Thanks everyone. She came through the surgery with flying colors as they say. As far as Carrara so far, I need to spend some time the next few weeks to get a good comparison. I have been using LightWave for so long I am used to using keyboard shortcuts. So far I find the modeler in LightWave to be easier and faster. Could be the fact that I have been using it longer. One thing I am sure about is selection in LightWave is much easier, polygon or point. In Lightwave modeler there is a "void" area in the lower left pane. Clicking here deselcts any points. When I select a point or points, they dont move. Once selected, then I hit "T" to move them. Only the points I have selected will move, no matter where I drag in the window. In Carrara, I usually end up selecting new points and moving them by accident. Also in LW if I need to add more points to my current selection, I just hit the "T" key again, that puts me back in selection mode again. Then I hold shift and select more points to add to the selection. If I want Polygons I hit the spacebar and it goes from point selection to Polygon selection. As I mentioned, once I am done with the current selection I click in the lower left pane of the interface and it deselects everything. Sounds like a simple difference, but working in modeler in LW is vey fast and efficient. Also in LW there is the option for object replacement. Say I have animated a ship flying by. Now say I want it to be a different ship, but want everything else in the animation to remain the same. In LW I can hit the replace object button and choose a new object. This object has all the animation that the other object had, including anything in the scene file (deformations, scale, etc). In Carrara it seems I need to either go into the modeling room and delete the object, then import the object I want. Then return to assembly. But also I have to remember to save the object again as something different to avoid overwriting the original object. I think that is right. If there is an easier way I would appreciate any feedback. One other thing that comes to mind so far is clip maps. Lightwave allows you to use clip maps on geometry. If I apply a mask in transparency, I can use that same texture on the object level to cut the geometry. This allows for more accurate shadows since I am actually affecting the geometry. I havnt found a feature similar in Carrara. Other than these minor differences I have been thrilled with Carrara so far. There are many things in Carrara that I wish LW had. The tree generator comes to mind. The fast GI and Caustics is another area. I like the soft shadows, they are not much of a render hit. In Lightwave to get soft shadows requires either a shadow mapped spotlight (which doesnt always look great) or an area light (render hit). Another way is to use the spinning lights trick that is employed in Eki's PlugPak. The physics engine works well. It bogs down on complex objects, but its easy enough to use a stand in to track for the more complex object. LW 8 has hard body physics, but I didnt upgrade, so I cant compare the two. Lens Flares in Carrara are much better with a lot more control. As I mentioned before though, before I switched to LW from Infini-D I was thrilled with Ifini-D's lens flares. One thing I noticed though. In Infini-D I was able to use tube lights to simulate laser beams--they were visible. Playing with them in Carrara I have yet to be able to do that. The selection issue I mentioned with regard to the modeler also carries over to the assembly room. Too often it is easy to move the wrong object. Pressing the spacebar in Layout(LW's assembly) goes from moving the object to rotating it. Press it again and it goes to the scale feature. Eventually you end up back to the move buttons. It makes positioning objects very easy. In this regard I feel LW is more precise and much easier to use. But LW has had years to mature and reach the level it is at. Being version 3 I am very pleased with where Carrara is at right now. When I consider the price for all these features its even better. LW also has a powerful graph editor and spreadsheet function. I would like to see Carrara have these at some point as well. This allows changing say a whole bunch of lights and their properties at once. I tried grouping lights in Carrara, but when I went to properties for the whole group I couldnt change anything, just the properties for the individual lights. Also LW has a global panel for lighting. If you want to lower the intensity of all your lens flares at the same time, just change global lens flare intensity. This changes them all proportionately. While still maintaining the brightness differences between them all. So a couple of gripes are really all I have at this point. Once I learn all the keyboard shortcuts I beleieve I will have less things to complain about. This is without a doubt, for me anyway, the best bang for buck out there. For some who does freelance on the side or someone who does this everyday this is a very competant program. Most of all I enjoy using it too. Donnie