Exactly. I plan to have fun. I imagine I will use Lightwave for some time to come too. But I like many of the things that are in Carrara. To get trees in Lightwave requires a plugin. Tree Druid from Dynamic Realities. Cost--$195. Other dedicated tree and plant generators can be had, but with large poly counts and they lack the complete integration with the application. Carrara cost me $399. For that price I get a speedy (compared to Lightwave) GI renderer. An amazingly fast raytracer. I set about 100 spheres up on a tiled plane, with reflection and refraction on in Carrara. With an atomosphere in the background. It renders very fast. Now, of course we dont buy 3D software to render out shiny reflective spheres, but it can give a good idea to how fast an engine is. I was impressed. I plan to duplicate (as close as I can get) the benchmark included with Lightwave, specifically the one with refractive and reflective spheres on a grid. I want to compare times and image quality. The indoor lighting example was also noteworthy, I was able to "play" with the photon settings and get very reasonable render times for full blown GI. Yes Lightwave as a whole is a lot more powerful than Carrara, however I rarely have the need for most of that power. I do some product shots and a several flying logos each month for local TV commercials. I do not do any character animation, and I do not foresee doing any anytime soon. I am well versed in most areas of the program and I do find some of the features indispensable at times. So for me and my needs, Carrara may be a better fit. If not, I still have Lightwave 7.5C, which fulfills most all of my needs now, but like I said the tree feature and the rendering speed were both worth consideration to me. So yeah I guess some may think I am crazy to buy Carrara while owning Lightwave, but you never know til you try. Plus I think it is important to have competition in the marketplace. I find it amzing that even though Carrara overall is not up to Lightwave in total features, it has some that are much better and it has some that Lightwave doesnt have. Of course Lightwave has a lot of features that Carrara doesnt, but I rarely need these. Quite a few of Lightwave's features and the overall robustness of the program are more suited to a studio environment. I have kids and until they grow up and finish college I dont see myself moving to another area. So for a while I am stuck here, with no intentions to move. So I have a small market. Light freelance work is all I will get in this area. Carrara should be able to handle most of my needs, if not, then its back to Lightwave. For now though I am having fun learning a new app and exploring all its features. If I were in a studio environment or faced with hefty challenges week in and week out it would be entirely different. In the end, if I cant implement Carrara into my workflow, then I am out $399. I can make that back easily on one job. Not bragging, just saying that sometimes experimentation is ok, and I saw enough with the demo to know I wanted to try the full version. Also, if it doesnt work I just gained a $399 tree generator. lol Thanks for the kind words. Donnie