I hope I'm not opening a new world war by asking this here, I need your advice. I will post the same question in the Carrara forum.

I'm working with Poser more than a year now, as a hobby, and I have pretty much Poser stuff that I want to keep using. My biggest problem with Poser is it has no landscape, sky and water support, not good as I want anyway. I decided to dedicate some time to learn to operate a 3D software that will help me with these issues. I have found many solutions, but most of them are for pro and probably demands too much time that I don't have (3D Max, Maya etc). Eventually, I decreased the options and it's now Bryce vs Carrara.

I want your advice, and I prefer people who know both of them. I want to be able to construct a large landscape area, containing water (lake, sea, river...), trees (grass, flowers, forest) etc, I want to be able to move in the landscape (animation) and of course I want to be able to use my Poser skills and models.

I'm assuming the learning curve is fairly the same, and that there are a lot of tutorials and support forums for both options. Assuming the hardware requirements are the same, what do you recommend, Bryce or Carrara?

Thanks for helping

Carrara? Grrr!!  Them's fight'n words!

:-D

Well, for me, I recommend Bryce. It's a given, really, else I would be posting in that other forum place.

I use both and they both compliment each other, I think you will find some good advice from others here as I dont know how Bryce or Carrara would handle a large landscape with trees and such.  I've read about tricks of using 2D for both Software to address Crashes etc..

I'd say go with Bryce which I think will do everything you want and its much cheaper in price.

Well...this might start yet even another war! lol but are you aware of Vue ? If not, I suggest visiting their website at www.e-onsoftware.com before making ANY decision. Vue is, like Bryce a landscape generating program. It has its own pros and cons, which I won't go into here. If your interested I suggest you check out Vue's forum hosted here on Renderosity.

As far as recommendations I go I will say this...if your interested in using DAZ content, Bryce may be a better bet for you. DAZ see's E-onsoftware as a compeitor now and so the relationship between the two companies is not very good. But again it depends and what your goals are, how much you can afford and what your most comfortable with. If you want more information contact me and I'll try to help. Best of luck!

Carrara, especially since version 5 and 5.1, has gained respect in the area that used to be considered Vue and Bryce turf: landscape, atmospherics, volumetric clouds, trees that sway and leaves that rustle in the wind,... there's a lot to explore.

Carrara is more sophisticated in the animation area than Bryce. It also has a larger set of choices for modeling, from the Spline to the VErtex modeler with tools that are reminiscent of construction-curve based tools found in Amapi (such as Gordon surface tool in Carrara 5 Pro).

Bryce is easier to learn in some ways, but Carrara is not difficult either. Hey, they all came from MetaCreation's dev team with a similar user interface in mind at some point, until they became MegaCremations that is.

If you need some inspiration: www.thebest3d.com/carrara  -  look for the examples/galleries by Markus Rothkranz.

There are a few good things about Power+Carrara too. But I don't know if the same is true for Bryce+Poser.

Carrara has also been known for long as a fast renderer. Way faster than Bryce I think. Again, things may have evolved.

-Philip

"I'm assuming the learning curve is fairly the same" - This would probably be an incorrect assumption, at least if you are talking about the programs as a whole. Carrara has a lot more capabilties, tools and functions, some of which rival the output of the "Pro" softwares you mentioned.  If you are talking about  "Carrara Basics", and not Carrara5 standard, or Pro, the comparison and learning curve would be much closer. In the following I will discuss the capabilities of the standard, or Pro versions of Carrara.
     Since I use both Bryce and Carrara, I have no "axe to grind". You can build superb landscapes in both apps, but due to Carrara5's advantage with its surface replicator I'd have to give it the nod as far as creating large,(huge!) landscape areas. I've populated terrains with tens of thousands of randomly distributed trees with little extra memory overhead.  You can even replicate and tile terrains to have landscapes extending effortlessly to the horizon.
   You can control the distribution of trees, grasses, weeds, rocks or other objects with non-visible greyscale maps or materials that you can apply to your terrains. The ability to use animated displacement maps in Carrara also makes it possible to make convincing streams, rivers, lava, or mudflows.
        Carrara supports wind animation for its trees, and an available plug-in called "Anything Grows" will let you grow and add wind animation to fields of  grasses and flowers.
Carrara also supports particles, forces, and physics so you can make convincing animated smoke, drifting leaves,fountains, explosions, etc.  Carrara has excellent animated volumetric clouds as well and quite frankly, the rendering is much faster.
  Sometimes though, I just open up Bryce instead because it is so easy to use, and I still love it.

as I use both, frequently
my reponse would be "it depends on what you want to do"..ie the details.
If you are creating an extremely large complex model (one model or just a few)..I'd say Bryce
Bryce can support far more detail then  carrara will ever open.

however, if its a terrain or some other model with extreme detail..trees, grass, and such..then its carrara (because of its replicators)..or explosions.

to clarify..carrara could never NEVER build this:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=795134&member

but bryce will never do this:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1411091&member

both can be a pain..but both can do things that can inspire.
bryce is NOT as stable as it once was
nor is carrara as reliable as it once was either...its a bit behind the current technology but I'd anticipate it being updated soon.

bt

Ditto what danamo said.

Thanks guys, you are really helping.
What about Poser? Is one of them (Bryce/Carrara) can work with Poser's stuff better than the other ?

The main (serious) problem with Bryce is the lack of ecosystem feature and not having Global Illum./Radiosity...but DAZ say it will come soon; when these things will be implemented then you should go for Bryce. :-)

and Cardinal Bryster remains silent...odd..;)

I love bryce, I love Brycers and the forum is much more helpful and friendly.
But life is too short to wait for the CPU crushing renders.  As the last Bryce Glass Challenge showed.

If Bryce was as quick as Carrara, even without the wodnerful Carrara lighting, I'd still use it.  For me, speed is the issue.  18 days to render something I could do in Carrara in 5 hours.  Yup, 18 days!  I stopped it and turned off DOF and cut it down to 18 hours.

Carrara - 1.5 hours
Bryce - 18 hours

Gotta say though, if you know Bryce, the learning curve to Carrara is really quick and painless.
It has a very similar feel.

Quote -
Gotta say though, if you know Bryce, the learning curve to Carrara i sreally quick and painless.
It has a very similar feel.

YES!!! I agree 100% it took me no time to pick it up, and do some neat stuff with it.