If you're a one-man-show you might wanna take a look at Animation Master. . . IF you're a one-man-show. It has a better character animation toolset than all the major apps and a pretty elegant interface. You'll read on various boards posts from people who use Maya/Max/LW in their day jobs and AM for their own stuff, mainly for the faster workflow if you don't have a bunch of people on a team working with you. You also don't have to spend thousands of dollars for plug-ins to get the features you want. The only 'must have' plug-in I've found was 30 bucks. It's not so strong on the rendering side, though. Some people just hate patch modeling, but I've grown to love it. Stability used to be a major issue, but Hash seems to have licked that problem pretty well. Last time I crashed it it was because I applied hair to the ground plane. hehe. If you plan to make a career of 3d animation then you might be better off learning Maya/Max/LW from the start, but your workflow as a 'soloist' will almost certainly be slower. You might need a big pile of money to get those apps to do what you want, too. You mention your comp "isn't a 3d workstation". I'd be very careful on that point if I were you. Hate to see you spend buncha money on an otherwise good app only to see it crash a lot because of your hardware limitations. 3d is a blast. Read as much as you can on the boards over at cgtalk.com, too, before you commit to a financial black hole ;) Good luck!

Message edited on: 05/25/2004 13:02