I found Shade incredibly buggy and unstable. I clicked a tool and it crashed, I inserted a object it crashed, I tried saving it crashed. I had so many issues that couldn't be solved via support I just gave up. I wouldn't recommend it. Plus from what I saw its modeling toolset was a bit limiting compared to Silo, Amapi, Modo, etc. Its a good start, and I do agree in a few years with some more development it could be a nice package. I wouldn't consider it cheap. The full version is around $1000 which looking at its feature set not sure why its so much more then the LE. Modo is way overpriced in my opinion. With tools like Amapi Pro that include the same poly functionality and also intergrated NURBS support. And then as stated Silo which gives you much the same power as Modo. And features like weighting are made into a big deal when well its nothing new, and I find their implementation of certain tools to be a bit odd and different in an akward way from the standard. It just way overpriced for what you get. I mean you can get Softimage for $495 and have the same toolset for modeling plus a complete animation package. Or even Carrara, Amapi Designer isn't completely on par with Modo, but at least you would have a full rendering, animating and texture suite. I'll likely stick with Carrara, upgrade to version 5 when it comes out. I mean if Hex supports obj export, I can export to Motionbuilder, (heck CS5 might even support FBX export for all we know, they have import why not export next) animate, import into Carrara, texture, and render. And I seriously doubt that Hex will cost close to a $1000 dollars. Heck I've upgraded all the way from version 1 to version 4 and I still haven't spent the cost of Modo with Carrara. I expect in the next few versions Carrara will give the competition a bit of a whiplash. If you look at the speed of their development compared to the competition they are finally catching up and they can only get better. Will Carrara ever be a maya? Doubt it, but possibly at the level of lightwave. All in all, I can see Modo being nice in a studio environment with maya, etc. Since it does support the pipeline, but for the cost, if I was a studio, I'd much rather just model in maya. I expect the price to drop. When you have complete packages for half the price it can't stay at even its current intro price for long. Info, I'd love to see some of your work. You have quite a collection of software I'd love to see what you can do! Brian