[sillysaurus3]

they require a full understanding of 3D math, the complete graphic pipeline, texture sampling, image manipulation techniques and how it all comes together before you can actually start doing anything useful

Hm, not really. I learned more from messing with working demos and prototypes than studying theory. But YMMV.

It's absolutely true that the whole pipeline is very intimidating for newcomers, though.

I love that phrase... "the learning curve has a slope of 'wat'."