OTOH, I think I've already mentioned it here: Carrara Studio. DAZ should set the features of Carrara Studio as their goal. CS has many things that really high-end programs have. All for $249. That looks like a really nice price for a really nice set of features. OTTH, I obtained Carrara Studio Pro for a review and... interface should be changed. It's ugly to high heavens. Turn on the advanced render features and it's slow, slow, slow. (On AMD 3000+.) The default tree is worse than Bryce's, although it does have some good options like bending and really interactive way of editing it. BTW, Maxwell is nice, but their four release candidates are apparently worse than their betas. Maybe Vray? :-) And Bryce's renderer isn't bad at all. It lacks the high-end features like subsurface scattering, ambi. occlusion, HDRI support and such. But what comes out looks really good. Except it's slow.

-- erlik