There are some ways of using blur, shadow, and glow combined with 3D to make a simulated extrusion in Vegas. It's not deep nor pretty, but fast. There is a veg on the VASST site, or if you can describe what it is you're trying to achieve, I can build you a veg pretty quickly.
Ulead Cool 3D or similar app will do a better job, albeit an extra step, if you need something blocky or with depth.

This is what I am after I would like to have it start small and grow to this. Thank you for looking at this.

You could try TrueSpace. I think you can maybe pehaps still get the older version for free. I bought the latest but one version and it is pretty capable for this kind of thing once you get your head around how to drive the damn thing and boy does it crash a lot.
Bob.

TrueSpace is pretty good, Cool 3D's demo could do this in about 3 minutes...with a 2 hour render.

two hour render in cool 3d?

that's a little long for a newer computer

We used cool 3d a little for one project a couple of years back, renders didn't take that long on an old PIII 800mhz or so way back then

Now on 3.5 P 4's all these 3D programs do stuff pretty quick

Most of the 3D stuff we do is 5 secs to 15 secs though

rendered at top quality and 30 fps at 720x480

then we stretch them out (time wise) if we need more time you double/triple/quadruple size in the time line and then change speed (.50 .333 .25) in properties to synch it so the effect doesn't loop

the hardest thing with 3D is finding a color and lighting that looks good (personally I like the shiny metallic look for 3d)

best 3D for text is still an old program I got 10 years ago by asymetrix way better than cool 3d for text rendering

BluffTitler could also handle this with ease.