Computer Animations were mainly started in the mid-1990s when Pixar announced the release of Toy Story, and then the shift of animation to 3D animation occured when Final Fantasy by Square Soft was released. There are literally hundreds of types of animation software available in the market. Some of them such as Blender are free and open source, but some of them like Maya and 3dsmax are licensed software for which designers have to pay. Learning animation is just like drawing and it all depends upon one's aesthetic sense. The basic progression for anybody who wants to become a 3D animator is first to master 3dsmax and then Maya and XSi Softimage.

To become a 3D animator or modeler in the games and film industry, 3dsmax and Maya skills are essential, with strong skills in Photoshop, Mudbox and Zbrush for hi poly texturing.

For architects and interior designers, rendering is the main thing. As far as modeling is concerned, they can use Evermotion and Dosch design for their scenes, but for rendering strong skills in V Ray and Mental Ray is strongly required.

Using plugins like the products of Sitni Sati, Digimation and Cebas can make animation more powerful and saves time for animators.

Finally, a good machine with:

1. 3 GB of Ram

2. 2.4 GHZ processor

3. a Nvidia Geforce 3D card

is required.