hmmm I have Carrara 5 standard.  Carrara 5 standard has a native import of poser figures, there is also a plugin Transposer 2 for Carrara 5 which lets you pose in carrara and import hair etc.  I do not have the plugin.  never needed it.  native import has worked just fine importing poser into carrara 5.

Carrara 5 pro includes the native poser import, as well as includes the Transposer 2 plugin.  C5Pro also has a network renderer and some other minor added things.  I didn't see the advantage of spending the money on those features.

Vue 5 and Vue5Infinite are very similar, the advantage of Vue5I is the ecosystem where you can paint a forest and render without having the memory system resource hoggin up.  I've used it a bit and it's really quite impressive.  That being said I do not do animations so flying over a forest of trees hasn't been a big deal for me.  Vue 5 has been just fine.  The price difference is quite extrodinatry if you not going to use the features.  Vue5I seems to be the flagship and getting more support.  Vue6 is coming out with Ecosystem II and supposedly really really impressive.

Quite hoestly with all the software I have when I do Poser etc work I use Carrara for trees and landscapes and import poser scene into Carrara.

I'm much more confortable in a 2d application than 3d and do a lot of post work/layering of renders.  it's easier to do a tree forest and layer the trees in photoshop than have my computer rendering for 8 hours to get a scene.

I really like Carrara.  has the feel and comfort of poser.  easy to learn, and it's really pretty fast at rendering.  Vue I have not been that happy with.  bugs and tech support and just the feel of the application I dunno.  not comfortable with it yet and I have 3 versions hahaha.