Well, I've been involved with Lightwave for ten years. You're under the impression that you can render Poser stuff there? Not the scenes. I quit using Lightwave for doing anything but making morphs for that reason. Lightwave IS a great product. For content CREATORS. NOT for content USERS. Newtek hasn't bothered to make it more compatible with ANY other 3D programs. The available plugins don't bridge the gap. I see no improvement in LW9, unfortunately. And that's why I do all my rendering in Carrara now.

I see this development as a move by DAZ to eat e-on's lunch for them. They will shortly be in a position to run Poser into the ground. Position DAZ Studio and Bryce as their entry level products, with Carrara and Hexagon as their high end products. Carrara is in a great position to move upscale, too. It already does all sorts of things you can't dream of doing in LW. LW does have a superior rendering engine. By a bit. If DAZ continues to develop Carrara in the direction its been headed, I expect to see that greatly improved, with the addition of many more effects, plugins, and so forth.

Bottom line, though? If you CREATE content, buy Lightwave. If you USE content, buy Carrara. I can't imagine DAZ antagonizing Carrara's large user base by trying to "replace" it with Bryce. They might decide to integrate the two, but I kind of doubt it. DAZ simply bought a couple of higher end tools so they can be your "one stop" 3D source. If anyone is in any danger, it's e-on. Vue doen't communicate well with anything. Carrara could easily be developed to gobble up THAT market.