I was undecided about the 2 programs myself. I took a class in Lightwave (it was the only 3D class I could find at the time). My instructor (and I've heard this other places also) said the modeling tools in Lightwave are better than MAX but MAX's animation tools are probably a little better than Lightwave. I want to do modelling and texturing and don't care about animation. I bought Lightwave and am very happy.