Hello, I hope this isn't a worn out question on this forum, but I'm looking at some different 3d packages outside of poser to use. I used to use Infini-D way back in the day, and I loved it! But when it "became" Carrara, I didn't follow along. By then I was too much into Poser. Anyway, can anyone here provide a good comparison between Infini-d 4.5 and the newest version of Carrara? I'd like to know exactly how lost I'd be if I decided to start using Carrara. ;) Thanks

Well, the good news is that you've been using Poser. Poser and Carrara's interfaces and GUI's are very similar, so you probably won't have a lot of trouble getting around. I used Infini-D a LONG time ago and don't remember it all that well, but did make the jump from Infini-D to RayDream Studio without much trouble. The basic concepts are the same. Carrara has most of the functionality of Infini-D, but it's in different places. Sometimes it's hard to find where certain features have been put, but after going through the manual (and not skipping the parts I thought I already knew), I'm getting comfortable with it. And Carrara Studio 2.1 has some really powerful features that neither Infini-D nor RayDream had, so it really is worth spending the time to get to know. I don't think you're going to be all that lost. - Dex

I would say that almost everything from Infini-D got incorporated in to Carrara. The Spline modeler is virtually identical except you get a heck of a better preview in Carrara and the speed is ten fold faster. There are some drastic changes, like the way you texture stuff is radically changed, but like the person that posted before me stated, I don't see you having to much of a learning curve. If you liked Infini-D, and you like Poser, you should love Carrara.

Didn't Infini-D have a better particle system than Carrara? I think mr. rustboy is still using infini-d (although I think he did some modeling in Carrara's vertex modeler).

Thanks, that helps a bit. Yeah, hartcons, I was a big fan of Infini-d's particle system. I still like the way they did things. I always wanted to see that particle system imported into Poser. I lobbied for it in P5 of course, but, well, y'know...

"Didn't Infini-D have a better particle system than Carrara?"

Not really. In fact they are virtually identical. The particle system is pretty much the only thing that Carrara took from Infini-D that actually still looks like it did in ID. (The other that remained the same is the lens flare effects)

The main differences in the particle sys are:

Carrara offers more shapes for particles than ID did.

The birth/death colors that were used to color the particles in ID still appear in Carrara but do not actually function. (which is pointless and totally stupid) To color the particles you must use the texture room.

In Infini-D using collision detection you had the option to have your particles collide with other objects in your scene and bounce off of them. Carrara can not do this.

Carrara vs Infini-D overall are nearly two different animals. Carrara is about 10% Infini-D and 90% Ray Dream. Pinklet is way off in saying that the spline modeler is identical. It's not. It's much closer to Ray Dreams that to IDs. In fact having him say that "almost everything from Infini-D got incorporated in to Carrara." would lead me to believe he wasn't very familiar with Infini-D at all. The reality is that almost nothing from ID made it into Carrara.

If you are familiar with Infini-D's interface and method of performing tasks than almost nothing in Carrara will look familiar to you. Nearly everything you learned how to do in Infini-D you will have to re-learn in Carrara. The good news is that Carrara is pretty easy to figure out so it shouldn't take you long to re-learn them.

The texturing method (which can be tricky at first) is superior to IDs. Once you learn it you'll like it alot. Carrara's render is also superior but that pretty much goes without saying.

Infin-D must have been a pretty interesting program for its time given that people are still talking about it ... I gather if one tried to use it today, though, the render times would seem very slow. To me where C's material system (which does allow you to do some pretty nice procedurals using the mixer concept) gets confusing is when you want/need to have multiple textures on different parts of a single object. C4D handles this through selection sets (you select and name a bunch of polys and then you can apply textures just to that named selection) and Lightwave lets you define different surfaces to go with different polygon selections (and then those surfaces can be textured separately). Unless I'm missing something, C's way is much more cumbersome (detach, cut and paste in the modeler and then fiddly layer lists when texturing).

Infin-D was actually a very interesting program. I haven't used it since 1997 or so. That is way TheGigaShadow got the wrong impression that I was not familiar with it, I just forgot what it was like. It had things that I liked better then Carrara. I agree with what you say about texturing in Carrara, I don't like this aspect about it either. I hope it gets improved on a future version. I also agree with TheGigaSadow about Carrara being 10% ID and 90% RayDream. One thing that he failed to mention was that Carrara also took the ability to display several deferent user defined views on the screen from ID.

For it's time (and price) Infini-D was pretty darn good. You are correct about the render speed. While it was never really speedy in contrast to Carrara it is super slow.

It [Infini-D] had things that I liked better then Carrara

Yeah, me too. The fact that Carrara doesn't have a bevel tool is vexing to say the least. Sure you can bevel the outer edge of an object (say the letter "O") in the spline modeler but it inverts bevel on the inner edge of the letter. It's for that reason alone that Infini-D still lives on my hard drive. When I need to bevel a logo properly I import the EPS into Infini-D, bevel it there, save it and then open that ID file in Carrara. Much better results than doing it in Carrara alone.

ability to display several deferent user defined views on the screen

Do you mean the way you can customize how your work area lays out? 4 pane vs 1 pane vs 3 pane etc...?

What about the idea of buying both Amapi Designer and Carrara 2? It seems to me that there is some redundancy in functionality, but the basic reasoning would be to have both a good modeler and a good renderer. The current discounts offered by eovia are tempting... Has anyone out there done something like that?

Lightwave has this approach (separate modeler and animation programs) and it can be a real pain, especially when working on smaller projects. I much prefer the approach taken by Carrara and C4D (everything integrated into one package). In a studio workflow where jobs are compartmentalized and some people just model all day and some just texture, light and animate all day things might be different but I don't really see Carrara being geared toward that kind of high-end studio work.

Just wanted to comment, even though this doesn't matter anymore. But REALLY nothing from either RD or INF got transferred over to Carrara, a great majority of the program is rewrites, like the physics for example, completely rewritten. The interface itself looks nothing like either program. Carrara is its own program. I pray for bevel in CS3, among other things. Eovia does very well to listen to its users, so I wouldn't be surprised if not all, at least some of the tools/features you want are in the next release. Brian