With the deals available on both products and the favourable pound/dollar ratio, I've decided to shell out either on the C5/Transposer crossgrade or V5 Esprit. Trouble is; which one?

I'll use whichever program I buy almost exclusively for rendering Poser scenes. What do people think?

Also, has anyone used V5 Easel, which is cheaper still?

Thanks.

i used both.I think that Carrara+transposer2 is better for all around rendering and features(inside ,fx,outside lightings,modeling, some landscapes and trees,etc).But Vue infinite is more fun to play and  better for 3d landscape with characters.Poser to Carrara via transposer or native is working good but slowly.Poser to VUE infinite is working very good and faster than Carrara

This is not even semi-OT it is completely ON topic. Poser was originally designed with the idea that it would be standard practice to make your renders elsewhere, and it is only really since Poser 5 that there has been a serious attempt to develop Poser as a renderer. It is still very clunky to try and use Poser as a complete scene-renderer, because too much is left over from the original "just posing" model. An example is the strange requirement in Poser that you must always have exactly one thing selected. In any other 3d program, you can have multiple objects selected, or none at all.

I have only used the Carrara 5 demo, and didn't get all that far with it without a manual; but it looks as if it could be nice. Vue 5 is powerful and easy to use, but because of memory problems, if you have a scene with large imported pz3 files, it becomes necessary every so often to save, quit and reload to recover lost system resources - otherwise Vue will crash.

I Have Easel and it doesn't load animations. I'm going for the Carrerra 5/Transposer bundle and downloading it this very second.

i have vue and carrara - they're both good!

Vue renders with true rays, render time light effects, atmospheric volumetrics, and fully volumetric lighting. It also has a lot of scalability in anti-aliasing and assorted quality settings. Carrara simulates the ray tracing to a degree, does light effects post render, and has no volumetrics for atmosphere. However it has some nice caustics, and perhaps more usable ambient occlusion (same feature in Vue slows down more). Before render each has some other very important differences: Carrara regular includes these things:

• A spline modeler
• A nurbs modeler
• A metaball modeler
• A particle generator
• A tree designing modeler (only in Vue infinite or with plugin - Vue's premade plants are better)
• An ecosystem (only in Vue infinite)
• Anything glows (see my 'Space Vixen' image for an example - which has nudity so I won't link it, but it is in my gallery)
• Shaped lights - the source of light is not one point, but an area you shape
• ability to repose and rebone a figure from within Carrara - no reimport needed.
• Ability to make morphs with the vertex modeler (which while sub-par elsewhere, is the best morph maker -I- have used).
• better terrain generation, and easier to tweak (however Vue's choice of a default zero-edge peak is nicer).

Further Carrara has these things not in Vue: - A primitive Vertex modeler (Hexagons is vastly better)

• A UV mapper (Hexagon's is better I hear)

The landscaping and atmospheric tools in Carrara are easier to use and easier to customize your results than in Vue. For terrains the results are also superior, but the opposite is true for atmospheres. Carrara's plant design app is only marginally better than the one in Bryce. But of course, the one in Vue is a pricey plugin that doesn't come with the standard app... Render wise it can often be a toss between the two. Carrara does better renders than Vue in 'X', but Vue beats Carrara in 'Y'.

http://www.eovia.com/products/carrara5/carrara_full_features.asp

This post was helpful since I am thinking of the Carrara deal. Is there a better option as JUST a renderer for poser scenes? I have 3DS for modeling, but am looking for something that will let me do more than 2 figures in a scene without the issues poser has.

I guess the question is, what program will do bigger scenes that poser and increase render times over poser?

best, Michael

I use Carrara 5 Pro to render all my poser related stuff. It works just fine and it's a hell of a lot easier (for me anyway), getting good results out of Carrara than it is out of Poser. I'm just much more comfortable with the way Carrara does things. My gallery has a bunch of Carrara renders for the curious. As a sidenote, though I will say that C5 Pro seems noticeably slower than C4 when dealing with my various scenes. C5 does have the edge in making it easier to import my Poser 6 content (I had to "trick" C4 to get it to import from Poser 6), just slower on my machine than C4 was. End results on both were quite good though.

Ok, So I've had Carrara 5 for 8 hous now and here is my first Poser 6 import result. I've obviusly got a lot to learn, such as how do I make the infinate water plane show up, but the figures look halfway decent in anycase. Especially once I turend on Render light through transparencies so Jame's Eyes showed up correctly.

The character on the left is practising levitation, which is one of the problems with trying to fit imported Poser figures into Carrara landscapes.   Carrara can be used to modify poses, but you lose the connection to the original Poser file.   Both Vue and Carrara have a bit of a problem for Poser users, in that their supplied landscapes (or V5I ecosystems) aren't ideally designed for putting figures into, because the features of the landscape are large-scale.   You can use a Carrara mountain as a small, rocky outcrop, but, somehow, it always looks more like a mountain (it may be something to do with the snow on top ;¬)   ).  Carrara's trees are hopeless.   You can't use them without extensive work in the texture room.   Vue's aren't wonderful, either, but they are the right colour, roughly, and there is good commercial content for Vue.   Both have limitations for importing Poser figures.   You can hit memory problems very quickly.   V5I has better recovery than Carrara 5.   If V5I says it is trying to save your work, I think it means it (not always true in earlier Vues).   Carrara hits memory-related buffers much too readily and that usually means a visit to the Task Manager, even when you haven't remotely exhausted available memory (I have had that today, when Carrara reached 600+ Mb, on a system with 2Gb, and gave up).    I get the impression that hair slows down Carrara renders a lot and that water (reflections = raytracing, presumably) makes Vue renders take forever and then some.  

My gallery here at renderosity has several images done in Vue and Carrara - which cal be useful to see what the same artist can achieve in each. One of them, temple furrete, is the same scene rendered in each in order to compre: Carrara version | Vue version Several of the other images will show you what I have managed to do with plants, lights, and so on in each application. My renderosity Gallery. So if you want a direct side by side, where the skills and style are the same for each - allowing you to leave the comparison to the apps, there you go.

Hey!!I thought I did well to get the tiger's back feet back on the ground in 8 hours! I couldn't find anything to "Drop To Ground" like I can in Bryce and Poser and it took me a while to find the XYZ editing text area. Moving the figures by hand is iffy at best with the move tool, same as with poser. And there were no dials for the XYZ, just editable text fields.  At least, that's how far I got with the time I had to play with it today. I'm pretty proud of my crappy achievement in anycase so.....:tt2:

Look for collision detection. Once you turn it on, drag the figure by the arrows and not the ball in the center. That will only collide the first point to first point of course, and often for a sitting figure you need to do things like put part of their butt beneath the surface of the chair, couch, floor, sand, whatever... But it gives you a start.

the weird thing is when I import some props etc from poser, some of them don't seem to want to collide and just go through surfaces. Love esther

I used one of the preset lighting scenes that are included and tweaked it slightly.

cheerio  lululee

Hi, greatw Ok. Now here's a tricky thing I learnt. To make the leg less shiny and plasticky, you actually need to turn up the shinyness slider possibly to over 90%. Try it and see, Love esther

It's in the View pull-down, but I think positioning things manually, as you have, works better.

Attached Link: http://http://www.renderosity.com/gallery.ez?ByArtist=Y&Artist=Djeser

Thanks for the help - it was very useful.

I've gone for Carrara, but it was a close-run thing. In the end, it gave the impression of being the program that integrated better with Poser. At the offer prices, though, I'd have been happy with either.

when you can afford it get both. they sort of complement each other. Love esther

Mizrael, it.s in the Assemble window (hand icon).   You're in the Render window.

LOL! Ok, well I did say I was new at this. :m_thoughtful: Thank you!

I just got the DAZ deal on Carrara/Transposer a few days ago and I'm im pressed with it. I've also been a Vue user for a long time, first version was Vue 2, last version Vue 5 Pro Let me do a side by side comparisment. Modeling: Carrara outshines Vue by far. Only true boolean operations are worth it. Vue lacks all of the needed modeling tools, while Carrara incorporates them. Poser import: Vue many crashes, Carrara none yet. When importing larger poser scenes, Vue gets very very very slow, Carrara still responds well. Terrains & skies: both are just as good, different setup, but both excellent. Plants & trees: Vue has real plants, Carrara doesn't. Vue has great trees, Carrara has good to great trees. But Carrara allows for much more editing of trees and you could probably even turn some of them into plants. UI: Vue's interface takes time to get used to, I like Carrara's setup, it's much closer to Poser. Features: Carrara has many many many more. The standard version comes even close to Vue Infinite. Carrara standard even has a sort of ecosystem and it works great, even with Poser figures. Need an army of 100's of Roman Poser figures roaming the forest? Carrara can do it, with just a few mouse clicks. Vue 5 Esprit or Pro cannot do it. Rendering: this is the big one...... Rendering poser figures with Vue and having them look good is a challenge. After doing a couple of poser characters renders in Carrara they look great without a lot of work. But Vue clearly has some more advanced rendering features, which I never used, I'm not prepared to wait 24hrs or more for my render to complete. Rendering Poser figures in Vue can consume a lot of time even withoout the fancy settings. Carrara is much faster and has a good number of impressive rendering features also. Animation: Carrara beats Vue easily. Animated Poser figures import without a probklem. Much better toolset for animating, I'm pretty sure Carrara standard even beats V5I easily in this area. Extra features: Vue simply lacks them. Carrara has all of them. Vertext & nurbs modeling, Particles, Volumetric clouds, impressive selection of different kinds of lights are just a few. But the main difference is stability. Vue is so instable and akward to use, especially when it comes to larger scenes, that I've stopped using it. Vue and Poser communicate terrible at times. I've only used Carrara fora few days, but it's rock solid and communcates well with Poser. For the money you spent, you get much more for your money when you buy Carrara. Vue is a landscape / outdoor generator. Carrara is a modeling suite. Capable of doing outdoors scenes and landscapes just as well as Vue, but with the addition of good indoor scene creation and handling also. Comparing the two I can only say that Vue is completely overpriced if you pay the full price for it. Carrara gives you something that's worth your money.... Vue gives you a headache.