Hey, rDogg:

A couple of other things that I wish I had known when I started using Carrara:

If you want to maneuver around a large scene using terrain generators, select Scene in the instance (lower right), then use the interface tab - there's a Scene's Magnitude selector.  If you select large, you will move around much more quickly.  Be sure to set it back to medium before rendering, or you may get some bad artifacts in the render - took me quite a while to figure that one out.

Also, if you put normal sized objects into a scene - say a boat on a sea, or a person on the shore, and you lose where something is ... rather than zoom all over looking for it, highlight the object or model you want to see in the instance on the right, and hit 0 (the number zero).  Your current camera will go right to the object.  This is also helpful when working in a complex scene and want to move around quickly to adjust various objects.

If you haven't done so yet, I highly suggest you play with the lights - they are much more advanced than poser offers.  In the general tab you can have them light, or not light, individual objects - very handy.  Also check out the effects in the effects tab.  If you find raytraced shadows are too sharp, go to effects / shadows and enable soft shadows.  Increasing the light radius makes them softer.

One more simple trick that took time to figure out.  Insert a sphere primitive into a scene.  Bring in two (or three if you want a back light) spot lights.  Arrange them at about 45 degrees off to the right and left in front of the sphere.  Go into modifiers and set each light to point at the sphere.  In the instance, drop the two lights onto the sphere.  Make the sphere invisible in the general tab on the instance.  Name it Light Sphere at the top of the instance panel on the right.  Save this and you have a light set.  To use, pull it into a scene from your browser, and move the sphere to whatever object or model you want to illuminate.  You can rotate it for different shadow effects, and if one of the lights is obstructed, you can move it and it will snap to point at the sphere.  I use this all the time for spot lighting with some 3d definition.

Klebnor

Lotus 123 ~ S-Render ~ OS/2 WARP ~ IBM 8088 / 4.77 Mhz ~ Hercules Ultima graphics, Hitachi 10 MB HDD, 64K RAM, 12 in diagonal CRT Monitor (16 colors / 60 Hz refresh rate), 240 Watt PS, Dual 1.44 MB Floppies, 2 button mouse input device.  Beige horizontal case.  I don't display my unit.