As a replacement for Carrara, how good is Strata CX8? I'm not an animator, so that's not an issue. Seems to have good lighting and rendering. The only thing is, everything on their web site looks shinny and commercial, never grunged up. I'm assuming that's because of their client base? How about Cheetah 3d? Houdini Indie looks interesting, but 200 a year seems a bit steep to me. Have heard Blender is hard to learn.