Well, you can't go wrong with Maya. C4D is very good if you have the advanced rendering addon. I don't know much about Carrara (aside from when it used to be RayDream Studio), but I hear it's good also, although probably nowhere in the ballpark of Maya.

3dsmax has the most rendering options. There's at least 4 or 5 plugin renderers (high end) available for it, it ports to Renderman via the MaxMan plugin, and MentalRay comes as a standard renderer with versions 6 and up (excellent integration, no extra cost). Brazil and Vray also had their start as 3dsmax-only renderers, and are considered among the best in the industry.

Vue5i looks impressive, and has some high-end features, like full G-buffer output support, radiosity, and true HDRI and IBL.

All of these apps have network rendering, so that point is moot. It all depends on what workflow you find most comfortable. If you're just using it for rendering, then any of these would be satisfactory I'm sure.

Message edited on: 05/26/2005 21:31

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.