I have been using Poser quite a bit over the past year, in fact almost exactly one year ago I started getting into it. I will most likely always be somewhat an "armature" but I've found that I really enjoy working in digital art.

As I've revealed in some of my recent questions to this forum I've begun to model some of my content from scratch. I have a strong desire to learn and one thing that I've found is that I learn best if I'm working in an area that I enjoy or am interested in. 

I am still very new at using Carrara, I know some of the basics but still find myself at a crossroads as to what might be the best tool for me to invest in both financially as well as with time and energy. I have not yet upgraded to C7 and actually as a demonstration of my impeccable sense of timing upgraded to C6 two weeks before I could have received C7 for free with that upgrade.

One thing that fascinates me and that I think I would enjoy doing, is to model clothing. I know its down the road a little bit for me but eventually I would like to get into that. I have seen tutorials on modeling clothing using 3ds Max and Cinema 4D but I have yet to come across anything for Carrara in that regard.

That is the thing that has held me back from upgrading to C7, because I don't know if I should invest more money into it, or if I should start setting aside funds to eventually purchase Cinema 4D.

So finally my question, I know that Carrara is a powerful tool for doing many different types of modeling, but is it a suitable tool for modeling character clothing?

 I use both C4D and Carrara. An upgrade to C7 is pretty insignificant in dollars compared to C4D. Additionally, some of the things that Carrara does out of the box like Global Illumination is an additional add-on to C4d (like particles, physics, etc.) unless you're planning on getting the full Studio. C4D Studio is an excellent package but it's also $4000.

For modeling clothes for the Poser/Carrara community Carrara is probably your best bet in money and learning curve. Carrara, especially compared to it's price, is a very full features program.

Thank you for the advice Mark, much appreciated.

I've had a chance to look at the concepts and user interfaces of the major applications for this 3D fun and, as I see it, the concepts are all much the same. Getting to know the concepts and be easy with it all in Carrara will save $ until you are ready to spend $$$$ for the ultimate stuff.
There are other forums that smile patronizingly at Carrara while they speak of getting  a  $2000 upgrade on their own app.
Sure. When we're ready for that kind of power...

I don't think there is ANY way to justify some of the outrageous prices they charge for programs like C4D, Maya, etc...

To be perfectly honest I don't really get it. I've downloaded demo versions of many of those apps and I'm serious its taken me a couple of hours to put a cube on the screen. Perhaps it is because I am such a novice that I really don't understand the difference.

But its the prices that get me. Sure if I were developing a large scale feature animation I could justify those costs. I remember a few years ago if you wanted to buy MS Word it was around $800, sure if you happen to be a business and use it all the time. But for home use where someone might use it once a week, I don't think so.

The big I see in some of the "pro" products are the resources for learning them. Lots of books, schools, tutorials etc. While there are resources for learning tools like Carrara and an awesome forum like this one with people willing to help, it's still more difficult to learn things beyond the basics or maybe I'm not looking in the right place. Still I've yet to find a good book on Carrara.

http://documentation.daz3d.com/carrara/Carrara7_User_Guide.pdf

Brian

 Most Renderosity users are not the target market for C4D, LW, Maya etc. Those packages are worth what they charge because the do some things incredibly important in a cinematic, animation work flow - but only if you are working in that space. 

Carrara's market is both the Pro and Amateur that want many of the features of the larger packages but don't need the integration, more sophisticated feature/control sets and so on. I use Carrara very regularly in my studio because it is an excellent choice and is a heck-of-a-deal that does many things very, very well. But it's also not in the same league as the cinematic applications either - and it's never claimed to be. 

The artistic capability of a pencil is always determined by the user. It's always more important to actually learn the tool than by another one hoping it does the job.  ;-)

Just the crazed ravings of a lunatic madman...

humm
Honestly I used to do all of my modeling in Carrara, but lately I've started using Silo (which is another reasonably priced MODELING program) and using Carrara for tweaks and fine tuning. This because unlike most other modeling programs (including C4D)  Carrara works very well in Poser;s native scale. When modeling in other programs I;ve found that you almost have to work in a larger scale (mostly 10x for me) and scale the items down to fit in poser.

Silo is a bit easier on the computer resources and has a UV system capable of "pelt" map style work, but then again Carrara now has this as well and reports say some of the memory leaks may have been plugged so I may go back to it as a primary. I like that Carrara has a rendering engine that is fast and gives excellent results. Silo doesn;t have any rendering so you have to export and use a good render (like Carrara) to see what final models will really look like.

As far as resources... heck, I buy and read books for ALL of the modeling programs. Most of the techniques are the same just the details of the tools used are somewhat different. Will a little work the resource that are out there can all be read for use in Carrara.

Personally if Carrara suits your needs why move to a "Pro" program, unless you envision working for a major graphics house and then you should concentrate on one they are using, for gaming 90% Max, for film and viceo seems to be XSI, Maya, etc. I don;t think more than a fraction of the major houses are using C4D, so why spend the money?

Just my opinion,
mike

Quote - The artistic capability of a pencil is always determined by the user. It's always more important to actually learn the tool than by another one hoping it does the job.  ;-)

WOW!  That is really Really deep, and yet so simple to understand.   Great bit of advice there.  I'm not sure if this is the right place, but another free program for modeling is Blender.   I've not tackled clothing with the rigging and such.  Don't know if that would work for this application.