I've been using Poser since P4 (currently using P6).  I've played a little with Vue, 3DS Max, and am pretty good with Rhino.  Seeing the price on Carrera 6 got me thinking about giving it a try.  Is it worth it?  Is the rendering engine that much better than Firefly?  is the interface pretty user friendly?  Will it wash and darn my old socks for me?
Any input and advice would be greatly appreciated!

I find it to be much more friendly then Poser 6 or Vue. Don't know about the other programs.

The Carrara rendering is much much much better than Firefly the Carrara rendering engine will actually give you photorealistic rendering much like the more expensive rendering engines out there...its just amazing to see something like V4 rendered in firefly and it comes out like bad anime and in Carrara she looks amazingly real.  I got Carrara just for the rendering its that good..plus it will easily import poser 6 scenes along with the animations.    It does not wash socks but it does allow you to get WWE PPVs.

Great!  Thanks for the input!   Now...Standard or Pro?   Hmmmmmmm........

By all means get the Pro!

It's a bit of apples and oranges.  Poser is primarily for character modeling and animation of people and animals and such.  It has some other tools, but they are secondary to the character modeling tools.  Carrara is basically for everything else, landscapes, skies, and other objects like starships, houses, toothbrushes etc.  What you want to do is do your character models in Poser then import them into Carrara.  This is a fairly painless process  And the results can be pretty stunning.  Take a look at my gallery for some examples of what you can do.  The renderer in Carrara is much more sophisticated and in my opinion, much better than firefly.  The indirect lighting options alone make it worth while.  Give it a try, but don't uninstall Poser, you will still need it for character models.

Quote - I've been using Poser since P4 (currently using P6).  I've played a little with Vue, 3DS Max, and am pretty good with Rhino.  Seeing the price on Carrera 6 got me thinking about giving it a try.  Is it worth it?  Is the rendering engine that much better than Firefly?  is the interface pretty user friendly?  Will it wash and darn my old socks for me?
Any input and advice would be greatly appreciated!

Oh, I'll definitely keep Poser.  I was looking for something I could use with Poser, a better renderer, and a modeler.  It sounds like Carrera is what I'm looking for!  ;)

It really does have a great interface.  The best I have seen.  I have been using it since it was still called Ray Dream Studio, and I was pretty much able to teach it to myself, just using the manual for occaisonal references.  With both spline and vertex modelers, it can't be beat.  Especially at the price.

Quote - Oh, I'll definitely keep Poser.  I was looking for something I could use with Poser, a better renderer, and a modeler.  It sounds like Carrera is what I'm looking for!  ;)

And my favorite the Particle Generator for special effects, fireworks, waterfalls, rain, etc.  To compare you would have to have several commercial progs.  Add all that up and then compare to C6Pros price which includes the Free DAZ Studio and content.  And if you have CS3, the new Bridge for free. 

I**'ve been using Poser since P4 (currently using P6).  I've played a little with Vue, 3DS Max, and am pretty good with Rhino.  Seeing the price on Carrera 6 got me thinking about giving it a try. **

Is it worth it?
Yes, it is.  I won't touch Vue or anything else for that matter when it comes to rendering PZ3 figures and artwork these days.  You can get dang near any kind of result with jit with the right settings and content.  (heck, I've even gotten realistic rain and snow within it by playing around with the multi-surface replicator.

Is the rendering engine that much better than Firefly?
What used to take 15 hours in Firefly (Or wouldn't work at all) takes 15 minutes.  The farthest I have pushed Carrara and still had it work was with a Don, a Judy, A V3, an M3, a freebie Robot, an S3, and the BRC Cloisters scene from DAZ and had it render fine (did this on a 2gig of RAM machine BTW) and had things render just fine.  Firefly would have rolled over and died...and maybe occasionally twitched.

is the interface pretty user friendly?
If you can figure out Bryce and Poser, you can figure out this.

**  Will it wash and darn my old socks for me?
**Not as is, but there is probably a plugin out there that will get it done ;)

If you are pretty good with Rhino and have used 3D Max, you will cry with pleasure at the user friendlyness of Carrara. (And you will cry also , with pleasure/amazement ,at the low prices of any Carrara plugins.) And Poser will be one of your dearer plugins for Carrara!

I just purchased Carrara Pro 6 and I must agree.  I came here by chance and have used an old version of Lightwave  5.5. on a Dec Alpha (Don't ask)  

Anyway,   I just can't believe how great the workflow is in this program, and I can't believe I never stumbled upon it before.  Anyway off the learn as many tutorials as I can.

Cheers

Radio Guy

http://www.markbremmer.com/pages/TutMain.html

Welcome to the group. Make sure to visit Marks site--Watch the free tutes (Buy the otheres!)
They will , I think all, apply to C6 as well as they do to C5.

When you get aclimatised, look at the great plug ins from DigitalCarversGroup and Inagoni etc.-some allready in C6 version!

I have the latest version of Lightwave. Put back in it's box and given to my son to try out. I have been spoilt with Carrara!

Thanks for the links. Looks like a great community.

 Yeah, Lightwave back in the box is right.  For the price I could have bought every addon for Carrara for the next six years.

Cheers

I just downloaded the patch for Vue 6, and now beside the crashes, I cannot Render anything at all.  I give-up, Vue is for the birds, back to C6.

Well, I went and bought C6 pro and couldn't be happier!  If nothing else, the renderer is fantastic!  I imported a couple of Poser scenes and they look so much better and rendered so much faster in C6.
Now I just need to get my feet wet with some modeling...  ;)

Have fun!