Originally posted by HZKoasters
Well that doesn't really help because Sketchup can do everything Anim8or can and then some.
Oh how wrong you are...Anim8or is way more powerful than Sketchup (although, really, just about everything is...), but it's just a hell of a lot less user friendly, which is why Sketchup is generally the program of choice. If you really start trying complicated things, Sketchup hits its wall very quickly. By all means, it's fantastic for simple, rectangular things, but getting into complicated textures, multi-planar surfaces, and even a few standard primitive shapes, it dies. I could go on and on about how useless sketchup is for lots of things (please note - I've never really gotten into any other modeler before, all of this is based *only* on menu options and a few simple tutorials), but I'd probably bore you all to death.