Yeah, I recall 3DS being more PC-prosumer based. And SGI | Alias was super high end. $150k Irix machines with VR gloves & glasses. You'd only find them in the engineering & architecture departments. The others were distributed at siggraph on free cd-roms, with permissive student licenses you could use for months of self-training and hobbyist modeling ;)

No one could top Maya back then in terms of flame, water & particle effects:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHFLapfliN8