If you can afford it, upgrade to the Pro version in my opinion the extra capability is well worth the money. Honestly, Im not a Carrara evangelist; its just that this is the first revision of Carrara that has really grabbed my attention (I also use Poser, trueSpace 6.6, Bryce 5.5, & Vue5I).

The tree replication in Carrara does indeed lack the random individual populating that V5I has, but you can easily modify individual tree characteristics for a given species (say about 6 different variations in color & shape for a species), and distribute them with user selectable random rotations & scaling in all directions. I wrote an email to a Carrara plug-in developer, suggesting he might try creating a plug-in that would use Carraras random seed ability for the trees when distributing, and he said he was going to look into that possibility.

Ive done several distributions doing the above mentioned process, and its pretty difficult to see any real sameness within the forest. Since C5Pro now has a translucent shader channel (the beta didnt have it), foliage is going to look a lot better. One thing, the Carrara trees do need more work on the default textures, as they are procedural and I dont think look that good without tweaking. However, I always tweak anyway, as nothing out-of-the-box seems to satisfy me. Also, if you need animated foliage, then Carrara wont be able to help you there. It has much better overall animation capability compared to Vue (has a real physics engine), but not animated branches, etc. On the other hand, Carraras trees have individual leaves and the pine needles are little spiral-wound individual needle groups like real pine trees. This gives the user the flexibility and capability to create really excellent close-up trees.

This brings me up to another cool feature. If you want, you can convert a distribution group to real instances. Be careful though, as the system resource requirements will go through the ceiling if you do this with a large (up to 10,000 object) distribution group!

I cant get into all the details concerning the precise terrain layering of noise, objects, texturesetc, but it is almost astounding what you can do!

I consider Vues occasional superior features incapable of surmounting Carraras numerous superior features. For example, I recently rendered 2 very similar scenes, at the same resolution and (as close as possible) quality settings. One was done in Carrara5 Pro, the other in Vue5I. I used raytraced soft shadows in both scenes. It took 139 hours in V5I after I stopped at ~80% complete, and turned-off the soft raytraced shadows. Carrara did the scene in less than 6 hours, and even looked better! Then you have these really excellent volumetric clouds, real sky simulation (I just did a South Western scene with a nice solar eclipse)it goes on, and on!

Believe me; I was not nearly so pleased with Carrara 4 Pro. It was just an all right upgrade to a decent application. Carrara 5 Pro is a different animal altogether. Just the change in the Carrara user interface was almost worth the admission (not quite though).

Unless you have the monetary resources to buy anything you want, you might want to try the Carrara5 demo when it becomes available, as well as the Vue5 demo, and make a decision based on your own hands-on experiences. I know there are a lot of satisfied Vue users (I personally think Vue4 is a much better deal than Vue5 Infinite for the money), and Im trying not to sound too much like I have an investment in Eovia beyond the (mostly) pleasant time Ive spent with it.