I agree with Crom00.... Imagine can make some impressive images, but on the whole I find it far less user-friendly than Lightwave... As an example, Imagine will happily let your render a scene without any lights...oooh, I just rendered a black screen.... :lol: Lightwave always has one light in the scene by default, but of course, you can edit, or delete it if you wish.... The thing I love about LW is the little 'status window' that comes up before rendering, helps to remind me of 'silly' little things like lights, image/animation saving, etc. ....
My .02 ... Find a 3D prog. that you are most comfortable with, then learn everything you can about it.. If any program feels like a 'chore' to use, you'll never spend enough time with it to produce decent images... IIRC, both Imagine and Lightwave had mailing lists with quite a bit of info....
Time to look thru my LightROM CD's , methinks....
