Getting the right lighting in Carrara is hard. My figures look so plastic. Isn't there any presets for lighting? I've move the light, resized it, tried different effects and I can't seem to get that crisp outdoor lighting like Vue. Is there an easier way?

There are lots of presets in the browser, or you can use the wizzard. They create new scenes, you can cut and paste your creation in them. Crisp outdoor lighting could be created by using HDRI lighting, or good skylight settings, that uses the sun, just like in reality. Indirect Lighting can also add greatly to realistic looking outdoor renders. The plastic look of figures can also be a matter of shading/texturing of course. Do you have experience with HDRI lighting?

I am new to Carrara and just finding my way around. I don't know what HDRI lighting is. So let's say I have my scene created. I copy it, then when I click on one of those light presets, I paste my scene into it?

If your figures are looking plastic it is likely the textures, not as much the lighting. Mainly highlight and shine. There are many lighting options in carrara. Alot of variety in presets also. Play with the lighting types in simple scenes. There is some info on 3pt lighting in the manual. Check it out. Also it covers the texture room.  Turning off the ambient lighting in the scene is important. The default is 20%. You can add some back in or use different colors, but that would come later after you get a feel for it. Play with the different kind of lights to see how they look. HDRI and a combination of distant or sunlight can be a better way for outdoors.

Attached Link: Plasticine man with velvet jacket with 3 point lighting model

HDRI is wonderful. You can also switch on "sky light," which will create a light dome out of the sky preset. Some people don't like this for the somewhat saturated effect it can give. A worthwhile experiment just to switch it on, or load in one of the lighting example presets from the browser. Definitely tweaking the textures is a good thing. Because of the way the texture room is set up it is sometimes effective to create an overall layer that influences all the textures, rather than dialing in each of the hundreds of materials later DAZ figures insist on.

I must be doing something wrong, I copy my scene, then double click on one of the light presets, which opens another window but when I paste into it, it looks awful. Plus I get other things in there from the light preset, barrels, cones, etc. sigh!

Hi, I just delete all those funny shapes from the lights presets. the plastic look of the skin goes when, funilly enough, you turn shinyness up to 90% Love esther