[polytronic]

A vanity exercise? I think you are really missing the point here. As a 3D graphics developer myself, having published my 13-years long pet-project, a full-featured 3D graphics engine as open source (https://github.com/StylianosPolychroniadis/NthDimension), I can surely tell you that going 3D as well as GPU programming, is The most rewarding, in terms of computer science knowledge, effort one can possibly do.

Now only if UV texture-mapping was any easier, I would love to be in a position to call myself a 3D artist.

Luckily, procedural graphics (both geometry & texturing) has filled the gap for me.

Off course, the biggest school was working along with real 3D artists that shed light and introduced me to engine and shader optimization, my greatest passion at the moment (along with GPU parallelization).