Quote - Unfortunately, I'm not finding life with learning Carrara to be that easy.  When materials do import from Poser-friendly stuff, they look really bad when rendered.  The material poses (in pose folders) usually do not apply in Carrara. In at least one instance, even a Daz Studio friendly character for V4/Genesis I tried looked like materials aren't even apply to the right material zones. I need to investigate that more... I haven't had a lot of time...

Not a very happy experience so far. I won't be giving this program much more time. Maybe two weeks, at best...

Stan's right. The more you know about Carrara's shader room the better off you'll be. I'm always, and Stan is too, adjusting Poser shaders in Carrara. My biggest gripe is that awful blue-green color that comes in with most V4 characters. That's the first thing that goes.

I will say that my journey deeper into Carrara's shaders is only just beginning after about 7 years with Carrara. I'm learning a lot and it's fun. I'm working on a project in my spare time that's just about learning shaders.

There are a lot of plugings from Inagoni and Digital Carvers Guild that add a lot of muscle to Carrara's shaders, too.

The simplest ones for Carrara come from Fenric. You can check out his site at Fenric.com and go to his Carrara plugins. He's got some very simple but useful plugins that deal with Poser mats as well as shaders in general. I use his Poser Shader Doctor often. It comes with the free Skin Doctor. Just a few simple clicks and the shaders are set to more Carrara friendly settings.

Also, how materials look have a lot to do with your lighting and render setup. This is all down to personal preference, but I alway make sure that Gamma correction is ticked on and set at 2.2 and scene ambience is set somewhere between 5 and 10 (the default 20 is much too high). The color of the scene ambience can also make a big difference. After that, set up your lights and go.

I know this isn't your first rodeo with 3D and I'm probably telling you much of what you already know, but I just had to toss my two cents into the ring. :)