Hi vince3, thank you for your inputs.  You mentioned Cinema4D costing about 400 dollers -- is that student discount price or educational edition?   C4D's official site has its core application (of R9.5) priced at $695 -- still quite affortable, too.   But I'm concerned about its support base not being as large as LW (or maybe I'm wrong), and its learning curve may be even somewhat steeper than LW's.

And hawkfyr, thanks for the input.

3DVim