"You can't animate parenting like in Hash or Max (or insert hi end app). But you can do it. There are tricks to getting around this. It isn't a straight ahead point and click approach but it is do-able." Sure. You can waste time with workarounds, that'll take twice as long to do, and do the job half as well.....Or you can actually HAVE the tools you need to get the job done. And yes, both you and helgard are right. If the result is good, it doesn't matter what tool you used to do it. But even if you could cut down a tree with a butterknife, wouldn't you rather use a chainsaw? But A:M doesn't stop with just killer, high-end animation tools. It was designed to be one-stop shopping for all your 3d needs. It was created so that one person, with one computer, and ONE program could create an animated film. Now here's the other thing, Price. Poser IS $50 cheaper than A:M. But take this into account: A:M has modeling tools built in. So you don't have to shell out for another program to model. A:M has Lip-synching built right in, so you don't have to shell out another $300 for mimic. A:M has sprite-based particles, on par with Particle Illusion, a $400 app. (Except A:M's particles will actually interact with the scene in real 3D!) Plus all of the other stuff I mentioned before, and all for just $50 more than Poser. (Unless you happen to buy A:M at a trade show, where it only costs $199.) "PS. Poser 6 has more features, and is more powerful than the program that made the dragon in Dragonheart, or the program used for the first Jurrasic Park." Really? So Poser 6 can do those really cool liquid effects from Terminator 2? Because T2 and Jurassic Park(1, 2, and 3) And DragonHeart 1 and 2, and MIB 1 and 2, AND the CG effects in ALL 6 episodes of Star Wars, used the same software, a combination of SoftImage, Caricature(ILM's in-house software), RenderMan, and Alias (It wasn't Maya yet, was it?)