For anyone wanting to learn the art and craft of 3D modelling and animation, there are few better starting points than Cheetah3D.

Developed exclusively for Mac OS X, it features a friendly if prosaic user interface, which conceals some powerful tools. The toolset enables you to model, texture, pose, animate and render your models, from characters to environments.

It also has decent import capabilities if you use other 3D packages, with 3DS, LWO and OBJ among the industry standard formats it supports.

New tools since version 4 include a revamped materials system, which enables you to define surface properties directly. The system's node editor lets you get right under the skin of a material.

Rendering is perhaps the area that's received the most attention, though: it's up to ten times faster than in previous releases, thanks to finely tuned hyperthreading and multi-core support. However, there's no marquee render to enable you to preview one section of your scene.

Cheetah3D still lacks features you would get in flagship 3D packages such as Cinema 4D or modo. But the most obvious absences are addressed with each passing update, and Cheetah3D is a fraction of the price.

The powerful render system means that professional 3D artists should consider it. The animation system is more limited, but accessible for newcomers. If you find the open-source Blender too confusing, try this instead.

Reallusion iClone 4 Pro pitches itself as an easy-to-use 3D movie creator tool, with the big benefit being that if you can't do something yourself, you can open up the online store and buy it from someone who can.

Can't create a walk cycle? Want more hairstyle choices? Drop a couple of quid and add one to your library. It's a little more complicated than that due to the number of human models on offer, but not by much, and it's certainly easier than firing up a tool such as Google SketchUp or the dreaded Maya to do it yourself – although you can do that too.

Dress to impress

The best thing about iClone's online store is being able to sample content. Any item can be downloaded (the screen will be watermarked until you pay up), letting you see if it works in your project rather than having to guess from someone else's thumbnail.

The only downside (ignoring the absolutely abysmal search engine) is that right now, there's very little content – at the time of writing, a handful of hairstyles, a few clothing templates and…

Well, let's just say that our actors' wardrobes so far largely consist of military costumes and comfy-looking clothes for the male character models, low-cut dresses, lingerie and borderline fetishwear for the ladies. Or, to be more exact, one lady – Violet – whose own default costume is half-business, half advertising billboard for her comfy new bra. Please, it's winter. Someone render the poor girl a nice warm coat…

Take control

The current lack of downloads aside, iClone is a great platform. The boxed version comes with a tool for importing 3D objects, notably from Google's royalty-free 3D Warehouse archive, which is very helpful, although for some inexplicable reason the downloadable version misses this out.

You can also import PNGs complete with translucency for some extremely quick, good-looking photo textures. In the editor itself, you have full control over everything from facial features to camera effects.

Probably the most interesting part is how iClone handles clothing textures, which it does via a system called CloneCloth.

This is a quick and dirty way to use opacity and diffuse texture maps to reuse the same mesh for multiple purposes – in real terms, a full-length gown can be anything from a miniskirt to a coat, with options such as hue and saturation further tweakable within the editor, and comprehensive restitching available in Photoshop. It's a brilliant idea, especially when tied to the online store.

It's certainly not the case that you can sit down in front of iClone and get instant results. It's a million times easier to get started with than any other 3D tool out there, but there's no getting around the complexity of the task at hand.

Quite often, that's the problem – coming from a world where the likes of UV mapping and balancing multiple generations of human-type models is as natural as water, the app does sometimes seem to forget just how complicated it can be for beginners.

Still, if you fancy yourself as the next Pixar – or, better still, have slightly more realistic ambitions – this is the tool to make it happen.

Despite Poser's long history – (it's now 12 years old, with five separate publishers over the years) it seems there's still plenty to be done with the popular figure-posing package.

Last year, current owner Smith Micro unveiled a Pro edition of the software, with network rendering and direct links into professional 3D-modelling software. Poser 8 doesn't offer those functions, but it does provide plenty of fresh ideas to entice newcomers and jaded long-term users.

The surprises in Poser 8 begin as soon as you run the software: the quirky-but-functional user interface, which has been in place for most of the software's history, has been replaced with a far more conventional style.

It's easy on the eye, with sober greys reminding you of one of Apple's design programs, and the tool palettes occupy less screen space than previously so that the Preview window is a decent size, even on a smaller monitor.

In the Library

The Library, which provides access to Poser 8's generous 4GB of bundled content and any third-party content you buy via the integrated online store, also sports a new design.

Tracking down the item you want has never been much in Poser, and the approach here, similar to the List view in Finder, still demands lots of patient scrolling around. What a relief, then, to discover a brand-new tab next to the Library: Search.

PREVIEW: Poser 8 features a brand-new sleek user interface with a much larger Preview window (Click here for high res version)

At last, you can simply type in the name of the item you want, click Search, and choose it from a results list. The feature is a bit sluggish in use, and a facility to add your own searchable descriptive tags to assets would make it more effective, but even this implementation is a clear move in the right direction.

The confidence projected through the new interface is reflected in Poser 8's technical changes. Most tools feel more responsive, while the in-screen preview shows the effect of lights better, although it's still not accurate enough. Rendering is also improved, with indirect lighting adding detail to shadows that used to require lots of trial and error to achieve.

Smith Micro has also created new figures: a male and a female, each in four racial variations. The emphasis on realism in Ryan and Alyson has mixed results: general proportions are good, but details such as the fold of the armpit area are unconvincing. The coming months will determine their real value, as content merchants decide whether they want to use Ryan and Alyson for their latest character and clothing designs.

Noticeable improvements

With overhauls above and below the surface, Poser 8 is a marked improvement over previous releases. Smith Micro has taken the same approach in Poser 8 that Apple has taken with Snow Leopard: there are relatively few brand-new tools, but there's been lots of tuning up to make what's there easier for newcomers to get into. It's more pleasant for regular users and more capable of good-quality renders with less fiddling. It'll be fascinating to see how Smith Micro builds on this solid foundation.

There's a sting in the tale for existing Poser owners, though. An upgrade to Poser 8, even for owners of the most recent release, costs $130 (£80) – more than half the cost of buying the package new. Poser Pro owners can get Poser 8 for the same price, although the changes in Poser 8 will be reflected in Poser Pro 2010, which is due out later in the year.

Many people who've explored the field of 3D graphics will have come across DAZ Studio. Available to download for free, it's the simplest entry point into a distinct area in the 3D community, where artists create models for anyone to use in their own images and animations.

Like its rival, Smith Micro's Poser, DAZ Studio enables you to bring characters, clothing, props and more into your 3D scene, then position and pose them before rendering a final image. With the release of DAZ Studio 3, DAZ has opted to offer this advanced edition alongside the standard free version.

The benefits of paying for DAZ Studio for the first time are not immediately obvious when you run the program: DAZ Studio Advanced looks the same as its free sibling, the initial steps in creating a scene are identical. Both editions offer improvements in their core functions.

Detail and control

The viewport better shows the range of lights as you position them, for example, taking some of the trial and error out of staging scenes. Rendering the final image yields better and faster results, with the system taking advantage of multicore processors if your Mac has one.

HOT WHEELS: This render by experienced DAZ Studio user joelgecko shows the results you can achieve if you invest the time

Achieving good renders takes practice, but DAZ Studio 3 produces highly polished still images. It's also possible to animate scenes, although it's not DAZ Studio's main focus. The plug-in aniMate was introduced in 2008.

DAZ Studio 3 now includes a Lite version that works along the same lines. As with characters and props, you can buy ready-made animations to apply to your characters, then re-order snippets of movement to create original sequences.

Although you've spent hours assembling scenes, creating renders and perhaps doing some animation, all of this functionality is available in the free edition. That's when you realise that the Advanced suffix for the paid edition is well-chosen: DAZ has assembled a set of bonus tools designed to appeal to the dedicated DAZ Studio user who craves precise control over every aspect of their renders.

The Figure Mixer, for example, enables you to blend parts of two figures together to create distinctive new characters. This is easy to use in practice, with DAZ Studio's usual slider controls enabling you to set the balance between the two shapes. There's also a lot of emphasis on shaders – components that describe the look and behaviour of a particular surface, for example how shiny a metal is.

Some complex shaders are included, and you can also create your own. The Shader Mixer that helps you do this achieves its results through a network of nodes that is instantly familiar to anyone who's used professional software.

In the mix

The Shader Mixer is typical of the tools that are exclusive to DAZ Studio's Advanced edition: liberating in experienced hands, but daunting for newcomers. They turn DAZ Studio into a powerful tool to create high-quality images.

If you're new to this area of 3D, however, the free edition represents enough of a learning curve for the time being.

Open-source fun from the Blender foundation. Taking over where previous tools like POVRay left off, Blender offers good basic animation and rendering behind a somewhat inscrutable interface.

As a Linux-based project, the application design isn't the most intuitive, even by the dense standards of 3D. If you're used to more conventional Windows-style interfaces you'll spend a lot of time finding your way around.

Also, like many open-source projects, Blender suffers from abandonware issues and feature creep. The alternative Yafray rendering module showed great promise but now seems to have fallen by the wayside.

And some of Blender's features have a perpetual not-quite-finished feel to them as developers lose interest in polishing them once the essentials are done.

Despite these drawbacks, the feature set is vast, and with time and effort the visual output quality can be as good as that from professional packages. If the idiosyncratic interface was only more conventional, this could be a worthy competitor.

Cinema 4D has gained a quiet following among 3D professionals, especially those who composite 3D design work with photography and video.

More of a destroyer or corvette to Autodesk's two dreadnoughts, it's smaller and simpler, which makes it easier to learn and also to work with. Output quality is just a minor notch down from the high end, but if you're not a 3D professional you probably won't notice – it's still very good indeed.

HDR support means that high quality photorealism isn't too difficult to achieve – some of the gallery shots on the Maxon website show off what's possible, and it's worth taking a look to see if you can tell where 3D ends and photography begins.

Render times are also relatively speedy, and at extra cost you can build your own mini-render farm for professional production speeds. Cinema 4D hits a sweet spot between a high end monster you'll need a second mortgage for, and a low end toy.

The balance between productivity and price is hard to beat.

Of the high end packages, 3DS Max 2009 tries hardest to make life easier for its users. Some new modelling tools help make four-footed animation easier. There are also some new navigation options which make it more straightforward to find your way around a scene.

Confusingly, though, there are now separate Design and Standard options which cost the same and are aimed at architects and everyone else respectively. Since most users would like a full feature set for their buck, this hasn't been a universally popular move.

Other changes in this update include the usual round of additions to shaders (texture generators), texture and object mapping, rendering and lighting.

Although there's a 30 day trial, the catch for novice users is the price – for that money, you could buy yourself a used car instead.

Overall, despite its capability, this is far too complex a product to contemplate as an entry level choice. 3DS Max gets a five out of five for raw performance, but two out of five for the high price, complexity and bizarre split product line.

Maya used to be a direct competitor to 3DS Max, but now that they're both Autodesk products it's harder to tell them apart.

As a rough rule of thumb, 3DS Max is the more limited of the two. Maya Unlimited includes much better particle, cloth, hair and fur effects, and also offers better textures and potentially slightly better renders.

The cost – apart from the financial hit, which remains eye-wateringly high – is an almost traumatic level of complexity. Maya's shader system is frighteningly detailed all on its own, and by the time you've encountered the rest of the features, never mind mastered them, you'll be feeling like it's time for a long relaxing break somewhere sunny and undemanding.

Maya is much-used in Hollywood, and it's not hard to see why – its liquid, cloud and fire effects are almost the best money can buy.

If you can afford it and want a complete all-in-one package, it's the gold standard for 3D. But it's not for newcomers.

BeLight's Live Interior 3D lets you redesign the interior of your house without having to get a single tool out other than your Mac.

You can view and edit in either 2D or 3D, perform realistic virtual walkthroughs inside the interior, shoot movies, make screenshots and generate panoramic views of the interior and share it with others.

Also, you don't have to spend time drawing furniture, since the program comes with hundreds of objects and materials.

While version 1.0 was good, it had flaws, many of which have been fixed in version 2.0. You can now model two storeys of your house, including the stairs; a Wall Designer lets you create panels, niches and openings in the walls; you can use reflective materials, which will render in real-time during walkthroughs; there's more than 300 new materials and 200 new objects; and the user interface has had a makeover itself.

You can share your designs by exporting them to Google's 3D Warehouse in SketchUp format. The interface isn't totally intuitive yet, with double clicking of objects never doing what you'd hope for.

You can't design your own furniture within the program and some of the features available in the expensive Professional version ($130 (£88) v $50 (£33) for the Standard version), such as the ability to create multiple light sources and handle more than two storeys, would have made the Standard version great.

But even as it stands, you'd be very hard pushed to find a better interior design tool even at twice the price.

TurboCAD is a piece of software that attempts to straddle the great divide between your current design skills and the skills of a design professional.

Armed with TurboCAD, you can design practically anything in a 2D plane. Models for products, or hobbies, or even master plans for building work.

TurboCAD doesn't give you the structural engineering skills to make your sketches workable, but enables you to express your ideas in industry-standard terms.

Attractive tools

Key features include 7,000 2D symbols that can be dropped onto plans, like doors, windows and construction points. 500 sample floor plans come in the box. You also get a complete set of drafting tools including line, arc, curve, ellipse and dimensioning tools.

We didn't like the clunky palettes that the tools sit in; they reminded us of Windows coding, but we felt our way around and managed to knock up some basic plans.

It's clear that you will need to give TurboCAD generous helpings of time if you hope to master it completely.

File conversion

The file conversion tools were a big draw for us. An architect had already designed a loft extension for us, using VectorWorks and AutoCAD, that was ready to submit for permission.

We wanted software that could handle the .DWG files, which TurboCAD claimed to be able to do, but in fact we found it couldn't open them. It suggested we bought a new version of AutoCAD (£1,000), and presumably a PC to run it on.

With time and forethought, TurboCAD can help you create designs as starting points for more in-depth planning. Don't expect fast results though, and prepare for Windows-esque tool palettes.