Hi Michael,
Well, maybe "Rocks" was a poor choice..."Objects" is more like it. This is a "3 point lighting" scene.



It comes with a bunch of prests for different things.



This is the room Danny was mentioning.



This is that same room in model view.



Note there is only one light outside of the entire model.

Remember that Carrara also is handling atmospheric data as well as lights. We have seen impressive work from Grendel using Carrara. I think it is a powerful render app along with the others. I think the thing that drops it off the others is it's lack of development, not it's ability or a "hobby app".

"""""Can you save your own presets"""""""

Yes, all this stuff is just a saved carrara file. Set up your own lighting scene and render settings you like and save the file. They have a browser thing where you can put scenes, objects/content etc.... I could open the "3 point lighting" rock scene, delete tyhe rocks and save it as "moi object test scene".

FOr a beginner, it's good to load a preset scene thats close to your idea, then delete the preset content and place your own in it for render. If you dont have experience in setting things like atmospheres with your lighting and "shaders" (materials, colors, textures) then it's hard to get something looking as you want.

Like for that room render, you could take max3d's waspbot, set it on the table and dolly the camera around and get a good render from all areas that appears the bot is in the room...