If I may add my input. Being a former Carrara user (well I still use it for some stuff, mostly stills) I would recommend a better combination.. If you are interested in animation I would recommend you to get Carrara Basic which is $99.00 and you get all of the features of Carrara except the Vertex Modeler; which is really bad in in my opinion (you can use the free Wings3d instead), and the GI render (correct me if I'm wrong...) AND the 3D Toolkit (The cheap version of Electric Image Universe) which is $200 ( I bought it and I'm very happy with it) The Toolkit comes with a lot of tutorials that are realted to Universe but you can take the experience to other 3d packages. The Animator in the Toolkit is MUCH more professional than the one in Carrara. It has Motion blur (the one in Carrara is pretty bad), MUCH better antialiasing, light cones that work, the fastest renderer around (It is NOT a raytracer, but from what I've been experimenting you really never use a raytracer in production, you use reflection maps) and a whole lot of renderering options (Illumination sets, control of higlights per light ,etc, etc) Maybe a whole lot more than you will use but if you are planning on making it a career you will be thankful for them later... The Modeler (a separare aplication) is much more complicated than Carrara's (it is not polygon based, its curved based) so you have to think different there, but it IS a whole lot more POWERFUL. Boolean operations, that do work, bevels... for that alone its worth it. You can combine the two for 300 and get a killer 3d studio. I don't know if you also get the free Amapi 5 with Carrara Basics but if you do, you get another great (if somewhat weird polygon modeler). So if you want to make fast and professional animations you can use the renderer in the Toolkit and if you need to raytrace something you can use the one in Carrara. If you decide you like one better you can then upgrade to the full Carrara or to the full Universe, I think its a Win Win situation. Well that's my opinion :), take it from someone that has used both (and still do) and which is happy with both. A one more thing, so I have my conscience clean : ) The UV mapping implementation in the Toolkit its pretty bad, while the one in the Carrara is pretty good (provided you use a freeware UV mapping application like Ultimate Unwrap or UV mapper, which I think its included in the Carrara disk). Also the Toolkit won't accpect 3d party plug-ins, you need the full Universe for that, contrary to Carrara Basics which do takes plug-ins (and they are cheaper too) Good luck, sorry if it was too long : ) fjv