What do you guys recommend for a 3D Studio? I just picked up Light Wave 7.0 and I have Bryce 4.1, are these the best there is I have heard of others, but Light Wave and Bryce are almost always people's top choice. Any suggestions? I am really starting to get into the whole graphics thing and now I that I have 2D down I feel it's time to move onto 3D.

If you want to add people to your bryce scenes and 3d scenes, you might want to check out Poser from Curious Labs (http://www.curiouslabs.com). The default models are ok until you want to get better images, then you can run over to DAZ 3d (http://www.daz3d.com).

I do 3d for a hobby, so I'm not a CG professional, so the above links may not have any "professional" value to you. But if you want people in your 3d scenes Poser will help greatly.

You may want to take a look at Renderosity (http://www.renderosity.com/index.ez?ReferMember=1698), they have many good tutorials, suggestions addons and even a store where you can buy extra software and models. You can also browse the galleries.

Just my $0.02

If I could afford the $3000 Light Wave, I'd actually buy 3ds Max instead. My brother has access to 3ds Max with his film group, and the rendering quality and speed blows me away.

Bryce is good for making quick landscapes, and I actually own it. But I'm looking at switching to Vue d'Esprit. It's not a 3d modeller in that you can't really create your own meshes.

For a 3d modeler, I'm still using the dead Carrara product, which replaced Ray Dream Studio.

I do own Poser, and it's a good program, although it's hard to import the models into anything. Although Vue d'Esprit imports poser models, which I'm excited about if I ever try it.

I use 3DStudio MAX, I have been using AUTOdesk stuff scince Autocad 10, for real modeling I still rely on 3DS4 with rcpadi on a 486, the reason being the mechanics of the moddeling is easier for me, maybe because I learn this way. Then I import the scene to MAX and add bits then render. There are other advantages to using the older version too, like various plugins working differently but newer IPAS stuff is super.

The reason I use 3DStudio MAX insttead of Lightwave is because I find the mechanics for construction to be far better, this is likely due to the fact that the packege came from AUTOcad in the first place so everything has been desighned for many different engineers to use as opposed to 3D designers. Supperior.

The thing I like about Lightwave is its rendering capabilities, pity MAX does not work the same, but saying that you can setup MAX to network render which is an obvious advantage.

Presently running 3DStudio 4R1 & 3DStudio MAX 3 with VRML/BONES + a few other handy things.

If you want to check out some good MAX handywork and get some meshes have a look at http://3dcafe.com

I also have a few other versions of MAX that are handy to, well have! Yes, I have been collecting them since 3DS3
:D