Try to get a few $ in the budget for some plug-ins like Anything Grooves (www.digitalcarversguild.com) which adds displacement mapping (an improvement over bump mapping). There's also Thor and Tree Druid at www.zenstar.com http://www.losthorizonsoftware.com/ supposedly has a v2 version of their power pack coming soon (I think v1 is bundled with Carrara v1.1).