@kenmo..i understand your frustration with the material room..i have all but given up on carrara..i use it only to do indoor scenes ,and only with my poser/daz studio runtime..also because i am used to the y axis being up..i don't use the modeling room ..i just use hexagon(which i had first anyway).

the render engine and the lights are excellent in carrara..i have rendered the same scene in poser,daz studio,vue and carrara..and carrara beats them all..especially indoor scenes
but being so hard to make materials..kinda ruins the fun of experimenting .creating of materials seems harder than it was in bryce..which i loved but had the same problem..creating materials..and thats what made me switch to vue..even though its only the easel version of vue,,it does its job,for out door scenes.i watched a carrara training video for version 5 i think it was vtc training..i had 6 standard..and when it got to the materials room..i got lost..

all i really tried to do was make water..the one that ships with carrara doesn't look right to me..i went in the materials room to change  it..fiddled with the setings,based on common sense..and got almost opposite of what i expected..ok so i reset it..and did opposite of my original tweaks thinking the results would be opposite of my last results..and got a totally different result.

everytime i fool with the material room..i end up having to go to the gym and beat on a punching bag..thank the stars i don't have high blood pressure or i would have stroked out by now.

anyway i do feel for you kenmo