Correction to the above post (the post edit time limits are really a pain here)

There was recently a discussion about Carrara vs Bryce vs Vue in the DAZ forums that might answer a lot of your questions. It can be found here.

Carrara 3 was good, but it didn't have nearly as many features as Carrara 8.5, and as Stan pointed out, it didn't have any support for DAZ/Poser content. A general history of Carrara that gives the new features added/improved with each version can be found here,  with the detailed list starting with Carrara 2 here.

A video that one of the regulars at the DAZ Carrara forums just did which gives a general overview of Carrara can be found here.

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