Attached Link: http://www.eovia.com/products/carrara_addons/vectorstyle.asp

Well- I'm extremely happy with having purchased Carrara 5!    C5 renders fast and is very strong in the area that I have most wanted- or needed- which is Non-PhotoReal Rendering. This is something I have been trying to get E-on to add for YEARS- as it is not only a very nice artistic feature- but also very useful for making MONEY- doing architectural, scientific, medical or mechanical illustrations!

E-on added some ability to "create" some cel shade effects in V5I- but simply left it at the "ability" to "potentially" create these effects. In Carrara 5 there is a very artistic and useful built-in NPR renderer- I was playing with it last night and really amazed at the artistic, toon and illustration effects I was getting! Plus it is fairly easy to animate things in Carrara 5- which is useful for professional work and also website graphics...

Another HUGE weakness that Vue has, because of E-on's extremely paranoid view of the world, is a lack of PLUG-IN'S. Digital Carver's Guild, and other 3rd Party groups, create some really GREAT plug-ins for Carrara! I am especially interested in Toon! Pro- only $39.95- and definately interested in VectorStyle 2!   VectorStyle 2 has some amazing features that in high-end programs like MAX and Lightwave cost many hundreds of dollars...

While Vue 5 still has great plants and the ecosystem feature- I am finding out already that buying Carrara 5 is a fantastic investment for creating money-making graphic and illustration style effects.

The net effect of E-on's turning away from the wants and needs of it's original user base, and focussing on being a PLUG-IN for High-End software is that a lot of people, especially when they discover Carrara 5, and all the great deals that DAZ keeps offering- is a splintering and erosion of the Vue user base. High-enders will hang out in their MAX, Lightwave, C4 groups- because THAT is their PRIMARY software- not the Vue forums. E-on's attitude in the past year or so, as they have been developing XStream- is that they seem to care VERY LITTLE for what their ORIGINAL user base wants. It seems to be now all XSTREAM, all the time, for E-on. And whatever they throw into a future version of Vue 6- will be just that- thrown in- with another new set of V6 bugs!

I'm not going to be in a big rush to buy the next version of Vue- as E-on's "business plan" is becoming increasingly clear- the low and mid-range user base is the "tail-end"- something they are leaving behind them as they concentrate of being a high-end plug-in. I personally will be spending more time with Carrara getting stuff made that I can make money with on a daily basis. And the cost for these great C5 plug-ins are very affordable, in a program that is pretty easy to learn and use...