sorry Vim, i haven't seen the price for Cinema 4d in a while so it may well of gone up, i just remember seeing some stuff in 3Dworld magazine  made using it, and maybe a couple of animations, i was impressed, and like lightwave it is one of the apps that some hollywood studios are using.

if you're on low system specs, when using vue it is best to put eco-systems,poser characters,and detailed props on seperate layers,so if you want say three characters in a scene you should put each of them on a seperate layer,then if you want 600 trees aswell, then put them on a seperate layer too, my "One day on Babe island" piccy was over 2 billion polygons and rendered no probs! you start getting into serious render times and resources when you use "global radiosity" lighting.