Ive been in the fortunate position (spent and lost a dam fortune, oh why do I have principles) to use quite a few apps including Cinema 4d, Lightwave, Truespace etc. FWIW for bang per buck Carrara 3 is amazing, itll never get itself out from under the 'Entry Level or HOBBIEST' banner but who cares when its this good, Ive learnt wether you spend 2000 or 200 on a piece of software people will still want more features, for the price carrara has some stunning one, it quite stable (not one crash in 3 months), stunning render engine, great interface etc. Blender (tech heads) Strata (old interface) Cinema (if version 8.5 highend app, v6 nope) Amorphium (not in the same league) Truespace 6.6 (I still use this as a companion app, great) Wings 3d (fast and free modeler ideal as a complement to Carrara) Lastly if you buy Carrara 3 get 'The Carrara Studio Handbook' by Mike De Le Flor its a very good complement to the C3 manual. Cheers Pete(uk)