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 Bryce 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

I've got both. Based on your comments, Carrara will be a better choice simply because you can do more with it on the modeling side including modifying your existing models if you want or simply creating new ones or new plants. Also, Carrara's replicator allows you to quickly populate landscapes with a varity of vegitation without creating huge files. Carrara's clouds are pretty nice to. Finally, Carrara renders substantially faster than Bryce. That's worth it's weight in gold. Bryce still holds the edge in ease and variety of atmospheric effects although Carrara is no slouch in that department. If your only goal is to do outdoor scenes with pre-made content, you may want to check out the latest Vue6 - it's awesome in it's atmosphere effects and renders waaay faster than Bryce. Vue's spectral atmospheres are to die for! Mark

I almost posted this in the Bryce Forum, glad I saw you posted here too. I don't go in for app. bashing and don't want to cause any conflicts. Unfortunately, it seems that comparing applications isn't looked on very kindly here at Renderosity.

I'd go with Carrara, if it is between those two apps., mainly because of the Poser support via Transposer plugin. Bryce also does not have wind effects or physics, so it is difficult to create a realistic animation in an outdoor setting.
I personally had some trouble with the interface, but it only takes time. Many users really like the C5 interface; that is a personal preference.

I started with Bryce (?2) and whilst I have kept updated I never use.There is really no comparison between the two. Carrara is far easier to work with and much broader in its capabilities. I am still surprised that Bryce keeps going frankly.Past it's use by date?

i own bryce (due to a sale at daz) but never had the time to get into using it. but i ran into the same problem of not having landscape in poser, so i turned to terragen. you can see the quality of terragen in the gallery here. just export the landscape into carrara, ad somethings like plants/trees for closer stuff, and tada!

Terragen landscapes are fantastic! Do you only export the mesh, or can you also export the shaders? What format do you use? Seems to be a very interesting option.

Hi
Have you thought about Vue 6? It has Poser 7 support (which the other two don't) and landscapes are way ahead of either Carrara or Bryce IMHO.

Well, honestly I have Vue5 and I'm a bit fed up with e-on's policy. Instead of removing bugs, they worked on their strange content protection code, which messed up a lot of things. Vue is very expensive for European users, so I finally dropped it. I can do a lot of fantastic things with Carrara 5 Pro and I'm sure that Carrara 6 will catch up with Vue again. I don't have the money to support two midrange application at the same time and with Carrara I get a small modeler to modify imported things in Carrara. The render engine is also fast and I'm pleased with the results.

Vue6 landscape are not far ahead of Carrara, but I have to admit, that the presets are better. The atmophere effects of Vue 6 are awesome. This is really an outstanding feature.

You can get fantastic results in Carrara too, but you have to understand the shader system. In my opinion the best landscape renderer is Terragen, but this program lacks other features.

So Vue6 is certainly excellent in rendering landscapes and also supports Poser7
Carrara 5 Pro can also do fine landscapes and supports both Poser6 and 7(excluding dynamic hair and cloth). In Carrara 5 you can also model, morph, uv map and texture models.
Bryce 6 is an excellent application for a very low price. It does not have advanced features like Carrara or Vue, but if you look at beton's works here in the gallery, you can see what a real artist can do.

In the end it depends, what your goals are, what workflow you prefer and what amount of money you want to spend. Just use the trial versions, do see what fits best to your purpose.

Thanks guys, I read about Vue and I'm really impressed. I think I'll give it a try. Vue is coming in few packages, got me confused...but I'll post the question in the Vue forum, along with some more clarifications. 

Again, thank you all for helping

I have Vue 5 but haven't had a chance to learn it.  Your pretty much limited to training video's which are $$$.  There is a book out now for Vue 6 on Amazon and the author e-mailed me and said that 80% should also work for Vue 5, so I guess I'll order it.

InfoCentral, I find this very helpful to start with: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/support/tutorials/
Just try to follow the flash tutorials, it can give you an idea of how to do things. Eventually, you will need better tutorials (dosn't have to be video), but these are good for a start...

Thanks for that information.  I will give it a whirl.

I have Carrara  5 Pro (still learning), Silo, Wings, Vue 5, Bryce and Terragen.

Now if you want easy detailed landscapes, to me there is nothing that touches Vue. That is a personal preference, Carrara can do good landscapes, just not as easily as Vue. Carrara is a more complete package obviously. I model in Silo, Carrara and Wings(hey it's free and was the first 3D package that I could get something out of without pulling my hair out), but landscapes are what I got Vue for and have been very happy with it. Love Carrara too, for different use.

Who knows what carrara 6 will be like? Maybe it will grab a lead over Vue.