When I first learned of Carrara (v5 at the time) I started a whole big thread over at CGTalk about it perhaps being a (better) replacement for e-on's Vue.

There aren't many other mainstream 3D animation packages that also let you add / edit environments for your scenes and models without plugins or addons.


The fact you can create mountains, trees, patches of water & grass etc., right in the app makes Carrara an excellent choice IMO. Also it contains true polygon modeling which Vue does not, so I felt is had an advantage over Vue at the time I bought in.

Of course Vue has way more atmospheric simulation stuff than Carrara but you also have to deal with doggie slow renders.

Carrara's presets are a quick way to get a scene setup where you can plop in your model(s) and render or begin animating.

The Logo scenes are really good for quickly getting that HDR / Sunlight lighting look that a lot of folks use now to show off their models - just replace the default scene object(s) with your own and reap the time savings of a pre-made lighting setup...

-Will