Hi manleystanley. My user name should really be 'I'm posting this but won't be around for long...' I'm in the habit of checking forums late at night before bed.

Anyway, I like Carrara a lot but I also use Poser and Reallusion's Iclone. DAZ Studio, I seldom use but I can't argue with the quality of DAZ's figures and content.

Thinking about your subscription plan for Cinema 4d, I can't help seeing the cons to the plan rather than the pros. The obvious drawback is the need to keep paying monthly - which could be OK but there is the risk that it might become unaffordable and then all your work is lost to you.

One year of the fees you mentioned could go a good way to beefing up hardware. I have only an i5 processor and a GTX 750ti and that would certainly be the case for me.

Another year of those fees would get you well on your way to having a wealth of Reallusion software. (I haven't done the exact sums - there are always deals and bundles.

In case you haven't checked it out before, the animation software is Iclone which comes with free character creator and a certain amount of content. To be of much use, however, it is really advisable to pay for the professional character creator. With that you could use all your DAZ and V4/M4 figures in Iclone for stills and animation. You could export these with animation to Carrara. Character creator has morph add-ons to enable endless variation in character creation. You could also bring in clothing items and apply physx soft-cloth properties.

Iclone's renders are generally considered inferior by those looking for DAZ Iray realism but they can still be very respectable in the right hands Also Iclone has an Iray plugin for stills). Reallusion actively encourages and facilitates an export pipeline to the Unreal engine, where scenery and settings are up there with the best. I personally haven't looked into Unreal yet but but I could bet that fantastic Wild West scenery would be available.

With Reallusion, good hardware is necessary and the costs of things really do add up if you want everything. The Iclone community are not primarily focussed on cute females but on characters of all kinds for film-making. Some forum members are serious about westerns, some medieval, some contemporary, some sci-fi. The motion capture content is increasing all the time and is VERY good. Like I said, I can get it working in Carrara as exported .fbx (and that is starting from a morphed, Genesis 8 exported from DAZ Studio).

Lastly, anyone can offer their creations on one of the Reallusion stores. (Initially items are sold for 'DA Points' which can be used like currency to buy other members' offerings. Serious, proven, creators get to sell for real money).

Nothing I'm saying is anti-Carrara and items sold at Renderosity for DAZ studio at least can be used in this pipeline.

(I hope this helps and I'll say Goodnight!)