Hi all, my 14 year old daughter has decided animation is what she wants to do for a living - she is a beginner with a long way to go so I thought I'd start looking into it, just to give her support and also because I think it's fascinating.

While researching softwares I came across this "new" package called illusionmage that looks just incredible at a very low price. When it looks too good to be true, it normally is, so was wondering if any of you has actual experience of using this package or if it's just one big scam?

If it is, can you recommend a good beginner's soft that won't break the bank. I was looking at Blender of course, but if anyone knows something basic to get her teeth into, that woud be great.

And thanks for the great forum, I've already learned lots of stuff!

It's not a real scam where you loose your money for nothing, the software is really good, but they sell a free and open source software called Blender. Which is not even their to sell.

And judging by the screen shots they sell the old version of the software 2.4x which looks very different from the new version 2.5x

You can download the new version of the software for free here:
http://www.blender.org/

_________________
Andyba, 3d artist
skills: 3d modeling, texturing, rendering, 3d character animation, compositing
3d software experience: 3ds max, Maya, Softimage XSI, Deep Paint 3d, Body Paint 3D, Wings 3D, Z Brush
2d software experience: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After effects, Macromedia Flash, Freehand

Many thanks Andyba, that's what I thought - I'll stick with Blender then, I did find the site and tutorials really helpful.
As I said before, thanks for this forum, this is a great community!

@ Andyba: It is the very definition of a scam. He's deliberately misleading people into thinking they're getting one thing when they're actually getting something else - Blender 3D and other 'free' material as you correctly point out. That's fraud in anyones book.

He's also gone to great pains to post fake reviews and articles all over the web about this 'amazing' package that no-one has heard of, seen or used (Illision Mage that is and not Blender 3D).

Is this kind of thing common with open source software? Somebody branding it as "their's" and selling it?

It's not really that common no. You are allowed to resell GPL/GNU licenced material but there are still conditions attached to doing so.

What you can't do regardless of that, is deliberately mislead people into thinking they're buying something their not. The guy behind this scam and a couple of others has gone out of his way to 'manufacture' (a false) pedigree for his fakery so it's difficult to find any serious reviews online as they get pushed to the back of the results by the spam he's posted everywhere for just that purpose.

I'm shocked that someone is doing that! That definitely sounds like fraud to me.

sounds like a scam, there have been several posts about it on the blender website