I use Vue 2.1, it's a good software ! I think you can learn a lot with it (see also my gallery for examples of close-up renderings). Vue4 has now caustics, volumetric atmospheres and lights and other things. It depend what you want to do with the soft. If you search only free softs, Vue 2.1 is the best (cause it's a landscape renderer, but you can render every scene you want in fact). For instance, Moray+Povray is an other good choice, for example for interior scenes (but landscape, outdoors scenes will be far less realistics than with Vue). Yves