whenever I'm doing any graphics (which is rare) I use Macromedia Fireworks. You can find a demo version at www.macromedia.com It may not be the best, but its fine for me.
Photoshop 6 and good ol' windows paintbrush. I have Flash MX but prefer Photoshop. Also, you can usually find Photoshop LE for about $50-$100. It is the Lite version of photoshop and is more than enough to get you started.
um, pretty much everything the photoshop does except it doesnt come with all the filters. It's mainly for web graphics (to be used with dreamweaver and flash), and it has good vector features.
I also may use MSPhoto Editor for an effect sometimes, and MSPaint for those times I'm too lazy to figure out how to do a simple operation in photoshop (that period is gone now, for the most part).
however, 3d applications, I have Bryce3d and trueSpace5
Im looking into some 3d rendering thing... i dunno where to start, I want to create complex 3d primitives and render them along with raytraced backgrounds etc..
Well 3dStudio Max or Maya are like the top gods, but 15 or 20 hundred... I got both free from my friend but they are undoubtedly illegal. I wish those things were cheaper
Check out GMAX. It is 3D Studio Max for games. If it doesn't save directly to an image format, you could always print screen it an transfer it to Photoshop. And did I mention it was free?
If you really wanna do non-web art you gotta go with Photoshop since there's literally nothing that can compare to it in power and versatility. Fireworks is decent enough at web art as it only works in vectors but that just won't cut it right now for almost all standard work and you gotta go with a raster program i.e. Photoshop.
I can't tell whether Rizz is asking about something like Bryce/Poser or an actual professional moddeling program. It takes far more time and effort to learn and get good at the real stuff though it's the far better choice. I know you have UT2003 so you have the MayaPLE at minimum which is in functionality identical to the retail version so check out www.3dbuzz.com for some really quality training videos that are free.
For any students out there check out www.journeyed.com if you wanna buy software like this since they give incredible proces on the real full software with the only restriction being the license says you can't do anything commercial with them. For example Photoshop's $300 compared to retail $600, 3d Studio Max is $700 compared to $6000. I know it's still quite a lot, though if your a student and are buying something like this you'll save incredible money going this way (don't even have to buy it to use for school).
Yeah all I want to do is graphics for websites and maybe animated gifs. I remember back in.. 7th or 8th grade we made a stickman dancing for the school district home page. But I can't remember what program we used