The whole entire idea behind Carrara is its native support for Daz/Poser contents and some very well-thought scene building tools. Other than that Carrara doesn't have anything jaw-dropping to offer.

Yeah, yeah, some will argue that Carrara has trees and landscapes and dynamic hairs. My response is that pre-made morphable trees and landscapes are a dime a dozen, and if I want to make an animation I will use short hairs for my actors and actresses, so I don't have to mess with dynamic hairs to begin with.

Going the Shade route to bring-in Genesis 3 into Carrara might work, but then why not stay with Shade for the entire project? I looked at Shade 12 Professional a couple of years ago. It is a bit quirky, but its renderer is top-notch, as pro as it can get.

Another venue that I am exploring right now is Daz Studio to Cheetah3D. If you are on a Mac, this could be a very worthwhile pipeline to consider. Cheetah3D's upcoming version 7, judging by the public beta, is a feature-packed 3D app , and its new super-fast renderer gives you caustics that almost match top-of-the-line professional renderers.