I started with Inspire (Lightwave Lite which is a bit of an oxymoron) but wasn't getting anywhere so I purchased C. C made sense to me and I started making progress but then I got frustrated with some of C's limitations (this was back at v1.x) including lack of bevelling capability in the modellers. So then I upgraded from Inspire to Lightwave. 17 books and many, many hours of pain later I managed to get Lightwave to create a cube which didn't even look that great. I started playing with the C4DXL7 demo and fell in love with the look of the test renders I was getting plus I found the C4D modeller very friendly. So I purchased C4DXL7. Then I wanted to do Flash vector output and getting vectorstyle for C was the cheapest way to do that so I went back to C plus I thought the new global illumination feature was well-implemented and I really like the renderosity user community for Carrara (including the forum and the contests and the tutorials, etc.). If you post a stupid newbie question on a Lightwave mailing list you will get fried, guaranteed! Many of the C4D users are french and german ... Now that I'm a little further along I'm starting to realize that a lot of the action in the real world happens inside compositing programs like After Effects or assorted Discreet products or video editors like Final Cut Pro (which supports plug-ins like the very cool Boris Red) which are starting to incorporate some 3D features of their own. The problem seems to be that in a professional environment it can take too long to redo 3D renders so a lot of the magic is done in a compositing program that is faster and more flexible. In spite of its limitations and quirks, I feel happy when I'm working inside C so I use it when I can and if it can't do something I need then it's off to Lightwave or C4D (Lightwave has better animation features than C4DXL7 in my opinion). I often model in C4D and then do the rest in C. For my money, both C and C4D produce nice-looking output without too much effort. I seem to have to work a lot harder in Lightwave to get something that looks nice (not sure why since it certainly isn't lacking in features). Also, the more tools I learn the more I find that I tend to use lots of different tools on a given project. No one tool does it all. Since I use so many tools, though, I have trouble with ones like Lightwave where it seems like unless you use it all day, every day it's hard to get anywhere (but it's unbelievably powerful in the right hands). I wouldn't underestimate the power of C's spline modeller (or amapi for that matter assuming you can understand how to use it and get it to run without crashing!) I think of C as training wheels for the higher-powered 3d apps but once I leave C I start to miss it. I think part of the problem is that as you add more features to a product it becomes more complex and thus more difficult to learn and use on a casual basis (especially if it's one where the only way to get anything done is to learn a zillion keyboard accelerators). On the Mac side of the house, it's a bit like what's happening with the iApps and their more powerful brothers. iDVD is somewhat limited in functionality but so darn easy to use that I've read about professional production houses using it for simpler tasks that don't require DVD Studio Pro (likewise with iMovie and Final Cut Pro). Why deal with the complexity if you don't need the advanced features for a particular gig? Everything these days is about doing things faster and cheaper. Well, I've probably rambled on enough for one posting!