Also have a look at Carrara 5. Especially when you are a Poser user, Carrara provides an excellent support. Plants - Carrara's plants are better than Bryce plants, but maybe not as good as Vue. They also provide a very flexible ecosystems. Materials, lighting - Carrara Pro has an excellent shader system, which also supports displacement and subsurface scattering (not supported by Vue yet). Poser import - TransPoser 2 makes importing of scenes so simple. It is included in the Pro version. Animation: Very good animation capabilities. Plugin for Adobe After Effects. Stability: Very stable like Bryce. Modelling: Has a real modeler included (unlike Bryce and Vue)!