Budget and your skills at learning I think play a factor. The Demo path is a great sugjestion because YOU will be using the 3d application, not the people that recommended it. I recently went through this which to buy delema. Tryed a bunch of demo's looked at prices. I went with Lightwave 7.5, but thats me. Truespace full version was recently on 3d world magazine CD you might want to try that demo and hunt down an old mag if ya can find one or order it online. lower price 3d appz Truespace, Carrara, Cinema 4d Art, Amapi. Just depends on your tastes and the feel you like. One of the things that I haven't seen the other posters in this thread mention is support. This to me was a HUGE thing for me. Updates, reliability, tech support tuts, books, all play into it. Another thing is growth of your abilities and the ability of the application to grow with you. You may only need modeling right now, and still graphics, but what about animation later down the road, or extras. A year from now you want to set fire to all the clothes ya modeled will your 3d application have that capability that you need later on, not promises, but functionality there in the package today. I know thats not a lot of help picking an application, but I tend not to like to get into the this is better than that wars that can grow. I grabbed Lightwave 7.5 at $1250US. Rhino was $900, 3dsmax was $1800, cinema 4d full blown was $1800, so I went with cheaper with lots of funtions. Hope that is helpful.