There's far more books and tutorials on Lightwave than Cinema 4D. I also got the demos of both. Lightwave works just fine. Cinema 4D loads but none of the menus work. It was like having a screen shot of the interface. Guess which program I'm getting? (I wish the Lightwave demo version would have had at least a small help file, though! I spent days trying to find how to select a polygon, only to find out that it was at the bottom of my menu. I couldn't see it because the screen wasn't maximized and it dipped below my taskbar! I also did print screens of the keyboard short cut menu so I could find all the commands easily.) trueSpace looks interesting, but there's a dearth of tutorials out there for it, and the tutorials that come with the program are animated tutorials that don't work properly on my machine. They didn't work properly on my last machine, and I'm not holding out hope when I get a new computer, either. On the trueSpace site, most of the tutorials you have to pay to view, so that really helped me decide against them. If you don't need the absolute latest version, you can check out ebay for older copies. I'm getting 6.5 for $400 and I'll upgrade it later, if I need to, for another $400. That's 1/2 off from the retail price. I also have Rhino and I like it for some things, but it's strictly a modeller. If you want good rendering and animation, go for another program. As you test-drive the programs, don't forget to breath on occasion! ;-)