Aye, I tried Max, Drac. I tried Lightwave, C4D, XSI, and a whole bunch of other products, and then settled for Maya 6 Unlimited as my 3D app of choice to learn and grow with. As far as I can tell, all of them bow down humbly before the ancient one, including this-here Vue and your-there 3DSMax. 3DS Max is not "a modeling software", but in fact the "3DS" in "3DS Max" stands for Three-Dimensional-Studio. Sarcasm, at it's driest. A studio application is not "a modeling software", although it may incorporate modeling, and I've never seen a new version of Max for $599. To add my own opinion, 3DSMax is clown shoes. My point was, for the money, you really can't get a much better deal than this program, if it does what they say it does. I have no reason to doubt that it does exactly that, these ideas should have been implemented a long time ago... If your options are Vue 5 and Bryce 5, there's no comparison at all...