I have have played around for a while now with all of the programs and was wondering how many other people here use other 3d appz besides 3ds max and which do u believe is best...
I have come to the conclusion that max is very easy to use (maybe casue I spend the most time with it) Maya is powerful great texturing and mental ray is amazing... XSI 2.2 is the best out there the easy of use of max the power of maya and mental ray 3.0 is incredible and the ability to draw a "render region" in any view point makes model tweaking and effects easy (render region creates a rendered area in any view point and it active updates all render regions are fully ratraced and effects")
www.softimage.com for a demo CD that will arrive in 4 to 6 weeks (or in my case 8 gerrrrr...)