Having seen sites a few recent sites which use 3D elements such as

http://www.confused.co.uk

and ones which go the whole hog

http://www.mtv2.co.uk

I was wondering what the easiest way of rendering these kinds of animations is (ie which software to use to create and animate simple 3D shapes)

I only want to do simple geometric stuff, not textured and lit Industrial Light & Magic type stuff and I only want to use prerendered stuff (at the moment).

I could do this the very, very long way and use the KPT 3D transform filter in Illustrator to render all the keyframes and adjust for relative distance and perspective by eye, but there must be a simpler way