Re the Carrara render. The reason it looks plastic is due to the fact that imported content tends to come into carrara with very high highlight and shininess settings, these need to be adjusted in Carrara's shader room.

Also default scene lighting In Carrara tends to have an ambient light value of 20%, this tends to bleach out textures and shadows quite badly, hence the need to enter a value of 0% to get more realistic lighting (as a start).

Peace,

SM.