Although I think Agiel does a very good job here, I personnaly wish he would be less patient with trouble makers. Reasoning and mature conversation is obviously not always the best solution.

Jeez, has this suddenly become the Carrara forum? Do you people have a problem with a user being happy with his software up to the point that you feel the need to hijack his thread? I personnaly don't think much of Carrara, and I'd never trade my copy of Vue for it. Carrara is an "average" product that does a lot of "average" stuff. It's got an extensive list of features that would probably lure a hobbyist, but the truth is, it's sitting in the middle of a big nowhere. Comparing it to Maya has to be the best joke I've ever read! Seriously, Louis, I have to question the reasons for such propaganda. You're not happy with Vue? Fair enough. Sell your copy and move on! I'm not saying the product's perfect. But for me it does its thing very well, and you just need to take a look at the gallery here at RO to see that I'm not alone. Live with it!

GWeb, I have to admit that I would much prefer eovia to focus the development of Carrara on improving existing tools and adding much needed features (such as symmetrical modeling), rather than add stuff that we don't really need. For instance, I don't care for the "nature" features, I already have Vue and I'm very happy with it - thank you. Why eovia would spend so much development effort on stuff like this is beyond me. The funny part is that it's reasonable to expect a new version of Vue anytime soon, which will probably put C5 to shame in that respect. In the mean time, we have to wait for much needed improvements. What a waste... As you say, dbigers, no application does it all. I think it's much better to be good at what you do, rather than average at a lot of stuff. SSS in C5 looks interesting, but I'm gonna wait for the trial version before I shell out for this puppy. Just my two cents.

Yes, sailor_ed, the image I posted is by Jensen - so I guess it makes sense :-) Thanks indeed for the insight, charlesb. THis is very interesting and what I wanted to hear. Sorry that some people here seem to have a problem with anybody asking questions. Sorry I don't share your blind enthusiasm; as I said several times, I was very disapointed with Carrara 4 and SSS is the only thing of real interest to me in C5.

Sorry, what I meant by "true SSS" is a simulation of what is referred to as multiple-scattering. As I said, I don't care about physical accuracy, but I want to know if the so-called SSS is really SSS (as in multiple-scattering) or just absorbtion. Show me a picture that exhibits mutliple scattering as in the statue above, and I will be happy :-)

"You've made it clear you don't like Carrara". All I said is that I'd been very disapointed by Carrara 4, but that true SSS would have made me upgrade immediately. All I've seen until now looks like basic absorbtion, but I'll be glad to be proved wrong. I don't really care about physical accuracy. All I care for is image quality. And again, (sorry to insist), I have seen no example of SSS in Carrara 5 to date (only basic absorbtion).

Correct SSS is not so slow to render, but it's complex to developp. Which is why it's much easier to do a simple "trick" and call it SSS. The "big deal" is that to render skin, marble and other SSS materials correctly, you do need true SSS. And you don't need such a trained eye to spot the difference. One simply looks a lot better than the other! And if you do animation, the difference simply becomes blatant!

Thanks mmoir and whkguamusa. THat's what I thought - simple absorbtion (and clever marketing). Considering how disapointed I was with C4, I'll hold off for now.

ren_mem, from what I've seen, e-on let you upgrade between versions for the difference in cost. Like if you got Esprit first, and then upgrade to Infinite, it basically costs you the difference between Esprit and Infinite. I find this to be quite fair. When C4Pro was released, all the guys that had purchased Transposer or Amapi basically lost their investment. Wouldn't call that fair... As far as I'm concerned, the only feature that would have convinced me to upgrade immediately would have been Subsurface Scattering. But it appears that C5 only offers absorbtion, and I was almost a victim of their clever marketing. I agree with you that Vue is probably due for another upgrade soon, as well as other apps. That's why I'll wait for the trial version of C5 before I take any decisions.

Well, subsurface scattering is the only thing that would have justified me upgrading after the disapointing Carrara 4. But it turns out it's not really SSS, but rather more of a clever marketing "approximation". Displacement mapping we could already do with the Power Pack. What about Fresnel, I would have sworn that was already in C4!

Thanks Toxe. I wouldn't "switch" to Carrara, since I don't believe in there being a "perfect" 3D app. To be honest, I've been rather disapointed with Carrara 4 Pro, but real SSS is something that would have convinced me to upgrade. If it's just simple absorbtion, I'll wait and see. Marketing almost got me; I'm glad I asked :-)

ROFL Ringo, no need to copy-paste the eovia website. I've read it all. And stand by what I said. BTW, saying things like "Poser support is much better than Vue" does sound a bit like a loose statement, esp. considering Carrara 5 doesn't even support Poser 6! I'm not interested in "evangelism". My question isn't about whether Carrara is better than Vue (I wouldn't drop Vue if I got C5 - I'm very happy with it, thank you), but whether SSS is really SSS, or only just absorbtion. That's the only thing that would justify me getting the C5 upgrade.

Tunesy, I'm talking about what I consider the "big" features, such as displacement mapping. I'm not talking about some of the incredibly lame things that are being served as new features (Fresnel and anisotropic effects: come on, get serious, I can't believe this wasn't supported by Carrara prior to version 5!). Toxe and rendererer, what I see in the pictures displayed as examples of SSS in Carrara 5 don't exhibit any SSS effect, but only basic absorbtion (aka "back scattering"). Real SSS means that the renderer can handle light scattered inside the object in all directions, not just absorbtion. THis is essential to render skin or marble correctly, for instance. So my question is, does C5 really handle SSS like in the picture by Jensen, or is it just a marketing "approximation"?

Could be one of the aboven or maybe you assigned a variable highlight function?

I shelled out for Carrara 4 Pro a while back and have been very disapointed with it overall. It does a lot of different things, but nothing very "in depth". You'd be much better off buying a specialized modeler like Orio suggested. You might like to consider Silo also.