3D movies have never been so popular thanks to the astounding effects generated in James Cameron's 'Avatar' and a host of 3D animated films from the likes of Pixar and Dreamworks. When you hear of astronomical budgets in the region of £100 million and above, it's hard to imagine that mere mortals would be able to afford to create even short 3D movies with software under £150.

But Reallusion's iClone 3D Movie Machine series has been gradually refining its accessibility for enthusiastic amateurs and professionals alike for some years, and iClone 4 Pro is Reallusion's best attempt yet to encourage newcomers to enter what is admittedly a complex arena.

Once loaded you can head directly to a series of online tutorials that explain the program's principal and new features before trying out some demos. The interface is deliberately uncluttered, with tabs at the top determining which Stage to begin with (templates or custom), which Props to include, the Actor to focus on (including modification of the head type) and finally the animation required before exporting the finished video or animation sequence.

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To the left of the screen is the Content Manager with simple folders which can easily be added to, with the Scene Manager below providing further refinements and the Modify section to the right of the main work surface. Manoeuvring your way around the screen is comparatively easy and once you get the hang of it, you can then attempt to be more ambitious.

If you're already familiar with iClone, the new features that will be especially welcome are the ability to directly turn image or video files into 3D objects, a timeline editor that is dockable and collapsible, support for High Dynamic Range and Image Based Lighting effects, smoother animation using Motion Path and a much beefed-up Facial Editor where you can even use your mouse to alter facial expressions and moods in real-time, as well as importing faces from photos which can then be used to create new avatars for your scenes.

There are further improvements in texture sharing, detailed hand movements and 3D video effects, and you'll notice some new characters have popped up including a cartoon animated child; Jimmy Toon.

You still have a very limited number of characters to start off (with a sci-fi theme) but you can import facial texture files from virtual worlds like Second Life and the extra iClone 3DXchange 2.0 software lets you animate any model created through Google SketchUp or downloaded from Google 3D Warehouse.

In addition, you're supplied with popVideo Converter, a handy piece of software that lets you marry up a chroma keyed video with a mask so that you can place, say, an actor or performer into a pre-rendered virtual set.

Obviously Reallusion can't guarantee that you'll be the next James Cameron, but as an initial glimpse into the enticing world of 3D film animation, iClone 4 Pro is an ideal place to start.