Google SketchUp is a deceptively simple, amazingly powerful tool for creating, viewing, and modifying 3D ideas quickly and easily. Google SketchUp was developed to combine the elegance and spontaneity of pencil sketching with the speed and flexibility of today's digital media.

What's New:
Google SketchUp 6 now lets you create 3D models from photographs, match existing models to background photos, render sketchy effects and fog and mark your models with 3D text, logos and watermarks. With the new Styles palette, you have easy access to a collection of display settings, which you can save and share. You also have greater control, with new features like enhanced modifier keys that let you perform operations like “copy” while you move, rotate or push/pull.

3ds Max is one of the most widely-used off the shelf 3D animation programs by the general public. It has strong modeling capabilities, a flexible plugin architecture and a long heritage on the Microsoft Windows platform. It is mostly used by video game developers, TV commercial studios and architectural visualisation studios. It is also used for movie effects and movie previsualisation.

Note: The downloadable trial version of 3ds Max 9 is not supported on Vista at this time.