Quote "Carra has modelling tools and landscapes capabilities, so you may indeed want to compare, but from what I've seen from the upcoming Vue6 line, it will knock down  Carrara pretty hard."

I don't want to or have any intention of starting a software battle.  But Vue 6 will be catching up to Carrara IMHO.  Carrara already has 3d clouds/displacement/SSS/REAL trees & ability to make from scratch/wind  etc etc.  The only thing C doesn't have at this point in relation to Vue6 is the ability to "paint on ecos".  This is only based on V6's advertising at this point, more things could come to pass before V6 release.

All apps have their strenghts & weaknesses, trying out demo's of each would serve you well :)