I guess both would technically be called shader controlled displacements. But Carrara's own doesn't give you an option to convert to a full geometery figure. Anything Grooves as a modifier allows you to collapse the modifier stack or export, thus making it a "high density" model. Not sure what this does to the UV unwrapping on a low polygon figure, but I'll assume it'll destory it until I learn more about this myself. Simple things like flat planes with displacement would be the easiest way to test out a working procedure. Before devoting huge amounts of time into research.