To say that Carrara is "a lot like Vue" plus modeling, is quite rough. 1- Carrara has no ecosystem distribution; Vue has; 2- Carrara's atmosphere system (sky, fog, clouds) is much less realistic than Vue's; 3- As far as I know, Carrara shouldn't have procedural terrains; 4- Vue scenes are exportable to big applications such as Max or Maya or Cinema, I don't think that Carrara scenes can; 5- Vue supports Poser 6 (although not completely yet), while I'm not even sure that Carrara supports Poser 5 yet and anyway I think you have to get a plugin for that. 6- Vue has a built-in vegetation system while Carrara hasn't Carrara has a very nice modeler, but using it to complement Vue is, like, a big waste of resource. Now there's Hexagon (also by Eovia) which is an excellent modeler, much cheaper than Carrara, and it's the perfect companion for Vue IMHO.