I can't help about animating, I don't do animations (yet?) I think the learning curve is pretty quick, either with the manual ( well made, but lacking in some topics), tutorial dvds, this forum, and the one they have at cornucopia3d.com Creating landscapes is not so easy if you're after realism, but you'll get there fast. Global illumination in Vue looks fantastic imho, and the radiosity renderer is very good too. Render times can be excrutiating if Radiosity is enabled. Many options to speed up your workflow, decent openGL. Now the bad things: still a few annoying bugs after 10 months it's been out ( poser dynamic hair import, memory leaks to name the most annoying), and the atmospheres sometimes look more painted than real. Oh, and bad volumetric clouds. But the best software for rendering outdoor scenery, if you ask me. Some prefer the new Carrara 5 Pro though.