Ok, I'll start off with easy declaratives, lol. I used Shade 5. It was a trial that had been sorta kludged into English and had no user manual or help o even support from 3rd parties online. I loved it. It didn't make modelling a challenge to figure out. Although I've become a die hard Wings convert, I am dying to get my hands on Shade now. I checked out the Demo of the LE version, and wasn't terribly impressed -- but that was more because I couldn't do anything with it, lol It is a different program, and it is not as directly "simple" to grasp as Poser is, so unless you are very much interested in learning a higher end 3D package, it's not the way to go. But if you want to do stuff like you can do in Lightwave or 3DS MAX, it's a VERY nice package. Especially for rendering abilities. FOr most general use, Standard is going to be the route to go, ut if you want to do serious stuff, of course you'll have to get the higher end professional version. The rendering limitation is somewhat bothersome, but a 4000 pixel image will do in most cases for print production when combined with Photoshop and reasonable knowledge of using it. Shade has GI and Radiosity -- two thing folks whine about a lot. Shade has particle systems -- somehting I'm into personally. It exports obj. That's something of a bother, as it means there won't be a lot of direct in and out, *but -- Poserfusion allows import of Poser scenes. Poser scens are suspended in OBJ format, so think a bit there, lol. In fact, it's greatest weakness is that it's import/export capabilities are negligible outside of the Professional version. But all of them do support RIB (damn, still need to get that BMRT client...) I'm rather excited about this. I've seen what it could do in Shade 5, and the features have all been improved on dramatically. I'm going to have to do an NVIATWAS as soon as I get it. Just gotta!

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)