Learning to use effectively a 3D app, whether it's Carrara or 3DSMax, requires lots of involved learning and practice.

A 3D app isn't like a car that if you don't like it you just selll it and buy somethig else. It would be utterly irresponsible for a 3D app software company to tell its customers: 'If you don't like our products, go use use someone else's app'.

What I am witnessing is that Daz took over an excellent RDS that could almost rival Lightwave, and over the years has let it fall behind to the point of extinction.

Daz has spent a huge amount of time designing their CMS with Smart Content which is of no practical use from where I am standing. Actually when I buy Daz content I don't even install the DS part, I only install the Poser files. IMO Poser's content manager is far better and far more useful, and Daz should have just shamelessly copied it.

And for the umpteenth time, that fast mipmap nonsense that Daz spent months to program in Carrara to speed-up the renderer is so laughable that I would really expect Daz to quietly remove it from the C9 release, because it really is a proof of utter mismanagement.

And, again for the umpteenth time, Daz should implement the Embree technology inside Carrara so at least upgrading to C9 is worth the price.

For Daz Carrara's product manager information, Embree is not some sort of cheese, It's a set of fast raytracing routines developed by Intel as part of their core graphic technologies, and is already implemented in C4D R15 and VRay.

http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/embree-photo-realistic-ray-tracing-kernels

This is Embree's impact on C4D R15 render speed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJd-WEtkg-Q