So following on from my introduction thread, I've been having a go at some of the tutorials out there.
I knocked a very rough waiting room up in Sketchup (didn't finish it as I needed to have a better think about door and window frames)
but then this afternoon, I had a go at the toolstore lesson - it's quite old now, so 3DCanvas is now Crafter, and the buttons are different and I don't have PSP, so there were a few moments of grumpiness as I tried to figure out what was going on (if anyone can point me in the direction of whatever "merge objects" became, I'd be grateful!!). I downloaded GIMP, but couldn't get on with it, but remembered I had Photoshop Elements, and that seemed to make an ok job of the textures (though I have so many questions about textures). I managed to make the basic shape, and after a bit of a fight getting the textures to show up, I got something that looked like a tool store! (The door is upside down though!)
So, so far, I like Sketchup (but can't afford to be paying for a Pro licence, so don't know how feasible that is), think I'm ok with Photoshop Elements (though need to do some reading), 3DCrafter I'm still not sure about, though it does seem decent enough for applying textures and exporting to the game (though I haven't actually managed it yet!!)
First steps undertaken, many more to come!