Well, I can't say I know much at all about Lightwave. But I have been using 3DSMax for almost a year and a half now. I like the interface of 3.1...everything's where I expect it to be. Very customizable. Plus, there a million and a half plugins for it. But, this can be said for Lightwave too. So I guess the best thing would be to take each one for a demo testdrive or something. See which one trips your trigger and go from there.