Personally i find 3dsmax to be very easy to learn on the modelling area. Much more intuitive then wings3d and such.
The Mental Ray renderer is very powerful and allows you to create some pretty neat results without much fiddling. However to really get to grips with the mental ray renderer, you would need a lot of trial and error, but thats the case with most professional engines. Still, its damn powerfull!

I also really really like the visual end results and incredible ease of use of Maxwell Render. Sadly it does come with render times that are way slower then bryce's.

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