I downloaded the free 30-day trial of Autodesk 3DS Max 2013 (no time to install it right now). I'd love to own it, but there's no way I could the justify the $3000-plus price tag for a hobby (sound familiar?). As far as I'm concerned, 3DS Max is the ultimate software toy. Actually I'm going to use it to convert some proprietary 3DS Max files to a more open format. There aren't any converters available because Autodesk won't allow it. I used a pirated (!! I'm generally against piracy, but for $3000 I'm not so against it !!) version of 3DS Max 5 until I lost it in some hard drive crash, so I'm quite familiar with it.

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X5000 / microA1(OS4.1 FE U2) / CodeBench / Imagine / Blender
Lightwave 2019 / Microsoft Visual C++