I used a formula in the glow channel and the transparency in the disk. That seemed to work reasonably well but not what I had originally planned. I also used several animated shaders. The shaders in Carrara are most defintitely different than in RDS and will require a significant learning curve for me. The more I use Carrara though, the better I feel about it. I would really like a patch and I'm dying to know what's in the next version (radiosity?). I also used the explosion tutorial that's on this site but I had to cheat Carrara to do it because Carrara can't employ a deformer when changing from one modeler to another. RDS can't do this either when you can't change modelers but I figured a way to do it but it isn't clean. You export the shape and the import it back in and that seems to work.

-Kix