I'm a sucker for sales, and bundles... I'm always trying to get the best bang for my buck. Maybe it has something to do with limited funds... or something I've inherited from my mother. So my question is... does DCG ever have sales? Just kidding... kind of... ;) Ok seriously though... I really think I have to have the anything grows plugin... played with the demo... and well... hooked me. And I'm thinking I might eventually want shader ops... not so sure about the star bright thing... not big on non twinkly stars... and I'm not sure about anything groves. If you can't tell I'm looking at the power bundle pack... My question then is this... is there any benefit to Anything Groves over the displacement abilities of C5? (I'm running standard version) And the same question with shader ops... do I need it with the shader system in C5? I've fairly new to Carrara so I figured I'd ask the people who use it and know. Thanks in advance for your help! Christina

I love to find good sales and bargains too, but DCG's prices are pretty reasonable. Anything Grooves is a must-have with C4, but with C5's new displacement, I don't know if AG is still necessary. Anything Grows is a great plug-in to have though. I would like to get the Project Gemini plug-in, since Carrara is not capable of symmetrical modelling, and also Anything Goos and Toon Pro. DCG plug-ins are great!

If you are going to get at least 2 then get the bundle. Shadersplus and shaderops having important features not in C5. See the earlier posts.

ShadersPlus and ShaderOps are must-haves since they both have functions not provided in C5 that I use in almost every scene. I would recommend buying these two instead of the PowerPack bundle. These two plugins (along with Veloutfrom inagoni.com) make the Shader Room "full-featured". AnyGrooves seems a little more intuitive than the Displacement channel in C5 but maybe it's only because I've spent more time with AGrooves and it does some things automatically for you.... I recommend you download the demo before you buy and build a displacement scene twice: first with AGrooves then with Displacement and compare. That money might be better spent on another plugin.... AGrows vs the Surface Replicator: as far as I know no one has gone head-to-head comparing these two, and I'm not sure the comparison would be evenly matched. AGrows creates "strands" like hair and grass which you have the option of putting a tip object on. Surface Replicator just distributes 3d objects.... So far I've not seen anyone attempt fur like Wayne's Teddy Bear (link below) using the Surface Replicator, anyone care to try? http://www.digitalcarversguild.com/gallerypopup.php?GalleryID=71&Page=24 At the risk of insulting DCG (and Eric who is a national treasure to this community) I have never seen an image using Starbright that made me want to rush out and buy the plugin. There is a tutorial that uses AGrows to make a starfield on DCG's site (link below). http://www.digitalcarversguild.com/tutorial.php?TutorialId=12 happy shopping! holly

I bought Power Pack which came with Starbright. It's a good value to start buying plugins with. I eventually bought all the rest of DCG's plugins. I also have all of Inagoni's plugins which I bought as a set in the beginning. The plugins gave me more ideas of what I could create with Carrara. Now I can't imagine using Carrara without them installed.

Thanks everyone for your help, input, and experience. I know there are many plugins out there I would like to get, and it's a matter of waiting for money to grow on trees... in the meantime I think I'm going to buy them as I can. So I'm going to start with anything grows, just because I've got some plans for it already. In fact I just finished my Happy 2006 image... using the demo. I'll probably post it in the gallery. Next on my list is shader ops and then primvol... and I'll go from there. Again thank you all for your responses. Christina

This is a bit old, but I have to say my bad because I misunderstood what was in the power pack. I thought is was a bigger bundle.After seeing what exactly is in it I would basically agree with holly because anything grows and shader ops would be great, but unless you really need grooves(like with c4)starbright is not really needed. I would like to see some volume discounts or different bundles tho because I know I will be getting several, but looks like the power pack wouldn't really suit my needs.Like aside from advance pack Inagoni gives you a discount when you buy several. Hate to say it, but it is incentive and it works I would have waited longer to buy things I did, but I saved about $300 with the sales I picked up.

No problem... and I did buy anything grows last Friday. I just can't afford to buy everything I want all at once, or sometimes ever... unfortunately I'm on a fixed income and that doesn't leave much left over for hobbies... I agree that sales are big incentives... and I'm always looking for the best deals. I know from my experience with the starfield's in Bryce I didn't like them and ended up post working several hundred dots so they'd look more like stars. (forgot to back up the image and lost the whole thing a week later in a crash) But I figure I can do the same thing in the future if I need to.

Yeah...we're all on fixed income... some are fixed better than others! :D Yes it can get quite expensive.