I'm putting up another vote for Carrara 4 Pro. My main reason being that, you get the import capability, it has a built in sky and terrain editor, plant editor, so you get much of the functionality of Vue. Plus you get a MUCH faster renderer. And if you want to model your own props, etc, then you can. TransPoser (the plugin that brings in animation) is included with CS4Pro. Its even being updated from what I hear, and will soon include hair dynamics. My vote is Carrara. Vue is nice, but limitied to its main functionality, landscapes. Brian