I've been considering buying Carrara. I have bought Hexagon and downloaded C4Pro demo. Because there wasn't a demo available for Standard, I have to ask: what are the differences in animation? In Pro the skinning seems to be very simple thing. Does it work similarly in Standard? Eovia's site says: "Looking for tools to improve your workflow? Carrara 4 Pro delivers a host of advanced features including vector and 3D motion blur for improved animation, four new file imports (BVH for motion capture, COB-trueSpace, FBX-Motion Builder and LWO-Lightwave, respectively), sound support in the timeline, five nodes of network rendering, a full license of Amapi Designer 7 modeling software, and Eovias TransPoser and CADstyle plug-ins." Since these are not crucial to me, are there other differences? My main interest is animation and rendering, since I will be doing modeling in other apps.

Well there were ik improvements and morph targets added. You might care about sound for that. Also those file supports could be important to you...even transposer for poser import, altho you may want to buy transposer2 for poser 5 support. The transposer w/ c4 is old. The motion blur is also in pro not standard. Hopefully c5 will be out at some point soon. There is a comparison on the site...gotta dig for it.

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.

Thanks for an answer! ren_mem, do you mean that there are differences in IK or morph targets between Pro and Standard? That Poser compability does not matter at this time, I'm not planning Poser animations (I prefer simpler models currently). I did go through the comparison chart but... For some reason the ads do not tell everything. I trust users more...

Well..the ads don't tell everything...and there is alot to tell so it can be confusing. Here is the detailed list url. No there is no diff I believe between pro and standard for those. Just improved in 4. The file support and audio may matter. If you don't need those or Amapi. Terrain and sky are good, but plants are kinda poor...may not need it tho. There are some texturing limitations too, but you can buy plugins for that...just keep the full picture. Many of the renders(everywhere) will use another package or plugins so it can be misleading. There is no direct flash export either w/o vectorstyle. http://www.eovia.com/products/carrara/carrara_full_features.asp

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.

Thanks for clarification! It seems to me that I will add one app to my collection. Standard may be enough for my current needs...

I couldn't say anything until today, but Carrara 5 really has some wonderful animation improvements. It's a very nice 3D solution.