Raydream is a pretty solid package and can produce excellent results. I'm teaching classes using Carrara Studio Basics. It's basically Raydream but it's a whole heck of a lot faster (about 10 to 15 times!). It's also more powerful on the shader side of things. The cost is $99.00 and that's not too bad. If you're in school you can get it for $50.00! You probably won't lose too much ground working with Raydream because you can open up RD files in C if you upgrade later and most of the things you learn in RD are directly imposed on you in C. You have to weigh out your need for speed while judging what your pain to adjusting to a different interface might be later. I found the transition to the new interface to take a little while but it wasn't that bad. -Kix

-Kix