I have P5, and thinking about a more powerful modeling/rendering tool. General impressions of cararra? Can't help but wonder if the relationship between CL and Eovia will make them more comapatable. Could the physics in Cararra compare with Poser 5's cloth room? Cloth room is really neat, but slow and a bit tempermental with anything complicated. I saw a cararra plugin for "displacment" maps, assume that's comparable to poser bump maps? Cararra can't do bump maps natively? How do cararra render times compare with poser's? Any feedback/opinions appreciated. (Yes, I've downloaded the trial and will play with it.) :)

Can't speak for the newer versions of Carrara as I am still using V1. But I have been using it for years now and still love it and it has one of the quickest and best renderers I have used. I hope to upgrade to the latest V3 when I can afford it. Not a plug for my products but just to show what can be done with Carrara V1. If it can do this... imagine what V3 will be able to do..! ziggie

Carrara does bump maps; they're in a shader tree similar to Poser 5's texturing set-up. The displacement map plug-in alters the mesh; bump maps only alter the render. Carrara does collision detection well, but doesn't have a single function like dynamic cloth. There is a Poser-to-Carrara plug-in being developed, but it has to wait for the release of Poser 5 OS X version AFAIK. Carrara 3.0 should be a useful tool for Poser users who don't want to waste time using Poser's rendering functions; see the Carrara forum in the software drop-down list.

I have Anything Grooves and its a very nice product. There will be a Tree Generator in Carrara 3.0, and of course, HDRI lighting. WooHooo!

BTW, my latest renders are all done in Carrara, for examples of what it can do render wise. I much prefer it, its a better renderer than Poser. But its not the easiest to import to... until you learn how. I posted the process in the Carrara forum, but I am writing up a full tutorial for it.