this almost a year after I bought the CD.

After reading (the stripped down) documentation on the CD, I started making spheres and cubes, and experimenting with raytracing and such, and that was when I got hooked on 3D.

Then I advanced on to RayDream Studio, wich was a MAJOR leap ahead, cause it had a timeline, and I could make animations!! [COOL].

After some friends of mine saw what I did, they suggested I should use 3DSMax (cant remember wich version they brought me) but it didn't seem to work, due to the fact that I wasn't using NT (wich I found out later).

In this period of time, I never had access to the internet, and was pretty much left to discover things on my own, wich I also did.

After some time, I got my hands on a (pirated) copy of 3DSMax R3, wich had no (little) trouble running in win98, and that was what really got me going.

Then, after reading some MAX tutorials and such, I came across some really neat 3D images and clips, wich was made my a new groundbreaking program called MAYA, and I leave it to you to figure out the rest

-DX-