Just really frustrated and about to take carrara off my pc. Kill me if ya want I dont care, wont be around. When ya make a nice software like Carrara peeps get excited at the prospect of having something that renders nice and has some oomph to it at a nice price. this is the closest thing to pro software I will ever be able to afford. And the documentation that comes with it is useless. the one book i found at amazon and others is about useless too. Was really looking forward to Carrara replacing bryce because for more professional things bryce just doesnt cut it. It does nice things here and there but it just doesnt cut it. I think carrara would, but for those of us who arent pros and cant just intuitively get it to work , what a waste.
 personally I will be saying thank you, yaking the waste off my hard drive and going to bang me head against the wall. Thx for everything,
:)

I don't know if you're still here to read any of the comments you'll receive. But I just wanted to write and let you know I understand how you feel. It looks like you're really good at getting great images out of Bryce and Poser and that's really what the problem is. When you're good at one package it makes it a lot harder to bang your head against the wall and try to learn another. I'm in the same position, I switched from Strata to Carrara when I got tired of Strata's lack of features and constant upgrade costs. Carrara has ten times more features (at 1/4 the cost) and I was really excited to get started using them. The problem is when you have 10 times the features it is 10 times harder to learn the software and when I start to get frustrated it's too easy for me to fall back to the software I know to get the job done.

The reason I'm going to keep trying, however, is because I've made that mistake before. Nine or ten years ago I had the chance to learn 3DS MAX, but I thought it was so much harder to make the images I was making with Strata I gave up. I realize my mistake now and I'm going to try and keep at it with Carrara, but it hasn't been easy.

I hope this helps.

P.S. I've yet to see any documentation for 3D software that is anything other than useless.

Carrara has ,by comparrison to virtually all 3d apps, an excellent Help file.
The Tutorials available are immense and include that very special series by Mark Bremmer, our forum guru.

If you get a chance to try out the "big boys", like Lightwave and XSI, you then would truly appreciate just how good Carrara  really is.

Bryce is really a toy. Carrara is a real, true, all round, comprehensive--VERY easy to use-- 3d app.

Don't give up--you will cry in shame later if you do!
Brian

Sometimes its hard because you can go in so many directions.  There are many good tutorials on bits and pieces of the puzzle, both here and on the Daz Forums (take a look at the weekly lets learn that went on).  Something that is helping me greatly is the Tutorials by Mark Bremmer.  The ones that VTC sells either online or a DVD.

What is it you want to create, or see yourself creating.

Quote - (take a look at the weekly lets learn that went on)

What is this "weekly lets learn" thing you speak of?

VTC from mark is GREAT, even for beginners I already have two books for Carrara  that arent useless... but you need to take a breath and read them. I just get Carrara after saw the few introductory videos that come with it... its pretty simple to use. I would say that its more easy then Bryce... that I never get a good picture in it! I used Lightwave and now ZBrush ans Maya and I can say this for shure: Carrara its easy... but you will need to want to learn. Its a shock to change from another software and you need to break this barrier so you can turn a pro. You will never find a perfect software, so go read...see videos tutorials (I have some at Vimeo) and try before giveup!!

I'm slowly learning Carrara..The Mark Bremmer tutorials were worth the money and I've learned a lot..However I've more to learn

Think about how long it took you to learn everything Bryce and produce really good work.Then realise that a more complex application with take 3/4 times as long to learn..

Anyway having spent the money I can't afford NOT to learn how to use it.

I also have to say that the render engine on Carrara is far superior to Bryce..Pictures that take ages under HDRI lighting in Bryce take half the time in Carrara.

Luckily, I started with Poser, which produced horrid renders, so that I was driven to find a better application.
I got nowhere with Carrara until I tried the "tree with fruits" tutorial at DAZ (written by GKDantas). It was written for C5, but still applies to C6.  It takes you through an entire scene building, using all the features of carrara that are vital, but hidden behind obscure tabs. Once I understood that all the program pieces fit together like a puzzle, I could make use of the Bremmer tutorials to learn the details.
A book of scenes and how to build them would be a good addition to the carrara library.
Hmm..... maybe we could start a scene-building thread here.

Thanks Sueposer! I am happy that my fruits tutorial help you this way... As I said I have some videos at Vimeo that show more things:

http://www.vimeo.com/user537029/videos

I am thinking about create more tutorials about Light and basic animation in Carrara that after many years using Lightwave its my first choice to render. But what do you want to learn more about Carrara?

Quote - > Quote - (take a look at the weekly lets learn that went on)

What is this "weekly lets learn" thing you speak of?

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=77208  is the thread which is a pointer to the specific weekly subject threads which get more detailed.

The Stickies in that forum have a couple of other tutorial threads Carrara 6 Tutorials reference list. is one.

*the FUR/Hair tutorial by Holly2000 is excellent and easy to follow.

There are some tutorials here in the Carrara backroom as well http://backroom.renderosity.com/~carrara/

**Note to mods if its not okay to post these links just remove.. thanks!

Carrara's still a lot easier to pick up off the bat than Blender, especially coming from using Bryce previously. I find it's useful to read a forum here or there and experiment. The .pdf manual is ok, but not as in-depth as it should or could be. (Daz3D needs to find someone like Susan Kitchens and hire that person write new documentation for Carrara. Then include that as a .pdf and also have a nice quality printed version you could order.)

Like you, I agree that where Carrara falls behind all the other apps (even Bryce or Anim8or) is with dedicated online instructional/informational content. (At least when it comes to english without resorting to going through spotty automated translations.) I'm sure there's some good free tutorials out there, but more often than not you're either going to run into pay-to-view content or a couple videos that run under bug ridden (at least on PC) quicktime or similar apps. Not to diss anybody making such content (yeah there's lots of  work involved, I know tut's aren't always easy because I have done some for other apps before), but I prefer a series of captioned still images that are free to view at one's own leisure. I can see where such content barriers the other apps don't have are off-putting to new Carrara users. (But if you have the gumption, you can remedy this. Sometimes the best time to make tuts are soon after you figure out something yourself. Not to mention Wikibooks and various artists forums are there if making your own tutorial site isn't quite your thing.)

As for myself, the forums (here, Daz3D's, and Polyloop) are the best places to find Carrara stuff. Probably better to ask questions than googling only to find 404'd pages or videos that blink and chop or freeze the browser. (With exception of the few Veoh or YouTube bits out there. But then good luck finding those in english.) And then you can get to more specific info that a site based tutorial might assume or not cover at all.

Too bad you gave up on the program before asking a few things. Should have spoken up about what the problem areas were before giving up. It's actually pretty decent in some areas and can do some suprising things if you figure them out.