I've been a long-time Ray Dream user... and just recently managed to get the company to spring for the Carrara upgrade! EXCEPT- I'm finding that Carrara is just different enough to cause me frustration. I guess I'm going to have to start over - Beginner's Mind, as the Zen Masters say.

I don't know what version of the code you have but there was a spiff little dorky tutorial that came with CStudio 1.0 which got me up to speed on Carrara real fast. I don't think it will take you too long. Ask questions here if you need to and good luck! -Kix

I'm running version 2. Yeah, there was a QuickTime dingus that I've just been skipping over... I guess I'll fire that bad boy up and see what's there.

Hey, Lensman - Yeah, there are some frustrating differences -- like where do you find how to change the mapping mode on an object? (It's no longer in the object's properties, but rather in the texture room.) But the good thing is that everything you know and love from RDS is still there; it's just been moved. It's like that line by Dr. McCoy from the first Star Trek Movie. He shouts in exasperation as he's leaving the transporter room, "I know engineers. They LOVE to change things."

My biggest frustration so far is the preset camera views. In RDS, when I would resize the working box in the modeling mode, the views would maintain their positions relative to the box. In Carrara, that doesn't appear to be true. right on, sfdex - eovia seems to take perverse joy out of creating the only OS X app that takes over the screen. :P

Actually, being a cros-platform user, I'm glad for that. C is the same if I'm on a (gulp) PC, or a (:>) mac. Having used plenty of other cross-platform programs that EVERYTHING moves even though your on the same vesion number! Just another veiwpoint. :>

Been there also, it took me about 6 months to change. Finally put my foot down & said I'd do the "next" project fully in C & that helped. As for the screen "takeover" see the thread a few back for a MacOSX screen utility that will allow you to use the top level of Quartx for images. Vey handy if you need to trace images in the model rooms.

I find that the only features they have eliminated are those very useful ones in the vertex modeler. Such as being able to draw rectangles, ovals, and whatnot directly into the modeler, and not having to muck about with all those settings that you can do better by eye, with snap-to on. Another in the same modeler, is the eliminating of the ability to move and resize meshes with the same flexibility as the "Assembly" room (via the actual coordinace, and size). I used RDS 5.5 for several years, and Ray dream 3d before that, and not having the vertex modeler in Raydream, then having it, then having some nice features added, and some nice features taken away. Well, it is a little frustrating.

It's funny, but it seems that I am the only one here that was actually using Infini-D. I started with Ray Dream 3, than upgraded it to 4. Then I started using Infini-D and just loved it. It was very stable and it seemed more advanced then Ray Dream, when the company got assimilated I was devastated. To me the way you could map things in to geometry in Infini-D was a lot better than even Carrara 2. I would love to see them bring back some of that in to Carrara 3, it just made UV mapping a lot easer. I personally don't care much for the layers list in Carrara, it just seems awkward, and the Mapping tools are quirky. What really gets me is that Metacreations initial campaign to introduce Carrara was kind of deceiving in a way, they led every body believe that Carrara was going to have the best of RayDream and the Best of Infini-D, they pretty dumped almost all the code for Infini-D and kept all or RayDream's. Don't get me wrong I have always liked RayDream, but I think that Infini-D had much more to offer.

i used to use infini-D as well. and for the first month of usig carrara 1.1 i swore that i would still probably do most of my work in infini-D. i was basically just used to infini-D. Once I got going with carrara, i never even thought about going back.

back in highschool when i first got into computer graphics (on a centris 660av) i was using Aldus SuperPaint. about a year later, my dad bought a scanner that came bundled with photoshop 2.5. It took me about another year before i was actually using photoshop.

i think you'll have a similar experience when ever you upgrade to a more powerful product. when you know how to get results in a lower-end product it can often be faster than stumbling around in a more powerful one.

at least that's my take on it.

-pix