I had the pleasure of playing around with LightWave 7 on someone else's computer for a few days recently. I was extremely surprised....surprised at how incredibly difficult it was to get good, realistic renders out of it. You have to set the parameters for everything, it seems, such as specularity, reflection, and on and on. And I mean you have to do everything manually, over and over again...lots of trial and error. And previewing a render is time consuming and a pain in the *ss. Even once I began learning the program, everything still took twice as long as the same thing would in Vue. Not only is Vue easier to use, but it gives better results, IMHO, and even renders the same thing much faster. Now, I know LightWave's strength is in it's animation and modelling, and effects and such, and I'm definitely not knocking the program..it's awesome, really, and I loved using it. But IMHO, Vue 4 blows it away for still renders, and LW doesn't have any of the plants and skies and such. Now, if only Vue had Global Illumination/Radiosity..... :)