Going back to Shade3D, that I had to set aside because of other occupations. I hope some of the Carrara users will find it interesting reading.

First, few generalities about Shade3D:

1. Shade is actually quite easy to learn, despite its reputation for being cryptic. In my estimate 2 weeks of full-time work and careful reading of the manuals should be enough to make you an mid-level Shade artist. Using Shade3D for about a month should make you enough proficient to produce some breathtaking art, assuming that you have prior knowledge of a 3D app, say Carrara.

2. A very strong point of Shade3D is its OpenGL preview screen. It is surprisingly accurate, lighting-wise,, i.e. it displays a preview that is quite close to the final rendered output. Not only that, the preview screen is also particularly fast and responsive, so much so that you have to set the camera speed to 'Slow' to avoid annoying jerky movements, assuming that you have a high-power graphics card.

3. Shade's camera is not a 'free' camera like Carrara's, i.e. you can't move it around the scene at your own will. It has an 'eye' and a 'target', and the camera always moves toward the target, and it stops when it gets there. For a Carrara user this may need some getting used to, but Cinema4D camera also behaves the same way..

4. Shade3D's camera, just like Carrara's, is not a true camera, i.e it does not have parameters to adjust aperture or shutter speed or iso sensitivity. It only has a focal distance, but it gets the job done.

5. To use Shade a dual-monitor set-up is recommended. Not that a single monitor won't do it, but only that a dual-monitor set-up is a lot more comfortable.

6. Shade lets you define custom workspaces to your liking, but somehow Shade has a tendency to move your layout by a few pixels each time you start the program. This is irritating, and I have not yet figured-out a way to correct it.

7. Shade's support for Daz/Poser content is, from what I can tell, actually better than Carrara's, in the sense that textures that are brought into Shade look quite similar to the way they look in Poser and you don't need to tweak them extensively to make them look good, unlike Carrara where you have to spend hours adjusting textures.

8. Daz/Poser contents can be brought into Shade either through FBX export/import, or through the built-in PoserFusion plugin, in which case you would need Poser. Either way the import works nicely, although I had a couple of instances where the FBX route didn't work, or maybe I did something wrong.

9. Unlike Carrara, Shade3D does not have a 'Consolidate Duplicate Shaders' function. This may look annoying at first, but Shade3D has a 'Register Master Shader' function, where you register a shader as a master shader, and then assign it to as many surfaces as you want. It's not that bad, but my preference goes to the 'Consolidate Duplicate Shaders' in Carrara.

10. Shade is particularly reliable and robust. The version 16.1 that I am using can be used for hours at a time without any glitch.

So what conclusion can be drawn from this long story? Well every 3D app has its strength and weaknesses. Some things are done better in Shade and some things are better handled by Carrara. When it comes to strictly using Daz/Poser content, my conclusion is that Shade3D lets you finish a project faster and at a far better render quality than Carrara, assuming that you use the native renderers in both apps.

Next-up, I will go into a detailed review of Shade3D's lighting, texturing and animation features as they compare to Carrara's, if I have time.