Bill,

I've used Carrara and C4D 6XL for commercial porposes, and many people who have posted on this forum use Carrara for commercial purposes. Eovia has made some big improvements in Carrara over the past couple of years, and 3rd party plugin development has also increased. Any of the software mentioned in this thread has probably been used commercially, and they all have their strenghts and weaknesses. That is why very few pro shops (if any) use a single app.

With the recent improvements in C3, and the up-comming Poser plugin, if I had to choose a single multipurose app, keeping in mind that it is comming out of my own pocket, it would be Carrara.

Other apps I own include 3DS MAX 3.1, Rhinocerous 2.0 (which is an excellent CAD type nurbs modeler), C4D, Body Paint, Poser, Virtual Nature Studio (VNS), Amorphium Pro, and the version of Universe that comes with the 3D ToolKit. I consider myself to be a newbee to 3D. I've been doing 3D related work as a second "job" for about 3 years, and continually go through the decision making process you are going through now, as I am on a limited budget. In my opinion Carrara 3 is the price/performance/feature leader. TrueSpace is also worth a look in the affordable 3D market, and C4D CE is an excellent value for a rock solid product (especially the free version). I worked with C4D for over 10 hours once without ever rebooting or shutting down the program, there are not many programs (3d or other) that can do this on a windows machine.

With Carrara 3 you get so much for the price. For modeling it has a vertex, spline, metaball, and a tree modeler. It doesn't have a nurbs modeler (which C4D isn't a true nurbs modeler either), but you can accomplish just about anything you might ever need to with modelers in C3. As I've said before, the render engine is amazing. C3 is a bargain if you just got it to render in.

I got real bargain on 3DS MAX, but to be perfectly honest, I got it so that I could put it down in my list of tools, and the rare occasion I might need to use it for model conversion or testing. I find MAX to be a bit user abusive, as opposed to user friendly. Rhino was my first 3D modeling software purchase, as I needed to be able to create models for use in Virtual Nature Studio (VNS). But Rhino is strictly a modeler. I got C4D XL6 and Carrara 1 at almost the same time (at prices I couldn't resist on ebay). I used C4D a lot more than Carrara 1, because I needed to use scaled images to trace off of for making models (which Rhino 2 can also do, but the ability to render the finished product in the same app made C4D the modeler of choice). I upgraded to Carrara 2 because in my opinion it had a better render engine than C4D 6 (that caustics thing again), but the need to use reference images for model creation kept me using C4D for modeling. With Carrara 3, I can now trace off of images for model creation, so I plan on doing most of my work with C3 now.

The real difference between Carrara and the high end apps is workflow, 3rd party support (plugins), and scripting/SDK power/flexibility. But for this "extra" offered in the high end apps, there is a big price tag attached, not only in the cost of the software, but also in the cost of training, with a big learning curve. Of course the cost of upgrading to the newest version (including additional $$$ for plugin upgrades) is much greater with the high end apps too.

Buying 3D software is like any other purchase. Let's say you have your own delivery business, and your buying a vehicle for it. If your delivering primarily small packages the vehicle you buy would be much different from one for delivering large quantities of lumber. You could buy a big truck (say a 2 ton with a van box) for your small package delivery service, in case you decide to start hauling large items in the future. But you'll be stuck with the cost of operating the larger vehicle on the off chance you might need it. Or you could by a Pickup or small delivery van, knowing that once in a while you might have to make large deliveries that will require multiple trips. Here you have the most economical vehicle for the bulk of your business, but your profits might suffer if you start making a lot of large deliveries with it. At this point you would have to make the decision to either purchase a bigger vehicle and expand your delivery service, or continue to focus on small package delivery only. In either case, you'll keep the smaller vehicle because it is still the better tool for delivering small packages.

I view C3 as the smaller vehicle. It can do everything I need, but a few things may require a little extra work to make a final product (where maybe C4D, Lightwave, or MAX have the tools or plugins that would make these occasional unique projects a snap). If I run into something that is really difficult in C3, I do have other support apps that may fit the job, which I haven't spent a lot on. If at some point, my needs expand to where Carrara just doesn't match the demand, I will probably invest in the upgrade for C4D 8 (or what ever the current version might be). But for now, I'm using C3 for almost everything except the landscape work I do in VNS, which really can't be done in any other 3D app (including Maya, XSI, etc.).

I hope this helps you make your decision. There is no "one size fits all" 3d software. But IMHO, in the for what it's worth category, C3 really offers a lot for the price.

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