I've been using Carrara for about 6 years, in various incarnations. The interface is incredibly intuitive and the company Eovia (not Kai, which is owned by Corel) has constantly strived to maintain the clean feel of the original interface while adding more usable layers and options for the more advanced users.

I've seen some condescending views toward Carrara lately, and I'd like to set the record straight. I'm an Art Director for 10 years now, specializing in print, however I do dabble in some web and animation. Carrara does what I want it to do, without investing in a 4-year degree to learn 3D. The first time you open up Carrara, you can poke your way around and learn to make custom shapes, textures and animations.

I've used Maya, Strata, Lightwave and a host of other programs, trying to find something that works the way I think. These programs were cumbersome, clunky, very PC and 'numerically mechanical' in their starkness. There are no clues and no intuition in their layout and you have to refer to the manual just to put points on a grid. To make a basic model takes hours and days.

In complete contrast, Carrara allows you to crete a basic model, create a texture, or add a mapping of your own artwork, light it, add background elements and export the whole thing as a tif, pict, mov, or whatever you need or can think of. I have used it to create product display photos for proposal comps, animated titles for movies, and a host of other small projects.

If you're a graphics professional with a need for a 3D program that just plain works, you need Carrara. This thing has saved my butt several times and I'm thankful it exists. Don't let the PC and Silicon Graphics guys scare you. I think something like Carrara scares them, because it delivers totally professional 3D results at minimal cost, with minimal time investment.

Unless you're a 3D professional (of which very few actually exist), Carrara will do everything you need...and more. After 6 years, I've barely touched on all it can do.