I can answer a couple of these: First I'll mention you can download a demo of Carrara from http://www.eovia.com/resources/download.asp 1. You could simulate symmetry the way you describe it, but it's not ideal because you always have to go into a separate modeling "room" to edit the master object. So you can't edit the master and see the instance update right next to it in real time. The lack of adequate symmetrical modeling is one of the great mysteries of Carrara. Digital Carvers' Guild http://digitalcarversguild.com offers a $30 plugin called Project Gemini that fills this void (although I haven't used it). Nearly every Carrara user has at least one Digital Carvers' Guild plugin - they're indispensible. The ShaderStyle bundle on Eovia's web site is all Digital Carvers' Guild pludins. But Project Gemini is not among them, so I digress. 2. You can set up mesh smoothing on a per-object basis. You can turn off smoothing for a polygon by creasing its edges, but you can't vary the amount of smoothing from one polygon to the next in a single mesh. In Carrara 5 you can specify a moderate level of smoothing in the modeler and higher-resolution smoothing for the renderer, which effectively makes the workspace much faster than it was in Carrara 4. This makes me happy. 3. Yes, you can perform multiple render passes, and in addition to alpha channels you can generate other "Gbuffers": Fragment Color (RPF) Fragment Distance Fragment Coverage (RPF) Object Index Surface Coordinates (UV) Normal Vector 3D Position I admit I don't know what most of these mean. But you can render all at once into a multichannel PSD image and compare them. 4. I'll skip this question 5. This too 6. Carrara's vector output requires a $99 / 99 Euro plugin (VectorStyle, http://www.eovia.com/products/carrara_addons/vectorstyle.asp ). I can't say how the results compare to Swift 3D's in terms of efficiency, but they look just as good to me, and more importantly Carrara is a really nice modeler, while Swift 3D is the worst modeler you can buy at any price. 7. Not sure what set-driven means; No scripting. 8. Particles can collide with objects; not sure about each other (someone else can pick up this question). -Joe