To be honest...there's a lot of packages that were popular when Bryce was popular that didn't offer choices or description of render engine (aka you didn't even know it was Phong shading under the hood; it was just a "render now" button). And NURBS are more recent developments -- Carrara has gone a non-NURB direction (and doesn't do patches, HASH or Subpatch or otherwise). Bryce gave you primitives and boolean operations (okay, it was Bryce booleans, and run-time as well, but...) Back when I started out in 3d, learning to think in primitives was the first step. You got into splines and cages later. Still, these same basics can be learned with something like Mechanisto -- a no-frills primitive modelling, animation and render engine. With all that's out there in shareware and freeware, purchasing a low-end program as a learner is maybe not the best bet. True, it is possible to use Bryce as a pushbutton program. There are extensive libraries. And it also has that insidous attraction of making good-looking stuff with little effort on your part, allowing you to delude yourself for a time. I think the main difference is that most people grow out of the "reflective spheres over water plane" phase fairly quickly. The "Naked Vickie in a Temple with a Sword" phase, however, is extended, nay, lauded, in places like Renderosity. It is very difficult to keep hitting presets in Bryce and actually have anyone take you seriously. It is painfully easy to master how to import Vickie and apply a smart-prop sword to her hand, and be applauded by the peanut gallery.