I really enjoy the render engine. Very fast and powerful.

I think part of the problem is when people start making comparisons and calling Carrara high-end. Carrara is a professional tool but it is not high-end and that is part of the reason I like it. High-end generally means quite deeply detailed and complicated (with the complexity comes more power however) but that is not what everyone wants.Carrara has lower-end implementations of high-end features which is exactly what I want. If people want the power of Maya or XSI (or any other tool) the best thing to do is to get them because no other application can replace them for what they are. As for mentioning other software, I have done it on occasion and I did not realise that mentioning freeware could be a bit rude on an application specific forum. I think I will refrain from now where it is not clearly the intent of the thread as some 3D forums do seem to have different rules and sensitvities to others which is easy to forget. I think honest discussion about an application is really important as devs can sometimes miss just what their customers want from them. A real balance is achieved when we can discuss what we think even when the discussion turns negative. As long as both the great amounts of praise or crit stay withn their respective threads without spilling out eveywhere on the forum it's all good.

Meh! Modern day 3d users are so lazy. In my day we would model each building by hand and place then one at a time.... Using a command prompt!!! Joking!XD Those greeble and anything groves renders look really good!

Ah silly me! :) That hand is really cool btw!

What is this darn 'newbie' tag next to my name. I hate that word!!!

I would recommend disabling interpolation and setting the lighting quality to excellent or best. Should sort things out.

I really dont know why I did not think of that!

If you are working in the vertex modeller and want to use a program with similar functionality give Wings3D a try. It is great. Somethings take a while to get used to but it is a very good modeller.

Impressive work!!!

I second that, This month 3dxtract was great! All Hail Toxe!

Falconproject's example of normal maps versus bump maps is the best comparison I have seen.Quite a clear difference.

I think this plugin does look quite nice. When combined with Anything Groves and/or Zbrush there is some serious power avaliable.

Yeah, I have the same problem when using Mozilla. IE works fine though.

Carrara has a great renderer. It is fast (ridiculously fast even on my old pc) and easy to use. All of the great things people have said here are true and the render engine is capable of results that you only see in the big boy apps. On the downside I would say that it can be a bit odd when confronted with some of the more difficult tasks. I find area lighting to be quite difficult as artifacts are generated with very high settings and using objects as light sources can get slow. (Mabey it is the renderer I I have to learn to use it better) Overally I really like it and with some tweeks it will be perfect.

Have there been any enhancements to the radiosity render engine?