I'm really torn on which to get, both look to be able to do the type of graphics I want, but anyone know which one is a) easier to use b) more compatible with Poser?  Vue looks a bit cheaper, at least their lower end one.  Any suggestions would be helpful, thanks

I use Vue 6 Infinite & I love it, one of the best purchases I've made. I haven't tried Carrara but I've heard it's good.
Regarding Vue, if you want more life in your renders this is the way to go. Global Illumination & Global Radiosity can give you realistic light which Poser can't, the render engine is very good. Poser imports in the main go by without a hitch. Some people have the odd issue, but in general it's fine. The only thing I need to work on regarding Poser imports are the materials to get them looking better, ie highlights, bump etc.
Vue is great for indoor & outdoor work due to it's great light implementation.

I go with stormchaser on this one. I also moved to Vue 6 inf and I love it. Importing  poser content into vue is a seamless process and you will love Vue's render engine.

Vue is used inbig budget professional film production because the quality is there.

And you really want Vue6 I if you can swing it.

Vue 6 inf might be out of my price range I believe.

There is a PLE version if you'd like to give it a try though.

www.e-onsoftware.com/try/vue_6_ple/

Both have a very distinctive and fine look from their render engine. I can spot 'em both from a mile away. :O) I'd go with whichever look you prefer.

Quote - Vue 6 inf might be out of my price range I believe.

I started out with Vue 6 Esprit and then waited for e-on to have a sale then I upgraded to Vue 6 Esprit pro studio and then to Vue 6 Infinite. Waiting on the sales from e-on helped. Once you get your foot in the door with Esprit buying the upgrades are not as costly. But Esprit is a good start.

Have used both - Carrara is not currently loaded.

As everyone has mentioned, Vue is awesome (Xstream+Maya here) so I don't need to go into details about that.

Carrara offers a little diifferent functionality. Carrara (as of version 5; I'm sure it's improved by now) has pretty good "native" import of cr2 files. Said another way, Carrara handles character posing a little more efficiently (easier on system resources) than Vue. In some ways, Carrara is what Poser should be. That's not that much of a stretch though since Carrara is a descendant of Ray Dream Studio; both RDS and Poser were Metacreations products back in the day. Or was it Fractal Designs? Memory fades.

Disadvantages - I wasn't really keen on the material editor, but that's a personal preference. Carrara uses weight mapping, which is a different rigging paradigm than Poser's spherical falloff zones. Not better, just different. The problem is that it's very difficult and time consuming to weight map a 72K poly character.

thanks replicand

Here we go again...
Vue - its an terrain and animation tools
Carrara - its a modeler, animation and render tool. In Carrara 6.2 you can load Poser content like you do in Poser, just drag and drop. To animate characters from Poser its very fine and you dont need to paint the weigt map for then (remember you are begining now). Carrara have Global Illumination too, Caustic and many other features that Vue also have. I will sugest that you download the Vue PLE edition and the Carrara Trial so you can play with both.
Replicand use Vue with Maya, so he animate in Maya the characters... this is almost the same combination in Carrara, some tools for almost everything from modeling, animate and render... (Carrara will not be Maya anyway, but still a easy and pretty tool)
You can checkout my demo reel that show what Carrara Pro 6 can do:

http://www.vimeo.com/1165994

And yes I love Carrara

I have Cararra 5 & 6 Pro and Vue 5 Easel. Both have their pluses. I'd love to upgrade my copy of Easel to Vue 6 but don't have the cash at the moment. To say the least, I like both.

Carrara 6 Pro is probably best for those who want to animate Poser content, while Vue 6 is by far the best way to build a realistic environment.

I have a question.....I know how to export a poser figure and all that...but when I try to import it into Vue xstream....all the materials are black. For instance the texture maps etc. Also my poser figures hair or clothing doesn't appear in Vue 6 xstream either, only the figure does and it's all black. Can someone help me please? I have looked up tutorials on it and haven't found one that gives me a straight forward answer. I would appreciate your reply. Thank you

The key question about this is, what do you want to do with your program? Vue is great for creating landscapes and backgrounds for your characaters to appear in, and has a great lighting model. Carrara, on the other hand, has terrain modeling tools, and is a modeler, as well, so you could use it to create your own props, clothing, figures, whatever.

Of course, if you just want to use it to drop your Poser figures in, set the lights, and render, then I'd say try both and decide which you prefer. But then you'd be missing out on the biggest part of what each program has to offer...

JonTheCelt

Quote - I have a question.....I know how to export a poser figure and all that...but when I try to import it into Vue xstream....all the materials are black. For instance the texture maps etc. Also my poser figures hair or clothing doesn't appear in Vue 6 xstream either, only the figure does and it's all black. Can someone help me please? I have looked up tutorials on it and haven't found one that gives me a straight forward answer. I would appreciate your reply. Thank you

How do you mean "Export?"   You should just load the PZ3 file into Vue and all the textures etc will be in place.  It sounds to me like you are exporting from Poser as a .obj file which is a horribly long winded and stuff-up prone way to do it

deadlydagon - If you have imported the pz3 I would open it up in a text editor & look at the paths, it would seem they are wrong.

Thanks Stormchaser,Frank T and Jonthecelt for taking the time to try and help me. I know I am doing something wrong, but cannot figure out what it is yet. Also Jonthecelt thanks for the advice on Carrara. I am going to try it. Sounds great........

I decided to go with Vue.  None of the sample scenes seem to load (yes, I downloaded and unzipped the ExtraCD that came with it), so working with these lights is a bit slow.  But it seems fun.

 PaganArtist and replicand hit the nail on the head. Indeed, Carrara is like what Poser should be although posing characters remains easiest in Poser itself. Carrara is cool but ultimately Vue is superior for its advanced atmospherics and the degree of environmental control it grants the user. 

To ease the initial investment (and ensure that you want to take it further) the best entry/upgrade path is to buy Vue 6 Esprit first, wait for a sale (like the one going on right now) to upgrade to Pro Studio. After the "getting to know you" period you can evaluate whether or not it would be advantageous to upgrade to Infinite. Unless you're a 3D professional I wouldn't necessarily advocate diving into Infinite off the bat, although if you're tempted to do so, as stormchaser already said there's the free PLE for test-driving.

I wouldn't recommend buying the individual expansion modules for Vue 6 Esprit. You WILL come to want at least Botanica and Ecosystems, but you'll save money buy simply upgrading to Pro Studio, especially when it's on sale. e-on's sales are generous. If you play your cards right, you can save 50% on Vue upgrades.

 Although the ostensible subject is Poser compatibility, I sometimes create terrains in Carrara to use in Vue, just for some variation. That works beautifully! Ultimately, if you have both Carrara and Vue for use with Poser, you probably won't regret the freedom that having multiple rendering apps bestows. 

I use Vue for outdoor scene, and Carrara for animation, and indoor scene.

Vue is great for outdoor scene, but the rendering speed is very slow.

Carrara works very well with Poser, and the rendering is very fast.
It is good for animation for the reason.
It is also good if we don’t need landscape scene.

Does Anyone use Vue for animation ?

Does Anyone use Vue for animation ?

Yep .. im use Vue 5 studio Pro for animations several yerars ago . Vue very easy to use and had good quality render without hasle and messy setup . But i can`t stand with rendertime . Since rendertime is important for me so i decided to try carrara  5.1 which seem alot faster especially if you want to use GI or radiosity .

Vue is excellent if you want to make fantasy scenery though you can realism too . But for d indoor or standart type images ( or speed .. ) i prefer using Carrara

Since both software had demo versions why you not try it first ?

Yes Vue is very easy to create real forest and outdoor landscape scenes BUT you can get pretty cool results in Carrara like you see in this scene:

http://carraralounge.com/?p=153

.. and how does Cinema 4D compare with both Vue and Carrara?... seems a lot of artists are using that as well.

Cinema could be called like a Carrara big brother. Theres a great plugin for it to handle Poser content and a plus is that it support render engines like Maxwell...and its talk with Vue Xtreme fine too.