Lightwave was the first and it started out on Amiga. Maya wasn't available on Mac until like 2002 I beleive (after it dropped in price from $26,000). Most serious houses develop their own apps in house but Houdini is the top, 3D Studio Max is definitely #2 but the plug-ins run around $10,000. Then you can start talking about SoftImage, and maybe after that you can bring in the others though Cinema 4D is quickly blowing them out with its BodyPaint module. As far as Final Cut goes most of the movies cut with it were somehow linked to Outpost Digital (owned by John Cameron - Soderburg's Producer and owner of Radical Media which represents most of those Directors and which also cut a deal with Miramax before the advent of Final Cut. They have PC's in their GFX dept. by the way and are the FCP house in NYC.) Final Cut is OK but AVID owns ProTools and SoftImage so Final Cut has been left out of a very serious compatibility pipe there (you can open an AVID project in ProTools and only a maniac would use only audio recorded on location. Final Cut loves to boast all these features to those who don't know any better (why would you color correct in an AVID when you can color correct the negative on a DiVinci? Why would you online in an AVID when nearly every house in NYC has at least 1 Flame on the premises if not a Henry (Windows NT) or Inferno?) Final Cut is for cutting things like 'The Apprentice' primarily. And honestly, for that price range, nothing compares to Combustion. The Pure graphics card renders Alias/Wavefront files period (check out the benchmarks on Advanced Render Technologies website) and it can be configured for any software system, and there are numerous scripts available online that will make Poser render over a network (there used to be a few here.) and they work pretty good. Macs also have serious network issues, a network of G5's will usually only run at about 30-40% max. speed. Beleive me I have used Macs for pro work but they just can't hold up to the tanks that PC's have become. They're cute and sometimes they can do certain things as well as a PC but for the price it's a waste of money. We called them about Shake and noone in the entire company could offer a shred of info. I've got several systems in my office and my Mac needed about $20,000 worth of upgrades to bring it up to speed to even handle 2K After Effects files. (another issue with FCP, they act like HD is a big deal when its like 6 slots below the highest picture resolution.) My Boxx speeds through all of the above with absolutely no problems whatsoever, I can and just finished rendering 300 frames of Maya for a spot with HDRI, Radiosity, and Caustics in less than 10 hours. And believe me it was a seriously heavy shot to render.

Well, since my earlier comment was 'off topic' I'll share some of the info given to me by a good freind and co-worker, who also happens to be the creative director for Smoke & Mirrors. Mac's operating system is the issue. It's written in a language that has to do something like three times as many translations as Windows, which is closer to machine language relatively speaking. This is the issue first and foremost. This is why there a very few professional level (ie. Houdini, 3DS Max, SoftImage, ART Renderdrives, etc.) graphics products available for Mac. Bryce is a toy. Poser is a nice toy. I have and continue to use them both. In fact I used poser in a spot I did for Kill Bill. But it takes ten steps to do something that takes two in any of the aforementioned packages. So that old 'They started off on Mac' arguement is silly. If you want speed, save up and get yourself ten of those little $400 Dell desktops and build a render farm. A single computer is foolish when it comes to 3D Graphics. Or get yourself a PC with a PURE graphics card, I guarantee it'll render a Poser scene in less time than it takes you to set up the preferences in the Firefly renderer.

HaHa! I must chuckle at you Mac users. I've been doing this nonsense for years and I truly do not understand why you always seem to fall for every little scam Mac throws at you. I do freelance effects and graphics in NYC and I've worked at Final Cut Pro editing houses and still I've never seen anyone use a Mac for any type of pro graphics. The mere fact the 3D Studio Max is unavailable for Mac should tell you something. There is no such thing as a fast Mac. I've got a Boxx w/ dual p4's and 12 gigs of RAM. Cost me almost half of what a similarly stocked G5 costs and I can put 9 different video cards in if I choose (one for each function just like an SGI). HaHa!