I use Carrara and Amapi to produce stills for a newspaper, so I can't speak about animation. I don't think that the learning curve on Carrara is as steep as Lightwave (I've used Lightwave 5.6 for a little over a year) but if you're new to 3D then I think all of them (3D applications) are a little difficult. When you talk about Lightwave being weak, what are you speaking about specifically? I know it to be very un-Maclike but the feature set is extremely capable. There is a pretty good reason that it costs 8 times what Carrara does and I think that that a large part of it is due to it's animation capabilities. On the other hand Carrara is geared a bit more to making still pictures and creating certian shapes is much easier and quicker than in Lightwave. What Carrara can't model, I've found that I can usually get done in Amapi. Another option is to check out DVgarage.com and see what they have to offer with the 3D toolkit