Attached Link: http://www.vizualds.com

Straker, of the 3 choices, I would say that Carrara would be the best choice. Vue is not designed to model, and Shade from what I've heard has some issues. If you get the pro version of Carrara (which you get free with purchase of CS3 now) you'll get Transposer (easy import of Poser models/animations) as well as Amapi Designer (for modeling) and you'll get CADstyle, Lightwave import, COB (truespace), BVH (motion data), and FBX for a variety of import options. And Carrara's Toon! renderer and the nonphotorealistic renderer fit the bill as far as toon shading. The reasons I wouldn't get Shade is that from quite a few people (including myself) I've heard (and seen) that its quite buggy, I couldn't get one process done in the demo without it crashing. Also, with Carrara you get a large community, and support structure to help you learn it. My site: http://www.vizualds.com with something like 75 tips/tutorials 3dxtract http://www.3dxtract.com with a monthly free e-zine with tutorials galore! Plus the yahoo list. Shade is very limited with help, so it would be difficult to learn. Oh...and of course http://www.carrarafilms.com which hosts a film list of short films in production by Carrara users:) Brian brian@vizualds.com http://www.vizualds.com