I have been using poser 7 a bit and I’ve been looking at both Vue and Carrara 5 pro for world generating, and I’m trying to decide which one I will buy. I’m mainly looking for your personal opinions on the programs (mainly Carrara but vue also if you have used it. Some thing I’m interested to know are how easy it is to use the interface and program, which one might be have less of a learning curve, which one has the most freedom of creativity. All in all what are your opinions on the program, negative and positive. Thanks 8)

Ps. I posted this originally in the general 3d section, but a forum monitor suggested that I post it here.

Hi ZB, I use C5Pro and Vue 6i every day professionally. They're both excellent programs and they both have their own quirks. C5P is a more flexible program since you can create "real" 3d geometry with with it. By real I mean real shapes and not the psuedo boolean type of process required of Vue. If your primary focus is landscapes Vue is the way to go. You can make excellent landscapes with Carrara but the environmental controls in Vue are simply more robust. If you're going to be doing a lot with Poser/DAZ characters, C5P will be a better choice because of the modeling and posing tools that are part of Carrara. Additionally, it's easier to work with Poser character materials/shaders in Carrara. For it's versitility, Carrara is a better bargin - especially considering the low cost plug-ins that can dramatically increase it's utility. But of course, these are the insane ravings of a lunatic madman... ;) Mark

My first thing is ..go get Vue 6I PLE version and play with it .. its free
And my second thing is check out DAZ site about the CAR 6 offer..
I ahve both Car 5 and vue 6 esprit ... i love vue .. i hav not used car so much but i see wonders comming from other users ..so... i cant say buy this or that..
When modeling comes to it i think Car is better .. but then again i model in SILO...

Poser 7 is not that good compatible with CAR anymore ..it works fine in V6 Esp for me..
But i cant find what it is you want to use it for .... 

Chris

If you are used to Poser, Carrara is not too much of a stretch to get used to. Vue is more focused on landscapes, so most of the tools are tailored for that. Carrara can be used for great landscapes, but you might have to dive a little deeper in it. Because it offers tools for way more things than just generating world. Build everything in them, for instance. Create indoor scenes. Take a look in the galleries over here. If you want outdoor scenes, I think Vue offers a lot of automation (for instance for 'growing' vegetation and populating mountain ranges with unique trees etc), while Carrara wants you to create different trees which you can replicate all over the place. I think the modelling options in Vue are far less than Carrara. So I would say Cararara has way more room for creativity. But, let me be clear, I am a very enthousiast Carrara user, so very biased. I will buy vue, somewhere in the future, I think. Just as a complementary tool.

Thanks for the info guys. I did see the sale on DAZ and that’s what has sparked me towards buying one now, but I will do as you suggest and check out the trial of Vue 8). 

Oh and I have another quick question to add. How does well does poser 7 import into Carrara 5 pro?

It "sort of" imports. If you use any of the higher Poser functions like Layered animation or the Talk Designer, those won't import. :-/ But, if your simply Posing figures, you can even pose them directly in Carrara. Can't do that in Vue.

How does well does poser 7 import into Carrara 5 pro?

Well the transposer plugin does not work anymore when you export from p7..
And the native import i made into C5 did not do the trick for me...

Car5 and poser7 are no friends anymore .... :-{

the import from p6 does work fine btw...

Chris

Hmm. well I guess I would have to reinstall poser 6 so that I cold import them in. not to big of a deal since I mostly use Aiko allot and starting to use Hiro a bit. Though it would cause trouble for when I use Yuki or V4. I wonder if Carrara 6 will be work with poser 7. Hope so since I’m leaning towards cararra at this point. Yet again thanks for the info. 8)

Poser is not my main program I use.  So importing Poser is not that important for me.  I have both Vue Infinite 6.10 and Carrara Pro 5.1 for WinXP.  I just mess around as a hobby and enjoy both programs greatly.  I have almost all the plugins for CP5.  They greatly enhance CP5.

Depends what you're doing, and what your budget is. I have C5 standard, and Vue 6 Infinite.

C5 has more versatility and a better all round toolset e.g.particles, deformations, object arrays that aren't present in Vue, but for landscapes and the Ecosystem technology, Vue is out on its own.

Vue 6 imports Poser (including v7) much better in my experience, including dynamics and morphs, but once imported, it's less flexible than C5. C5 kept losing morphs, and undoing the posing changes I'd made. But rendering results are comparable.

Lighting is generally better quality and more flexible in Vue, but I think C5 volumetric light is better when it comes to shadows.

C5 is more stable, and the interface is a bit more intuitive than Vue.

The Vue renderer shows its quality over C5 when you start doing high quality global illumination and radiosity renders. There's a long thread about this somewhere - I just couldn't get C5 to produce good enough results for daylight architectural renders with everything at best quality, but already I've got better results with V6 and I could pump up values a lot higher e.g. photon counts.

This is just from my experience - hope it helps.

Check out my gallery for some recent PoserVue renders esp "Le Bisou" and "First Contact".

Richard

If you don't animate or use dynamic cloth and hair the native Poser importer is fine in Carrara without transposer.  If you have a copy of Poser 5 or 6 you can still get transposer to work.  Of course you can set up your animations in Carrara as well.

Carrara is capable of creating landscapes that almost rival Vue, the plants aren't as realistic, but are fine for distance shots  Carrara's new replication command can mimic Vue's ecosystems if done properly.  Carrara also works better on systems with slower processors and less ram memory than Vue does.  A lot of people are having issues with Poser imports on Vue 6, if doesn't take much to have Vue crash because it uses up all the system memory.