Hi Mary,
I certainly understand you post. I try to learn each month a new application to stay in this “first contact” feeling, it is so easy to believe that mastering one application will enable to learn a complete different on in an instant. Might be possible, perhaps not. At least I found some obstacles from time to time, and yes like yesterday with Premiere (Which I use since 1996.) Anyway…
If you are on MSA (MAXON Service Agreement), please make use of the offered training, as 1to1 has the advantage of interactively adjusting the speed of information. (Slows down when you need it or skip things that is already available to you)
My suggestions would be to go one time along the tutorials that you will find in the “Help Content” of the application it self. There is as well the “Quickstart Documention” http://www.maxon.net/support/documentation.html
Please note that pretty much any tool or even parameter has that “right mouse click” help support system, if you like to explore C4D directly.
These two (Help Content Tutorials and Quickstart) are my first recommendations to get an overview about the interface and to get an idea about the typical workflow.
This will help you to get the base to use the over 2,000 Cineversity Tutorials in a much better way.
Yes, 3D—with any of the major packages—is certainly a little bit more complex than other more (or less) 2D focused applications.
The idea that I personally have about that field is simply, that you can do so much with these tools, that (at least during the start) one favorite direction should be followed, e.g., architectural Visualization, character animation, technical animation, “Motion Graphic”, or “Visual Effects”, etc..
The more you share what you like to do, the more we can suggest something.
Please feel always free to ask any question, if there is a question not answered so far, it might help others later on. I try here since the start to keep that a safe place for ANY question, no question is too simple or too far off.
You will see after a short time it will look much simpler, than it does right now.
All the best
Sassi