Am currently experimenting with Carrara. This is still a work-in-progress. For this rendering, blurry reflection for the floor was used. Caustic and global illumination were turned on.
What is Carrara? It is a 3D modelling, rendering and animation from DAZ. It packs lots for features for a relatively low-price.
Carrara’s strength lies in its ease of use. It probably has one of the easiest to understand interface for a 3D application.
Feature-wise, Carrara can do quite a bit of stuffs. It sports features such as a plant generator and terrain generator. Additionally, it has tight integration with 3D character softwares such as DAZ Studio. This allows easy 3D character import and posing.
By the way, Carrara 6 is now free on certain magazines such as the April issue of Digital Arts. Get it while stocks last !!