Carrara is a general purpose 3d modeling, animation and rendering package. Carrara is notable for including compatibility with Poser and DAZ format 3D figures, along with a selection of landscape generation tools, together with its more traditional modeling features. The history of Carrara starts in 1989 when a group of individuals moved from France to California and founded Ray Dream, Inc. with the idea of creating graphic software for the new Mac computers with color displays. Two years later the first version of their new 3D graphics program which they named Ray Dream Studio was released. In 1996 Ray Dream Inc. was sold to Fractal Design Corporation. Fractal Design Corporation was in turn acquired by MetaTools The combination of the two companies was given the new name MetaCreations. Around the same time another 3D graphics program named Infini-D was acquired from Specular International. Now owning two 3D graphics programs MetaCreations decided to merge Ray Dream and Infini-D into one application giving it the new name Carrara.