DustRider,

The rendering is ok, IMO far better than Poser's that have a constant depth field on everything even of that which is supposed to be in focus.

But the reason that I am considering Carrara is not for the rendering but for working with animations and Marvelous Designer's dynamic cloth. It works in C4D but there are annoyances. For example the bvh export Daz > C4D always botches a little, it is never exact needing time consuming corrections. There are other small things too such as that Interposer can't handle high-heels. It adds up. Perhaps just as Anabran say it is not so smart to depend 100% on the one single person.

The animations I want to do are not for big time production only for small runwalks and presentation of fashion. I think Carrara will fit in smoothly.

As for the heavy lifting I have always used C4D together with ZBrush. But for every month ZBrush is used a little more and C4D a little less. Maybe Carrara and ZBrush is all that I need? Anyway I don't plan to throw away C4D anytime soon but perhaps abstain from the hose expensive updates until I see how this works out.

Carrara need a number of plugins, the aniblock importer, the hvh exporter and mdd export/import plugin. But all is very moderately priced. I will make a serious try. Wish me luck!