Hi, sorry, haven't been following this thread, but on the XSI, Maya, Max and Lightwave discussion. XSI is becoming the next industry standard for film 3d, and has been used in a lot of feature films (ILM uses it, so you can imagine). XSI is also becoming popular for games (Half-Life 2 especially), and has released a free version for making non-commercial stuff for mods, but it can do a lot more than that. XSI Mod Tool, which used to be XSI|EXP, is basically the same thing as Maya PLE. Maya was and still is an industry standard for film 3d and for feature animations (ILM uses it, the people who made effects for LOTR uses it, dreamworks animations, I think also Pixar uses it), and is loved by all Unix users because of its powers when it comes to batches and scripts and such. 3DSMax is very popular for games, but has been used for other stuff as well. I would say Discreet is more famous for Combustion though, and Apple has their Shake, but Combustion is cheaper (have a look at those Linux version prices on Apple's pages, eeeeew, also notice that Combustion 3 and Combustion 4 both sell for the same price, uhm, HUH?). Looking at the discreet website, they've made a new compositing program called Toxik, which seems to be especially aimed at film, and has support for HDRI. Lightwave I really know nothing about, so I really can't say. Sparrow, when you said student versions are great for students, were you referring to Maya Personal Learning Edition? It's not a student version, but a free version, but it has watermarks, and cannot be used for commercial purposes.