For us folks who like to stay Free and use the Blender 3d program over every other costly options!
Colored Material, Multiple Materials, Materials - Shaders, Materials - Transparency, Materials - Mirror, Materials - Ramps, Procedural Textures - Gradient Blend, Image Textures, Decal Image Textures, Snap And Align Tools, Camera Constraint, Appending And Linking Blender Files, Rendering to an Image File. All credit for this set of video tutorials belongs to Neal Hirsig.