This is a tangent, but I don't think the cost of things like 3DS or Maya were ever major barriers to entry. They were widely available for 'free' download. I think the companies involved were basically using this as what would eventually become the modern 'free for entities with less than $xxx annual revenue' license as there was seemingly less than 0 effort to ever enforce their copyrights. To say nothing of the countless commercial books available for both, which simply would not have had a market if it was only selling to people who had real licenses for the software.