It depends on where you're headed. If you're targeting an animation career in Hollywood or Game development, C4D may be a good choice - expensive - but good. You'd be wise to get some training (costs money) to fully realize the benefits of C4D and become fluent in it. If you want to get more than the C4d Modeler, you'll need to pick up C4D studio - $3400 which has the hair, a renderer and a couple of other plug-ins/modules. And be prepared for a learning curve and the cost of upgrades to remain current. Additional plug-ins are pricey. Kinda blows the budget if you're trying to stick with $3000. :-/ As a counterpoint Carrara is very robust and can do many things quite well but for significantly less. I use it every day doing realistic and stylized stills for print and animation for brodcast and HDTV. The plug-ins are excellent and inexpensive. The skills you pick up in Carrara will translate directly to other 3D apps. Be prepared for a learning curve. It's just not as steep as C4D's ;-) That's it in a nutshell. If you'd like more info, just post back. Mark