Things I like: 1. Price. 2. Render quality and speed. 3. Shading philosphy, very powerful. 4. The SDK, having spent time in trueSpace, Lightwave, and now XSI, Carrara's SDK is more open and easier to use than anything else I've seen. I can tell that the SDK is part of the plan in Carrara where other apps it's an afterthought. 5. Rooms, I like everything else falling away so I can do a single task. The UI in general is very comfortable to me. Things I'd like to see: 1. 64bit support. I know a few of my customers who are hitting the limits of what Carrara can do. Not everyone is there yet, but I've seen scenes that need 2 1/2 gig of RAM to render (the 1/2 gig for the OS) so there are people pushing those limits now and it will only get worse. 2. The Shading Room. I love the power, but often it's a pain to navigate especially when copying channels across shaders. You almost need two monitors to do heavy lifting in there and if you're stuck on a 1024x768 machine you might as well shoot yourself in the head. I don't know what the answer is, but I believe it can be better. 3. Translucency. There are tips and tricks for faking it, but it really needs to be supported natively in the renderer. 4. UVW coordinate support. Regards, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild 3D plug-ins for Carrara http://digitalcarversguild.com

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins