Here is section of a piece I did with Carrara5 Pro. Look closely at the jeep, as it was textured completely in Carrara5 Pro using the fantastic "Anything Goos" plug-in. I can do my modeling as well as landscapes in C5Pro. I think that the quality of Poser import to C5Pro is superior to Vue 5 Infinite (which I've owned since 3/05). Landscaping in C5Pro is very precise, and it would have been very difficult to do the sand/plants/grass mix, etc., in Vue (with the precision) as I did in C5Pro. I love C5Pros terrain capabilities, and its volumetric clouds are excellent. I often create terrains in C5Pro and import into Vue5I -- when I do use Vue.

Now, some of the plants you see in this work were imports from Vue, as C5Pro doesn't do well in the bush department.

Carrara is likely more difficult to learn, because it is that much more powerfull overall. I think C5Pros rendering engine is way ahead of Vues -- and much faster with complicated lighting.

Vue does shine if you need 500,000 object instances on your scene.

Get the demos for each program -- spend some real time with them, and check out the work done with each application.