I bought hash animation master a year ago at the recommendation of many hash users i talked with on various web boards I was told by many that hash was extremely "intuittive" and i would be creating awesome character animation with it in short order. after installing the program i was shocked to find that my huge library of 3d model and props ( .3DS,DXF, LWO) would all now be essentially useless!! due to hashes proprietary "patch" geometry hash will import a DXf or 3DS mesh after an agonizing 15-20 minute wait.( on a 300MHZ G3processor) and once you get it in, the work required to make it usable defeats the whole purpose of having premade content that saves time modeling mundane objects like table lamps and coffee cups. In the area Character animation has has some very powerful features but they are very labor intensive and NOT very intuitive at ALL!! and the user interface is HORRIBLE!! in my opinion the hash online community in my opinion tends have a high population of "Software evangelists" that is people who elevate thier favorite software to the level of a religion and tend to be very defensive about the programs shortcomings and unfairly critical of ALL other 3D programs. especially Lightwave I was viciously attacked and flamed by die hards on the hash user list for daring to admit that I still use bryce!! being told "you bryce and poser weenies deserve what you get" I had made more way progress with lightwave and Cinema 4DXL 6.5 after 4 to 6 weeks of ownership than i did in 4 months of hash use. and i already had plenty of lightwave objects to immediatey begin doing radiosity test renders including meshes exported right out of poser4. and Cinema can convert poser exported BVH files to animated Cinema skeletons than can be fixed to imported poser meshes for rendering in Cinema at $300 hash is a great buy feature wise but if you are really ready to get a high-end app save up for lightwave 6.5 or Cinema4DXL6 Mocap