Cheetah3D 5.1

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.

CheetaD 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 CheetaD is a fraction of the price.