Opera,

The complex shader nodes in Poser your using for real skin (and maybe reflections) probably won't transfer "one to one" into Carrara. CS has a great shader system which is capable of producing realistic skin, but I doubt you can get a load and go transfer that you won't want to tweak.

As for the dynamic hair, typically you need to tweak it in Poser before importing with Transposer. Usually the root and tip widths need to be reduced and strand density increased to get good results in Carrara.

Soft shadows are also very easy in CS, but you will have to adjust your lights to enable soft shadows. The intensity of the imported lights typically needs to be reduced too.

I think that you can probably get the results your looking for in CS, but you would have to modify your work flow a fair ammount to streamline your work (and there would no doubt be a few comprimises along the way).

The render nodes in CS5 Pro, and the multiprocessor support may be a big enough improvement in productivity to offset the changes in workflow, and the usual problems associated with moving data from one software to another. On the other hand, your current "render garden" approach may still be the best solution. If you could talk Eovia into giving you another 30 day demo, it may be worth your time to check it out again so you can see for sure if it will do the trick.

The attached image is a quick and dirty comparison of Jessi with danamic rendered in Poser and Carrara. I used the default lighting in P6, and reduced the light intensity for each light by 20% after I imported the scene into CS. I doubled the strand count, and rediced the strand width about 1/3 of the original hair set up in P6. Both images had the same strand values so you can compare the results. I could have gotten better results if I spent a little more time on the strand size, and turned on soft shadows for the lights, but it's way past my bed time, and my contacts are getting cloudy (can't see the screen to well).

Hope this all helps a little!

--Martian Manhunter, Great Job!
DR

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