Does anyone have real world experience doing landscapes iin BOTH applications that can give me the pros and cons of each? I an thinking of getting Vue, but if Carrara is just as good at creating results I will just invest more in Carrara. Thanks in advance.

Hi Vasseur7, I use both professionally. If you're ONLY going to do landscapes with pre-made models, Vue may be your best option. It's truely a dedicated, landcaping piece of software magic. If you're going to do any kind of model creation, character creation or scene building with original content, then Carrara is a better choice. Carrara is awesome. In my experience, Vue still holds the edge over Carrara with natural environmental settings. BUT - Carrara creates exceptional landcapes too. Both Carrara Pro and Vue Infinite have network rendering which is invaluable. Both programs have excellent render engines but Carrara currently has Subsurface Scattering, Translucency, Saved Lightmaps plus other lighting effects that Vue currently does not. Oviously, I use both because the complement one another for my studio's needs. There are finer points I and others can discuss about this topic, but the afore mentioned stuff is the highlights. Mark

Wow!! Mark Bremmer responds. I guess that is as qualified an answer as I can expect to get. Thanks for the feedback I really appreciate it. =-)

If you don't mind, I'll add something to this.

If your using Poser6, Carrara is quite good at importing Poser files and working with them. But Vue6 seems to have taken it one step farther in importing Poser6 material shaders and using Posers posing dials for easier posing inside Vue. Just a lettle better than how Carrara does it.

I have and love my Carrara5Pro, but I'm buying the Vue Infinity to go with it. So some extra thoughts to go with what Mark said.

Thanks for the responses. I appreciate it..

Can only speak from experience ... as a user of both Carrara 5.1 (standard) and a more recent user of Vue 5 Esprit, I've found that the packages are complimentary. Carrara is the better all-rounder, and definitely the faster and higher quality renderer on the whole. But Vue has a clear edge for environmentals and landscapes.

Depends what kind of work you want to do - for me, lighting is the key for my style of work. I tend to focus more on overall visual impact, and work with simple models and geometry, rather than complex modelling and shading. Carrara comes out a clear winner for this.

The overall render quality seems higher in Carrara e.g the smoothness of volumetric light at lower quality settings, soft shadows are much smoother, anti-aliasing is clearly better in Carrara esp when viewing object edges in volumetric light, you have more control over rendering parameters in Carrara (unless you go for Vue Infinite perhaps).

Vue creates excellent water (using fractal terrains) - even better if you get Vue Infinite and get the Open Ocean functions.

Carrara is generally pretty robust and dead easy to learn, but has a number of annoying bugs e.g. doesn't replicate the visiblevolumetric properties when you replicate a light using the particle or replicator functions. But Vue seems to crash randomly - might be my GeForce 6800 OpenGL Drivers.

Vue definitely has a future - does Carrara have a future after being bought by DAZ? Remains to be seen!

That's my tuppence worth! Almost all the art on my blog (http://craftycurate.blogs.com/) was done with Carrara if that's any help!

Thanks
Richard

Think of it as tools for the job, I wish there was a do everything 3dGraphics/Programing package out there (it would save me money :)  but until it comes along you will find yourself using all sorts of software.

As far as who software is better the answer is yes.

I use Carrara 5 Pro quite a bit as do I use Vue as do I use Mojoworld as do I .....

The question you should be asking is what can I do more with and my answer would be Carrara as it will do out/in door scenes, physics, modeling, animation and much more as it is a general purpose package.

Vue is a great product and will do most of what Carrara can do minus most of the modeling features, limited animation tools (not sure about version 6) and no built in physics but can be achieved with python scripts.

Ultimately the choice is yours, keep in mind that there will always be a gfx package that will do something’s better then others and the reverse is true as well.