I don't believe Blender will be a threat to production-proven 3D apps like Maya or 3DSMax. What I meant by 'Blender 3.0 will not take prisoners' is that the 3.0 release should pack enough high-end features to make it worth considering in a pro pipeline.

But going back to the topic of this thread, I believe now that Adobe and Sony Creative Software are the best picks for a possible Carrara acquisition, for the following very similar reasons:

1. Carrara fits very nicely in both companies product line (Vegas, Acid Pro, SoundForge for Sony, Photoshop, Premiere and After Effects for Adobe).

2. Both companies products are already priced in the $199.- to $799.- which is about the same price as a non-discounted Carrara Pro, i.e. $549.- So Carrara's price will not be an oddity in their product lines.

3. Both companies are very accustomed to talk to the prosumer market, which is precisely Carrara's target audience.

4 Both comapnies have substantial financial resources. Putting a team of 10 developers to work on Carrara to bring it back in shape will only be a drop in the bucket in their development budget.

5. And finally, both companies have proven track record of successful software acquisitions like Vegas for Sony and Illustrator or InDesign (formerly Aldus Page Maker) for Adobe. So we are sure that they will be able to add value to Carrara and not kill it right after the acquisition.

 

Between Sony Creative Software and Adobe, my personal preference goes to Sony, because I am not so much in favor of Adobe's Creative Cloud subscription structure, but other than that both companies are equally tooled to breathe some life into Carrara and give it the stature it deserves in the prosumer market of 3D apps.