hello everyone, im just wanting to know if you can use your poser figures within carrara 6? i mean importing etc... ?

All Poser content can be used in Carrara  with the Browser.

yes, just to concur - c6pro is good enuff IMVHO that poser is not always needed, but be
aware that c6pro still has difficulties with some poser figures and parameter dials.

how exactly do i get to it? im wondering whether to buy carrera or cinema 4d , what would you recommend? and why? ps thanks....

have a look at the DAZ site it will tell you a lot of what you want to know.(dywstdify)

Ringo did a video about adding  Runtimeto the browser in Carrara 6:

http://www.digitalpainters.net/

I have a video about this inmy site to but it is in portuguese and you need to register to get acces to the video:

http://www.online.euqfiz.com.br/

Hi if Maxon Cinema4D is Actually within your budget I strongly suggest Buying C4D along with the interposer pro plugin,
instead of Carrara.
 with interposer
you can directly access your poser runtim from directly within Cinema4D
and you will have a Much better render engine than Carrara.
visit the Cinema4D forum And Ask around about  how well Poser integrates directly
into cinema with the plugin.

Cheers

compare the carrara and c4d galleries here for an indication of which is more often used
for poser figures.  I'm not certain if any of the images on the first page of the c4d gallery
here contain any poser figure, but most of the images in the first page of the carrara
gallery here contain poser figures AFAICT.

Cinema4D is one of the bigs guys in the market, so the learning curve is a little more complex then Carrara.other thing, to get a great render in Cinema4D you will need a module more called Advanced Render ... well you will end in a U$ 2500 bucks or more if you want hair...
Well Carrara its a great intro level software with a good render (GI, IBL, Radiosity, AO) and hair with a little as U$ 549 or only U$ 384 for Platinum club
If you have the money and want to work with a pro software get XSI (dont know te support for Poser content) or Cinema4D
If you want to play with  Poser content and have fun doing good things like I do get Carrara that is very easy to use.

Carrara 6 is pretty inefficient with memory (worse, I believe, than Poser 7, but possibly on a par with Poser 6).   It does also have the problems with dials that Miss Nancy mentioned.   For most Poser-type characters, dials load as sliders, with values available from 0 to 1.  Any value to the right of +1, or to the left of 0, has to be entered manually, which is unnecessarily restricting.   

There are also no dials in Carrara for controlling movement of joints.   Movement is done directly in the scene, with the scope of the possible movement restricted by "constraints".   Some characters are constrained, by default, to be unable to bend their elbow joints beyond ninety degrees.   You can switch between various settings of constraint, but a set of dials would seem to be a better solution.

There was a thread on DAZ, where a new Carrara user properly expressed dismay at the shortage of dials and was slapped down by somebody with the "dials-are-strictly-for-the-groundlings" attitude.  No doubt, that particular somebody daily curses the designer who invented the car ignition-key and rendered obsolete the purity of the cranking-handle.

As a C5 user, I was able to get C6 quite cheaply when it was launched and I have used it a fair amount since, but I'd tend to turn Miss Nancy's remark on its head:  Poser is good enuff IMVHO that C6Pro is not always (or often) needed.   I am quite glad that I didn't need to fork out the full price for it, because I don't think it's worth it.   If I want to use a different render engine for Poser, I am much more inclined to try Vue.

Having dabbled in both Carrara and Vue, I think Vue is a much better value for about the same price. Though you'll instantly find a compatible GUI in Carrara (trackball, etc.), the render engine is dreadful and slow. And forget adding more than a few figures without a major slowdown or even crash. I was working with c5 or 6 I believe.

Vue's viewport setup is a bit wanky but makes better pictures and has an easier IBL system, more user-friendly texture mapping system and seems to handle Poser import with more stability.

All of this is just opinion, mind you...:)

I prefer Vue over Carrara. I tried Carrara 5 Pro, but the complete lack of precise placement and scaling makes it pretty useless to me.
Carrara renders dynamic hair better than Vue, though.

The main advantages of Vue over Carrara (IMO) are:

• viewports. Very intuitive (in my opinion), easy to use, especially if you're used to a 3DS Max like user interface
• vegetation. Ecosystems are easy to use, and each plant/tree/rock generated by the ecosystem is different. You can create a complete garden with thousands of plants in minutes.
• scene complexity (only in 64 bits Infinite): on a 64 bits OS, I can easily create and render scenes with hundreds of billions (yes, billions, it's not a typo) of polygons. 30 hi-res Poser figures with hi-res textures? No problem.

If you're into massive scenes with lots of figures and complex environments, Vue is the way to go.

Men this post is a Lost point... Carrara its a full 3D software where you can model, texture, animate and render. Poser is like Daz Studio, only a composite tool for content and Vue is another tool to create Landscape animations that support content.
This is why Carrara isnt Poser and isnt Vue, it have the best of all  those worlds, its not perfect but I never buyed a box of pencil that could paint great images without a good artist.
The way out? Just get the demo version from all those softwares and try for your self, thats is the right way to choose a software. Theother way to choose is to look what your target want you use, like CG houses, game development industry... if your idea i to be a pro lookswhat they want you use... other way try demo versions.
I did this about 3 years ago and find Carrara as a perfect tool for me, there a lot of things that need to be done so it get perfect (never will like all 3d software), but it can handle Poser content, have some cool tools to landscape, can model (some model fuctions can be animated!!) andhave a great render engine, faster then Poser and Vue.

Yeah, the problem is Carrara sorta promotes itself as an all-in-one tool. No such thing in 3D. Everyone has to use a lot of different apps to get images/animations finished. And IMO loading all those features into one program means almost every feature gets short shrift. It's a nice idea if you're Maya, but for a 500. app they ought to focus on doing one thing well.