Want to spent money and not sure if I should buy Vue Infinite or Carrara 5 pro. It would be easier to decide if I had many landscapes with many plants. For me it is very mixed with for sure more indoor or citystreet location.

Where is the Poserimport better? Vue Inf. or Carrara 5 pro? Where is the final rendering better?

Thank you for answers.

Thomas

Poser import isn't 100% perfect on either. Look thru post to see issues. However, poser models are always a bit problematic everywhere. For that matter any kind of importing has a history of this.Carrara does well tho and has native poser support w/ bones and ik. Carrara ids a more powerful renderer IMO. More stable, better quality, faster...more control.

I own both. I had Vue 5I for over 6 months and lost track of the amount of patches. The other day I got the rendering farm of 10 computers to work. I have lost track of how many times I have tried. By the way, it only worked because I had no poser content and lots of alpha planes and very little real content. Carrara I've only had for a very short time and it has a few things that annoy me,but nothing that I can't work around. It doesn't have the nice land scapes that Vue does. Carrara hasn't crashed once. If you are trying to decide between the two then I would suggest that you do a search for "oom" in both forums here and other places on the net. Save your money on Vue and buy Bryce for backgrounds unless you really need the plants to move in an animation. Dale

My personal experience is C5 is better... but then again I'm not doing much in way of landscapes

Carrara's new landscape capabilities have not been fully explored by many yet. You will begin to see better landscapes soon. I think they can give Vue a run for its money. Obviously, Carrara will be better for man made environments because of its modeling capabilities. I believe that Carrara's Poser import is a least as good as Vue's, if not better. Carrara's rendering is very good and faster than Vue's. Carrara has lots of inexpensive plugins for any specific need you might have. From what you asked for, I think Carrara is the easy choice to make.

Patrick

Message edited on: 01/21/2006 09:24

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.

Here is a closeup view of the jeep (is sharper without jpg compression).

Carrara 5Pro makes bushes just fine. Maybe you should delve deeper into the plant editor. Very nice use of Anything Goos, great example of what it is good for.

I think it's just more awkward to get certain looks w/ the plants.I have spent sometime in there with the manual playing to tweak certain plants, but still didn't get what I wanted(took awhile.)The big issue seemed to be w/ mapping and rendering I have noticed that carrara trees seriously slow things down. Whereas obj imports don't. However, Vue even has limitations with the plants. Plants/trees are hard.

I have both programs and without a doubt Carrara is far better in all features. Vue render engine is slow, interface is really unsuitable and application is very buggy. Carrara has a lot more features, best structure and interface and is a lot faster ... really try it before any purchase :) Juan J. Gonzalez

Get both. They are both good programs. Lightwave might still come with V5I included.

Carrara 5 regular is the equivalant of Vue 5 Infinite, but at the price of Vue 5 Regular, and it also includes a modeller. That itself goes a long way for me, though I already have Vue 5 regular and love it... It might collect dust if I can figure out Carrara lighting (what in Carrara is the equiv of a volumetric sun in Vue?) and terrain texturing (I can't yet get a shader from a terrain to continue on another terrain or infinite plain as if they were the same object - something Vue does automatically). I have had some errors in importing Poser into Carrara, see this thread: http://www.eovia3d.net/showthread.php?p=66711#post66711 But they have already started looking into this bug, so that speaks for good support. I suspect that in short order the two apps will be equal in quality of Poser Import.

I do like that in Vue I can grab the sun while in scene and move it around, rather than having to enter an atmosphere editor. I also really miss the ability to 'drop' an object that I had in Vue, but Carrara's collisions detection does the same thing by dragging one of the arrows, but not the 'center circle' (a difference that caused me a lot of confusion yesterday). I did not know I could export plants out of Vue... I will need to give that a try tonight. Vue has more freestuff - and this is very important for new users. Especially in the area of shaders and atmosphere presets. That said, all the Carrara community needs to do here is put out about 50 atmosphere and shader freestuff presets for common things and it will be in the viable range.

Very helpfull answers. I thank you all. Decision is for Carrara 5 pro and some plugins ;-) Thomas

I've owned Vue5I since 3/05, and I personally consider C5Pro the best both for the $$, and in absolute terms. The advantage of the Vue sun is eclipsed by Carraras sun due to the fact that the Carrara sun is a true simulation. The vue sun is more an infinite light.

At any rate, I do presently use Vue, and if one can afford both then they might consider getting both applications. Though, with all the problems I've had with Vue, I doubt I will upgrade to V6I?

If I one day create more outdoorscenes I will maybe think again about Vue infinite. But well I think Carraras evolution is so fast that maybe that day Carrara will win the race for my money again.

Not to mention e-on makes you upgrade everytime or forgets you.