Ariana,

For your early sessions you should keep returning to the first chapter of the Carrara manual, the Basics, to learn what the names are for the various rooms, controls and windows, where to find them and what you can do in them.

The Carrara 5 interface has more space for the 3D view than previous versions but its getting a little bit too busy, especially for beginners.  The icons used to be bigger and friendlier.

If you are familiar with Bryce and Poser then there are a few things to point out that are different in Carrara.

You should recognise the little ball and the direction arrows on the far left side that move the camera.  In Poser these orbit the camera around the figure, or face or hands depending on which you are on but in Carrara there are only two default cameras.  They orbit around the current selection so try to select the object you want to look at and work on before you move the camera.  If you loose the camera and dont know where you are click on the Camera name in the top left corner of the window then choose Set Position to...   |  Reference.

The properties tray on the right is similar to the one in Poser but it doesn't have the nice easy dials that you can spin.  You can make objects visible here, change their name and get direct access to edit their materials.  At the bottom of the properties tray is the list of objects in the scene, just like the Hierarchy Window in Poser.  There is also a list of objects in the sequencer window.  You can use either of these in place of the little triangle below the scene view that you get in Poser.

You probably wont want the sequencer window in the way most of the time.  If you click on the handle of the Sequencer tray at the bottom of the screen then it will close and look a lot more like the Animation palette in Poser.  If you click on the handle and pull the tray right up and out to fill the screen then its like clicking on the little key in Poser to get to the animation and key frames window.

The browser tray in Carrara 6 was moved and you can only get to that only by rolling out the bottom tray far enough.  This is like the library in Poser but there wont be any figures or hair there until you add them, its more like the 'props' list.  You only have to drag and drop the thumbnails from the browser to add things to the scene.  However unlike poser they wont start out in the centre and on the ground unless you drag them into the scene list on the properties tray !

Anytime that you create certain objects, such as dragging in a moutain from the top toolbar much as you would do in Bryce, Carrara will automatically move to the 'model' room.  You can return to the view of your scene, the Assemble room, by clicking on the icon of the hand at the top of the window.  Also if you want to shape the terrain by hand use the Map Editor button.

To get a fast rendered view of your scene use the Test Render tool which is the little camera icon on the bottom left side of the main window.  Press escape if that is too slow or you want to abort the test.

I expect there are quite a few other new users to Carrara, like yourself, who are a bit lost.

PS:
I have a separate older computer for my internet use and keep my best PC isolated for security reasons.  I haven't installed Carrara or any other applications on this one that I'm using so I cant do side by side screen shots easily today.

...Also the soccer is about to start and its my national duty to stay up late and watch it.