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Hey guys I am currently facing quite a pickle.

I am in my Junior year and am currently looking for colleges, preferably those that have courses revolving around video game/graphics design and digital art/animation.

My family is planning on saving up for a Mac since we have heard they are made for programs revolving around the course topics, but the problem lays with the programs we have been recommended to purchase for they are much more expensive than we have previously though of.

We are currently looking for programs, but most search engines have turned up with very vague sites, uninformative news articles, and other expensive programs that don't seem worth investing in.

Can Dakka give us a hand?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_computer_graphics_software

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=13567410

http://www.xara.com/us/

http://www.daz3d.com/

http://www.computerarts.co.uk/reviews

http://www.itreviews.co.uk/guide/sguide5.htm

http://animation.about.com/od/softwarereviews/Computer_Animation_Software_Reviews.htm

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/gb/en/Content/1150905725000?trkid=UKSEMGglBR

http://www.adobe.com/products/


It all depends on what you are actually going to be studying/using whilst at college. I would assume that college literature would state what types of packages and/or programs you will be using? These should bb your main port of call for information relating to your chosen field.

And ,yes, most professional grade packages tend to be expensive but then they are industry level products

Some of the links above cover a few of the professional grade packages out there as a rule Autodesk, Adobe, Corel and Xara are the main players with some other pro apps out there as well.

How much do you already know about computers or programming? The industry grade stuff is really expensive, but in schools, if your using anything fancy typically the program will be made available to you in class or in the computer labs. If you don't know any programming yet, hold off on spending large amounts on a program for this kind of thing. Learn more about computers, how they work, how they're programmed, and then look into graphics engineering. I honestly think everyone should best start with the fundamentals

That said:

If you want a free option that's very simple you can do very simple and basic graphics programming on any computer with a simple C/C++ compiler and the OpenGL library, both of which can be downloaded for free online from numerous places (Microsoft has a free version of Visual Studios and the Visual Studios SDK). There are a lot of tutorial websites that will help teach you how to use it and how to program in OpenGL and C/C++. If you're using a Mac, it comes with a built in compiler, though it can be a little annoying to use at times because you must access it through the terminal (You can do the same on a PC through the command prompt IF you have the libraries you need) but the option is free and doesn't require you to download a program. Some Macs come with OpenGL I think.

For general programming (no necessarily graphics) you could download Eclipse, and play around with Java. It's a very easy language to figure out and doesn't have some of the complexities or minor annoyance of C programming.