Hello everyone. I'm new to 3d art (well, to more versatile tools for it than Bryce and Poser anyway, and I haven't used those in about 10 years). I bought Carrara 8 Pro from Daz a couple weeks ago, and have since found out that because I am a student, I can get and use 3d Studio Max for free. I would ultimately like to learn both programs, but which should I learn first? Will skills learned in one application transfer to the other one? Are there advantages to Carrara over 3ds Max? It seems that it'd be much lighter on computer resources for sure. Thanks for any advice you can offer me.

If you are going to work in animation/CG professionally, I'd suggest 3ds Max. 

Max will be more difficult to learn but it is a program that has wide adoption in the pro world. Max is more difficult to use than Carrara because it is designed for the pro world which means everything is programmable/customizable. And, all that variation and ability has to be learned and can even seem cumbersome at times. By comparison, Carrara has a much friendlier interface and makes some animation abilities, especially animating DAZ characters, insanely easy, but...

While Carrara is fantastic to use and is a software I've used professionaly, it is not a 'professional' software. What do I mean by that? Autodesk, Maxon, LW, Luxology etc., their software IS their product. For DAZ, content is their product and the company has purchased and maintains software to make using their content easier. So, there is not wide professional adoption of Carrara, nor is their predictable support and development cycles as is the case with the pro-grade software. DAZ's hit-and-miss dev cycle and support abilities make most pro pipelines stay away from adopting Carrara as an additional software. 

A couple of years ago, DAZ hired me to demo Carrara at SIGGRAPH. I was showing some other animation pro's how Carrara handles animating a helicopter and how easy it is use the Carrara tool set. They commented what I did in a couple of minutes would have taken 20 minutes in Max. But, stuff done in Carrara can't be ported to other render engines or exported consistently into something like FBX with predictable results on the other end. So, they walked away, wishing they could use Carrara in the work-place but knew it was never going to happen. 

Hat's off to DAZ though. They have done some incredible work with their character series and  Carrara's abilities. Carrara really does own the hobby/semi-pro market. Blender is so cool but doesn't have integration with content like Carrara does. For the price, I don't think there is another software that is as capable and as integrated with content and file import abilities as Carrara. In my studio, it still is a CG Swiss Army Knife. 

Everything Mark said is right on.

One other thing to think about is what you plan to do.  If all you're going to be interested in is outdoor landscapes, Carrara can do it but there are other packages that can do it better.

Carrara can be a good modeler but it isn't a great modeler.

To emphasize Mark again, Carrara is a one package do it all for the hobbyist and it can bang out some really great stuff in the hands of an experienced user and artist.

if you want to do certain types of things, there might be better choices.

Let us know what you're into and maybe we can help.

Well, firstly, thanks to both of you for replying.

At the moment I am just primarily interested in learning about 3d modeling, and learning to make images and animations for my own amusement. I would like to reach the point where I could develop some content for Poser and Daz Studio myself, and if it turns out that I have the potential, to learn how to develop game assets and animation eventually. I realize though that I am a LONG way from there at the moment though.

Quote - A couple of years ago, DAZ hired me to demo Carrara at SIGGRAPH. I was showing some other animation pro's how Carrara handles animating a helicopter and how easy it is use the Carrara tool set. They commented what I did in a couple of minutes would have taken 20 minutes in Max. But, stuff done in Carrara can't be ported to other render engines or exported consistently into something like FBX with predictable results on the other end. So, they walked away, wishing they could use Carrara in the work-place but knew it was never going to happen. 

Wow.  Wonder what studio they work for?  20 minutes to animate a helicopter in Max isn't exactly accurate.  Although, it would depend highly on the animation and model in question, but just to get propellers spinning, it would literally take 10 seconds.  Just hit the animate button, move the timeslider, and then rotate the blades.  To make them spin faster, just rotate them more.  To lift off, just create an animation path from a spline, and link the entire helicopter to it, then it's off.  That's certainly not a 20 min operation in Max. ;)

However, for a much more complex model, with many animateable parts that may need to be scripted, etc., then even a Maxscript to animate those complex functions would only take 10 min to write. Oh well. 

LuxXeon, 

Getting stuff moving in Max is not a problem, this is true. However, our conversation was actually about Carrara's ability to simply set a Behavior Value for RPM. This greatly simplifies the ability to reduce flicker or "walking" of the blades based on the frame rate of the animation.

Some of these things are also addressed by animating blurred texture maps. But, there are many times that hitting a sweet-spot of flicker using real geometry is desirable. That's the kind of time savings that they were impressed with. No scripting, no writing, just drag a slider because the scripting is already done.

For adjusting these types of actions, Carrara is significatly easier to use because the functions are prebuilt. But of course, Max does many things that Carrara cannot - including drain a wallet when upgrading or getting plugins. ;-)

RPM can be tweaked in 3dsMax too, Mark, using "normalize time" settings in the Motion tab. No, it's not a simple slider function, but it's nowhere near a 20 min operation.  Anyway, check out Scriptspot.com or Maxplugins.de, and you will see that not everything is wallet-busting upgrades and plugins.  Max has a HUGE comminity of people creating FREE stuff for the application as well.  Perhaps one of the largest free repository communities in the industry.  So funny you should mention cost in a thread where someone has already said they will have to pay nothing for 3dsmax, as a student.  No offense to anyone.  Not looking for a fight, nor am I downplaying Carrara's usefulness.  Just seems funny that someone who can get 3dsmax for free would post in here if they should, and not even bother to post in the 3dsmax forum to get contrary or secondary opinions.  Seems the leverage is in favor of the "home field advantage" if you ask me.

Happy new year.

By the way, if your goal is to create content for Poser, then go with Carrara.  After all, it's owned by Poser content manufacturers, so no doubt it will have shortcuts to allow this type of thing to be more efficient.

If what you want to do is model get 3ds max, its much better (has more options). If you want a fun generalist 3d program, learn Carrara.

I personaly find Carrara frostrating to model with, but its other tools are really nice & easy to work with (the learning is much faster than with 3ds max).