The only "script" for Carrara is a third-party python plug-in that I am not really very familiar with.

"Standard" Carrara plug-ins are written in C++, not any sort of script, and are very different from DAZ Studio.

That said, you've done the hard part - coming up with the algorithms and functions that perform the calculations. Translating that into a Carrara plug-in should be reasonably straightforward.

Quote - Daz's prices certainly seem to have gone sky high. I guess they figure they have the market cornered -

That's not why.

As a broker, you automatically lose 50% of the sale to DAZ.  Then they go and put it on sale for 50%... or worse.  With the stacking coupons this last sale, people saw discounts as high as 75% off of the things they were selling.  And those discounts come off BEFORE the 50/50 split.  So, broker something at DAZ for $10, hope to make $5, but actually get $1.25 - that hurts... tends to make one want to quit selling.  The only way that DAZ PA's have to work around the endless sales is to price accordingly - if you want to make $10, your product needs to come out priced AT LEAST $20 if not $30.

I was speaking of the Carrara SDK, from teh point of view as a Carrara plugin developer.

The Embree "SDK" is not particularly polished, lacking even basic documentation.  The "tutorial" spends far more time on OpenGL than their render algorithms - I'm not impressed.  Business as usual for Intel, though: that's the way all of their stuff comes out.  I tried to use their math kernel library, once, and that was a nightmare.

I believe that one experienced developer as hypothesized, working full time on Carrara, WITH NOTHING ELSE TO DO, could probably do it in six months.

But I would put forward that there is no such person.  They've closed the bug tracker, so we can't inspect the tickets anymore, but I saw rather a lot of lengthy Eastern European names for a company whose only physical office is in Utah.  I'm really quite certain that DAZ has a pool of contractors at an outsourced company that get assigned to whatever project the management has given priority at that time.  If they have more than one or two permanent, full-time developers I would be utterly shocked.

Couple of things...  INTERNALLY, light and shanding in Carrara is 32-bit per channel floating point RGBA (128 bits per pixel):  it is only the output that is clamped to 32-bpp.

Secondly, Embree does appear to provide the very things that are the most onerous as far as developing your own render plugin, actually.  It should be possible to take the SDK sample renderer, rip out the very inefficient calculations it is using, replace with Embree and add Embree's GI calculations.  As a plugin, you'd want to provide two modes: "legacy" that outputs 32bpp but is network render friendly, and "high quality" that outputs HDR, but has to run locally because it will be writing the file itself instead of using Carrara's built-in final image handling.  Hair and volumetrics would still be a challenge, since Embree handles neither of those things (though at least it does instancing).

I agree with your point in general - people get very strongly attached and a bit strange about their favorite software.  But as a software professional, I do not agree with your assertion that it's especially strong in 3D software. 

Counterexamples (some more historic than current):

Excel, Quattro Pro, or Lotus 123?

Word, WordPerfect, or OpenOffice?

Photoshop, Corel Painter, or Gimp?

Illustrator or Corel Draw?

Oracle, SQL Server, or DB2?

Vi or EMACS?  ;)

And, of course, the ultimate example that makes the most heated 3D software argument seem like a playground disagreement:

Windows, MacOS, or Linux?

Yes, it should work without trouble in 8.1.1.12

They work for 10 minutes at a time, forever.  10 minutes after Carrara starts, they turn off.  Exit Carrara and restart, and you get another 10 minutes.

Yeah, sorry...  As a developer, I'm too used to knowing that the Edit menu is the only place the commands will go. 

I'll put some tips up on the download page to make it clearer.

It's hard to give exact guidance other than "In the Edit Menu".  Generally, under the "Fenric" sub-menu, but if you only have one then it won't be.

My "Fenric" sub-menu is very nearly as long as the main Edit menu itself. :)