Attached Link: http://www.softimage.com/products/Xsi/v4/comparison/

You would be hard pressed to compare a $2,000 movie studio producing special effects and animation software with Carrara but there are those who will plea their case. There are drastic upgrade pricing with XSI due to the cost dropping on their Foundation version. If you want more you will have to pay more. This is true of all software packages. As soon as you buy Carrara they want to sell you plug-ins to give the product more features. I don't think Digital Carvers Guilde is going out of business because of Carrara 4 Pro. The question you have to ask yourself with adding features is are you really going to use then if you get them and secondly is it worth it to get them? Most of the features included in the more advanced versions of XSI are not something I really need. The Foundation version covers just about all the features I will use and if I want more I'm sure it would be cheeper to get the third party plug-ins just like with Carrara. The exception to this is the hair and fur simulation which I wish was a standard feature. The cloth simulation comes standard but there is a more advanced cloth simulator in the Advanced version if you want to produce Van Helsing, Hidalgo type movies. But be prepared to script that trigonometry you learned in High School. These high end programs give you the power to produce but they don't give you the knowledge or the talent. You have to supply that. There is a lot of talk about Foundation being a nothing program and is just a ploy to lure you in and then slap you will stiff upgrade pricing. I say nonsense. Look at the comparative chart between the three and see what features Foundation is missing and see if these are included in Carrara and I mean the Carrara Pro version. Then look at the features included in the Foundation version with those that are missing in the Carrara version. Look at the movies Van Helsing and Hidalgo and compare rendering quality. Then ask youself dollar for dollar which is the best value?