I'm not bashing Bryce either, it still has a great renderer as far as I'm concerned. But it's had a rather rocky past; Corel killed it in my opinion (Bryce5 is a very good upgrade in my opinion but Corel overpriced it by scales of measures, and thus vastly diminished its popularity I think) and thus far DAZ hasn't done much to help it either. So it's been stagnated and everything else has rushed on past it. But, darn it, I'm getting that student edition of Maya, and I bet you'll still see some Bryce renders in my gallery, for nostalgia... LSD-- Yup. (sniff) But you forgot to mention Terragen, which in my opinion does MUCH better water than Bryce, fully equals its landscapes (not much difference there), and, oh, yeah, it's free =) And I'm not entirely sure that 3DS is such a major application anymore? I had heard that it was sort of going downhill (much like Bryce in that fashion) and being replaced by much more powerful applications (like Maya, for instance). I could be wrong, though. Sans-- I don't know if you've tried this or not. But it's given me a lot of fun =) Go to the Maya forum and look in the header. You should see something about Go Download Maya PLE. Alias offers a "Personal Learning Edition" of Maya Complete for free, which you can just download, no charge at all, no worries, no spyware, no viruses, no kinky advertisements, no signing up for worthless "deals": you just get it. It has watermarks plastered over everything to make sure you don't use it for commercial purposes (something that the student edition doesn't have even though it has the same restriction).