I would also recommend Vue since it doesn’t sound like you want to do a lot of modeling and Vue is perfect for setting up scenes quickly and rendering. You can import 3DS objects into Vue so I wouldn’t worry about finding content. There is a lot of content that is compatible with Vue out there. As other have said if you buy Vue 5 now you get Vue 6 for free so don’t let Vue 6 stop you from making a purchase.

I played with Shade a bit but found it difficult to learn and decided not to purchase it. I use Cinema 4D for modeling and find it much easier. Perhaps my impression of Shade was skewed by my knowledge of Cinema 4D but I would strongly recommend that you download the trial of both programs and work through some of the tutorials. This will tell you which one you find easiest to use for what you want to accomplish. I think you’ll be producing things much quicker with Vue.

While Vue can do primitive modeling, if you are planning to create your own models it is probably more easily accomplished in a modeling tool. In that case I would buy a separate modeling program anyway and import those models into Vue (that’s what I do).

~jr