Carrara's future is bleak. As I mentioned in this thread the latest Carrara 8.5.1.19 has the 'Smell and Feel' of a software hastily put together by an intern paid minimum wage. There will certainly be more of 8.5.x.x 'releases', but they will all be buggy, poorly tested and mostly unuseable.

You are exactly right, at one point the last good known version of Carrara (which imho is 8.1.1.12) will stop working on newer OSes, and it will be the end of Carrara for those of us who don't want to use 8.5.x.x releases developed by inexperienced intern(s).

As I mentioned in the thread above, I am not hitting on the intern(s) working on Carrara, but doing serious developments on a complex 3D app isn't a job for an intern.

IMHO Carrara's only clear advantage is its native support for Poser contents, and its particularly well-thought 3D view and scene building tools.

Other than that I don't see anything in Carrara that would make it stand-out. Compare Carrara Pro with the 'entry level' Cheetah3D and you will see that feature for feature, Cheetah 3D beats Carrara Pro hands down.

Fortunately for people of your talents, who don't seem to use much Poser contents anyway, there is a 'dream solution' which is Houdini Indie version. This is a full-blown Houdini package (a $12,000 3D app) offered at $199.- The only restrictions are that you cannot use it in a commercial pipeline and the output is limited to 1920x1080.

I have it on good authority that If you are looking for a job as a 3D artist in a prominent production studio, even mentioning the name of Carrara will immediately get you thrown out the door, while if you show some reasonable Houdini skills, you could get hired immediately with a hiring bonus that could be as much as $100K.