I'm a very content Vue 5 Infinite user. Vue 5 imports Poser figures well, including dynamic cloth, but you'll have to tweak the materials. Dynamic hair does import, but it doesn't render very well, it's only usable with dark hair colors and medium to long distance.

I also have Carrara 5 Pro. A straight import of a Poser figure, including dynamic cloth and hair, goes very well. Carrara renders dynamic hair much better than Vue 5.

The downside to Carrara is it's user interface. I can't make heads or tails of it. And I sorely miss numeric entry for position and scale values (maybe they're in there somewhere, but I haven't been able to find it).

One of the great advantages of Vue is it's user interface. In less than 20 minutes I was able to create a decent looknig basic scene in Vue, while I couldn't do anything decent in Carrara even after half a day of trying.

I'm rather excited by the upcoming Vue 6. I'll go for the Infinite version, since that one will come in a 64 bit version, hopefully allowing me to create even larger scenes than I already do (20 human figures plus architecture plus lush foliage is no exception for me. But it taxes Vue 5 to its limits, even on a very powerful PC).
I'm also very interested in the new shaders and polygon smoothing. Right now I don't use Vue for closeups of Poser people, since the lack of polygon smoothing shows blocky shoulders. For closeups I usually render in Poser 6.

So I'd say download the demos. Both Vue and Carrara programs import Poser scenes quite well, both programs have much more powerful renderers than Poser. But you'll have to find out for yourself what user interface works best for you.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

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