Yeh in most ways Carrara is better than Ray Dream Studio, lighting effects a mo0re complex shader system etc, but I really wish they had not taken out the wizard modeler for skinned objects, I ifnd it much easier to work with than the free form modeler in Carrara for simple objects. If you look at most of my images, the sculpted curved elements are all done in RDS wizard skin modeler. Then I bring it into C4 to finish, light, sskin and render. I checked out 3dXtract, not bad. I think they have more here though.