I used version 4 to make the screen captures, but everything is in the same place, and works the same in version 2. I double checked to make sure it was the same, since it was easier to do the screen captures and all on my laptop, which doesn't have version 2 on it. Eovia has been very good at leaving things in the same place during the version upgrade process, which makes upgrading a pleasure (not like some vendors who think each upgrade needs to look different with many things renamed or in a different location on the UI).

Good luck, have fun, and keep trying! The learning cure on any 3d application is fairly steep and takes a while(at least for me - I've been trying to learn now for 4+ years, maybe some day I'll get good at it). But, after a while it becomes less frustrating, and a lot easier to do what you want to. The user interface of Carrara, being very similar to Poser, makes the learning process complimentary for both applications.

If you use Poser a lot, and plan on making your own stuff for Poser with Carrara, you might look into upgrading to either C4 Pro or C4 Standard + the Transposer plugin. Carraras render engine is much better than firefly in Poser. Even Carrara V2 has a much better render engine, it's just more difficult to import Poser figures with the maps intact and working properly, and requires some manual editing of the materials (which really isn't that difficult - AFTER you figure it out). There have also been some good improvements to the vertex modeler, animation, and even better redering options (which is very impressive given the quality of the C2 render engine)

There is also an excellent and very active Carrara Group at Yahoo. You can find several tutorials on the web, which should help ease the learning curve.

Happy rendering!

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