Yeah, those Carrara plugins are great. I once discussed it with Eric, but he wasn't too interested at the time. I think we should all start a petition…
Actually there are rumors that Imagesynth 2 will be released soon. It's built by Allegorithmic (the same people who make MapZone). I would not be surprised at all if IS2 has some of this functionality and can plug in directly to Modo's shader stack. I'm guessing of course! Wishful thinking...
jonah