ADSL but still seems horrendously slow here.  I think our telephone exchange has been having problems for the last couple of months, takes me ages to connect sometimes.  Says a lot for living on the edge of Scotland's 'capital' city (rolls eyes)

No worries :) and all being well you'll probably be seeing more of me when I start getting deep enough into it for questions ;)  Still got several more days of downloading to go yet I think. :D

I stuck with the Pro.  It was what I chose originally when I bought C5 so it seemed a bit of a waste to backtrack now.

Thanks all for your input.  I went for it and bought it.  It's going to take me DAYS to download all the stuff that comes with it :D

My mistake, just looked at the offer again and that was the price of the ordinary Carrara not the Pro.  Makes the decision a tad harder again.

Thanks, that does help to hear a positive review of it.  I remember C6 getting a lot of criticism when it was first released.  I just did the currency conversion and even with the exchange rate being much worse than it used to be it's still only 30GBP.  Just have to live up to my promise to myself to get back into it.  I did Mark Bremmer's C5 course so will have to sign up to VTC again I think.

I watched the VTC tutorials in August last year and found them extremely helpful.  Now I have C6 Pro to learn do you think there is enough different to subscribe again?

Both use Java to run.

I wrote up a short intro to using POVtree in the Bryce forum a couple of years ago

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2234245&ebot_calc_page#message_2234245

Arboro is easier to use in that you export the obj direct without needing to go through PoseRay.  Neither of them really has a manual as such so you really have to just use trial and error, Danamo stuck at it longer than I did I think and got some good trees.  I gave up and bought Xfrog ;)

After tinkering a little with Gradient Designer and realising I just couldn't figure out what it was doing with the different blend modes I searched on XOR pen and came up with an even better freeware (perhaps) or at least more usable for me in that it has tutorials so I can start to figure out what to do. It seems to allow for a lot of functions within the software including filters and sinewaves of different frequencies.

It's called sTile at

http://www.harmware.net/index.htm

They're not animators obviously so I'm not sure how well they'd work for your purpose, I'm not an animator either (yet, who knows, Carrara may change that ;) but thought I'd pass it over on the offchance it might have some use to somebody.  It's certainly entertained me for the last hour or two :D

I've got quite a lot of utilities for both general work on the computer and for artwork.  I'll try and remember some of them:

Context Free
Easy Thumbnails
Screenprint32
Plant Studio
Universe (an old standalone version)
Arboro
POVTree
MapZone
Wood Workshop

Other essential utilties
Stripfile
Treesize
AVG 
Zonealarm

What would I say?  For the folks that write open source or giveaway freeware it would be a very loud THANK YOU because it amazes me that they are so generous with what to me is a mysterious gift to write software.

Danamo, your comment about wanting greyscale heightfields reminded me of something I have installed but haven't worked out how to use yet.  I have no idea if it would help with what you are needing because I only ever get very regular looking wavemaps out of it but here's teh link anyway

http://www.wolfiesden.com/downloads/images/gradient.asp

Kathy

Notefinger is right, my email came on 29th October specifically saying that they were emailing in batches so that the servers don't run into the kind of problems they had with other upgrades and masses of people logging in at once.  You know I feel kind of sorry for Daz just because they're customers seem to complain whatever happens...  everyone downloads on the same day and complains the downloads are slow, phased downloads and people complain it's not fair. 

Perhaps it is alphabetical, my surname begins with E.  Perhaps it's location, being in the UK I was able to get my downloads started before the rush as soon as I got up while many in the US would be asleep.

Kathy

I don't get the impression anyone in this thread was indulging in slanderfest. Personally I have an extreme fondness for Bryce, like the Bryce 6 upgrade and was expressing just how hard it is for me to switch to another application at all, even one that has a slightly similar GUI feel as Carrara does. I have utmost admiration for some of my favourite Bryce artists who can make the program truly sing; Frogdot, Meski, Mario G to name but a few.  I am not remotely at their level.  Each to his own is my motto. If I could do what those artsist do in Bryce I doubt I'd bother changing application at all.  There you go, my flaws.

Meanwhile, I'm still having a whale of a time learning my way round Carrara and suspect there may be going to be some images where I mix results from Poser, Bryce and Carrara with the odd C4D/Xfrog tree.  The purists will hate me :D

Kathy

Just starting the shift from Bryce to Carrara I have to say it's the first program I've felt 'at home' in since Bryce.  I've tried and failed at C4D for instance. 

Things that would tempt me to stick with Bryce...  I have enough knowledge of the program to be able to make a scene pretty fast so going back to being a beginner can be a trial.  I have lots of things stored for Bryce that can speed things up.  Masses of free presets and skies and things in Bryce.

Some of those are also reasons why I think Bryce is a good place to start. There is so much free stuff to get you going and it is a bit of a cult software so that you can find really experienced users able to help you out with almost anything you want to do.

But... things that are really going for Carrara now I've started learning it (working through Mark Bremmer's tuts at VTC as we speak ;) ) are like having Bryce then adding on all the things you wish Bryce would do like the four screen view, the surface distribution, displacement mapping (oh how I drool to think of playing with displacement maps at last as my C4D was before effective implementation of that).  I'm sure there will be much more to get me going as I learn.  When I look at the wishlist for Bryce 7 I am sometimes thinking 'why ask for that in Bryce 7 when you could by Carrara now?' :)

Kathy

I'm also thinking of joining you in Carrara.  I thought about it and opted out last time Daz had a sale.  This time I think I will regret it if I miss my chance.  I'm still swithering about Pro or basic.  I could use the money I save by getting basic plus Transposer to buy the Anything Grows plug in I just was reading about in the forums here.  Ohhhh so many options.

Looking forward to trying this out though.

Kathy

Attached Link: Nice visual demo of paper sizes at Wikipedia.