cjd, DUDU0001, thank you for your responses!

cjd, have you ever used the software? It was featured in the latest issue of C3DE (Carrara 3D Expo Magazine), and from the tutorial there I understood that you need to set up your animation in a specific way to achieve more or less smooth results, otherwise there will be a lot of artefacts. If you've used it yourself, other than the render-edge distortion, did you run into limitations of the type of scene/footage that could be used?

DUDU0001, I've had pretty good results with simplified render settings. In fact, when you replace light through transparency with caustics, you sometimes get better looking results. (And faster) But my issue is that for the length of animation I am looking at, if I don't optimize on timing, then with the speed of my machine, it will be rendereding long into the second half of the century. For example, if I do the same as you - by leaving all settings checked in the top render tab, it is normal for my machine to take about 12 hours for as single frame - 12! hours!That is 12 days of non-interrupted rendering for each second of footage. Not an option. Especially since I need the machine for a lot of other things too, so I can't afford to have it as a dedicated renderer.

I know that there is a way to import noth pz2 and bvh, but my question is more about the details of setting up the use of BVH files: what are good resources of BVH files that work well in Carrara, and is there special prep that needs to be done in order to use them.