edit: for the people who do this for a living, how did you get into it? Do you have a design degree? Right place, right time? I would LOVE to get into the artistic side of 3d modeling/rendering (in my professional life). Doing mechanical stuff is cool, but there are a lot of limits on how creative you can get
Well, I started my career quite young, got my first drafting job at 17 and been doing it pretty much ever since (about 10 years now). Did civil for a short while and moved to Arch., & over the years moved up to cadmanager &/or project manager. At first, my familiarity w/ 3dmax wasn't much, but I managed to make a couple renderings 'un-craptastic' enough to convince my employer at the time it was a worthwhile purchase. Been playing around w/ it ever since, and my current job is the first where my primary responsibilities are rendering instead drafting (been about 1-1/2yr. now).
In a way, I think I'm in the same boat as you. I got bored w/ drafting so pushed into rendering. But now I'm bored w/ strictly 'arch' rendering and trying to push into other areas (games/vfx, whatever I might be able to get into). I feel like it's a pretty big hurdle to jump across to another industry like that. Partly because I'm already very well versed & comfortable where I'm at, but also b/c it seems like the competition is so fierce in the 'creative' industries. It gives the impression that you have to be unbelievably talented to get in as an unknown.
We were planning on moving to Austin at the end of '08 where I was going to attempt to make the jump away from Arch. But when Septembers 'z0mg doom & gloom' hit I didn't feel like it was a smart idea to put myself in the job market if i didn't have to.