" I agree with the observations so far, but I'm just mostly impressed with the quality vs. rendertime. I've been struggling to achieve this kind of GI look in Carrara." I really don't know Carrara at all, aside from some modelling I did with RayDream waaaay back in the day. That's about as close as I've come to Carrara. ;-)

That said, I don't know what kind of options the render engine in Carrara has or doesn't have, but if it has a skylight and AO shader, you can do just about the same thing I would imagine.

MentalRay is really an excellent renderer, although it can be quite complex to master. Some people don't like to have lots of dials and parameters to work with, because it makes the learning curve rather steep. In the end, however, the more options you have, the more chances you have at finding a great render setting that provides the quality/speed tradeoff you need to get almost any job done. So far, I've been most impressed with both MentalRay and FinalRender. I think I prefer them over any that I've tried, regardless of the application. Then again, I've never used PRman. ;-P Message edited on: 01/30/2006 23:02

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.