Redrobes - Thanks a tonne! I know what you mean about the interface. I opened blender once and exactly once, thought "I am way in over my head" and promptly closed it. But you're right that a more powerful program would produce some nicer results: Sketchup's biggest weaknesses are definitely the absence of manipulatable lighting (you only have one light source: the sun, and it produces only very basic hard shadows) and lacking in depth texture options (only basic, flat textures). One day I'm sure I'll give a more complex program a shot for those features alone. I did see that sketchup has some really great plugins that provide those options, but they are all commercial products that cost hundreds of dollars. Of course, Sketchup has really lacking export options too, so making stuff and switching over into another program is not really an option. I haven't tried importing models into Photoshop to give their basic 3D painting tool a try yet, but any 3D work I've tried to do in PS was laborious, slow, and frustrating. I am eager to see what new features Google adds as they go. Sketchup 8 came out, but the new (and impressive) features were geared towards making actual buildings for Google Earth.

Tilt - It is honestly amazingly easy. You'll get going in minutes. In fact, just watch the four short 'new user' tutorials and you'll already have enough going for you to make stuff. Sketchup has some pretty brilliant interface elements that make it super easy to know what you're doing and what is going on. Here is a link to the official tutorials, for when you decide to give it a shot: http://sketchup.google.com/training/...ew_to_gsu.html

Vorhees - Thanks a bunch, buddy!