I work as a graphics guy at a newspaper and do a lot of informational graphics and illustrations so I can't speak much to the question about animation. But here's the deal on doing STILL pictures: For doing anything mechanical and/or tech oriented I think Carrara blows everything else out of the water that I've used(Lightwave, Strata). Carrara's renderer is good, not as good as say,Lightwave but then Light wave costs about 8 times as much. Believe me, Lightwave's renderer may be better but I'll be damned if it's 8 times better. Strata makes a good product too but it costs over twice as much as Carrara and without Carrara's walls and projections it's a real pain to assemble stuff. You will spend a LOT of time assembling stuff in 3D. Also Strata doesn't ship with hundreds of premade models like C. You can get a lot of use out of those. AND Strata's modeler isn't quite as strong as Carrara's The only other app I think you should check into is the DVgarage's 3D toolkit which features Electric Image 2.9 and a training DVD for $199.00. I can't recommend it completely because I've never used it, but it sounds promising. Carrara plays well with FreeHand, Illustrator and Photoshop and its learning curve is a little tough but no where near as tough as most 3D apps. Don't let anybody lie to you, all 3D apps are difficult to learn and they all advertise how easy they are.