Never heard of Carrara? This is the successor to Raydream and Infini-D, both of which were very popular entry-level 3D programs in the 1990's. Carrara shares a similar user interface with Bryce and Poser, all of which were long ago owned by the same company, MetaCreations. If you already know and use either of these other products you'll find it even easier to use  Carrara.	See Carrara used by Markus Rothkranz:  Iceberg, the movie Easy to own, fun to learn & ready to use. See more samples & Resources to learn more!
Very Cool 3D, Very Hot Graphics! animated texture made in Dogwaffle, mapped over 3D terrain from Carrara

 

Advanced Rendering - Caustics and Physics based animation Dropping a pair of interlocking rings, with Physics engine and high-end rendering including caustics. This animation was done in Carrara 5, but the exact same is possible in Carrara Studio 3. Carrara 4 and 5 however offer great new features beyond. If you like CS3, you will likely want to upgrade to C5 - you'll love it! click image to play Quicktime movie (made with QT6, uses H.263 compression codec)

 

Using Carrara with Poser You can use Poser models and animations and render them within a Carrara scene or animation. Note that with Carrara 5, you don't need the plugin anymore, as Carrara 5 has native Poser import capability! See more examples of Poser+Carrara together beyond Project Dogwaffle: Poser 5 & Carrara 5  & PD Pro 3.5 PD Howler

 

Creating Trees & Plants with Carrara & Dogwaffle Even if you already have a high-end 3D program, such as Lightwave, you might want to use Carrara as a companion/plugin tool to make stuff like trees & plants. Considering the cost of some of the tree image collections this is a great deal even just to make plants!

  

3D Text, Titles, Logos This is one of the easiest and yet oh-so powerful things to do in your communications: impressive 3D text, titles and logos.

  

Digital Landscapes - Carrara's Terrain Editor &Atmospheres take it further: Flight Simulation and Animation over Virtual Terrain You can use the terrain editor with sophisticated skies and atmospheric effects to create stunning animations.