There's a long story. Here's the bit (with a bit more detail than Nivek provided). Metacreations had RayDream (Studio and 3D), Infini-D (another 3D program it had purchased from a company called Specular), and Poser. Metacreations "combined the code" from RayDream and Infini-D to create Carrara, which it somewhat hastily released. Version 1 of Carrara was notoriously buggy because of the hasty release on the part of Metacreations. This hasty release of Carrara was precipitated by MetaCreations somewhat mystifying decision to divest itself of all of its 3D software business. They off Poser (to Curious Labs, as I recall), and for quite some time Carrara was an orphan. But one of the original programmers of Carrara (and RayDream, as well, unless I'm mistaken), Msr. Antoine Clappier, had been in negotiations to get the rights to the program. Eventually, a company was formed, called Eovia, and the rights to Carrara were assigned to them. Eovia released a patch for Carrara version 1 that really made a lot of people happy by improving its stability, and began working on Carrara Studio 2. I made the jump from RayDream Studio 5.5 to Carrara Studio 2 recently, and while the interface is a bit befuddling, I am growing to really like the new software. As for patches and plug-ins for RayDream, they're still out there somewhere on the net. There's a plug-in for RayDream 3D that allows 3DS inports and exports (although that was standard in RayDream Studio 5.5 -- I think it might not have been standard in RDS 5.0 or 5.1). Hope that's helpful and not too long-winded. - Dex