I have Just recently recieved my copy of the Carrara 3 beta & I have to say that I have never before been so impressed by a software upgrade. The improvements Eovia has made to Carrara are amazing.
The new rendering, tree generator, uv maper,modeling & shader features have been heavily publicised & have met to great critical acclaim in this forum but I feel I have to congratulate Eovia on the Improvements they have made in the overall usability of Carrara.
The interface enhancements & general usability caught my attention immediatly, it feels easier & faster to navigate the Application & everything seems to be intuitively in the right place making the whole Carrara experiance much more enjoyable.
It's difficult to put my finger on what exactly has made it more user friendly but Eovia has obviously spent a lot of time in this area, the tabbed properties tray seems to make a lot mose sense to me with much more infomation contained there as opposed to various pop up windows & menu pulling steps that I feel slowed Carrara 2 down. All the rooms have benifitted from minor tweaks & major enhancements that simply seems to make more sense.
Well done Eovia for making an upgrade thats worth the money. 5 stars.

Now, you did it. Now my anticipation on getting my beta is going to go off the roof. :-)
I am glad to read a review so positive as yours on software that I have spend so much time and money on. I am a RayDram/Infini-D user and I have upgraded to every version of Carrara, so far. To be completely honest, Carrara in my opinion had an extremely rocky start, with all the Metacreations blunder. I almost jumped ship, but something kept me from moving to deferent software. I am glad to see that it was the right decision after all. From the feature list I think that it has matured into a very comprehensive package. Now I can only whit to experience it my self.

I have to second Graviton's comments. The whole thing is just... better. And I think they were extremely smart to 'pre-release' it first as a beta. With all the flack other softwares have been getting upon release, it was a very clever move -- the endusers get a reduced price to test it. However, where the other softwares might not have lived up to the hype on final release, Carrara 3 exceeds expectations while still in beta! Thanks Eovia, and if anyone has any doubts about whether the upgrade is worth it, it totally is!

Has anyone mentioned that this is a "Beta" with, as far as I have encountered, a couple minor functional ommissions and no fatal bugs? I haven't crashed or locked it up yet, and I feel perfectly comfortable doing production work on it. A "beta!" Most software companies would be delivering the second patch to get this level of performance. What ARE these guys; the iCab of 3D?

I had it installed for less then two hours playing with it. I could not agree more with the comments on this thread. The way it renders, the new interface, the enhancements on the vertex modeler, the tree thing. If you have not gotten this upgrade do not hesitate. I am running it on a dual G-4 with 867 dual processors and it is a joy to work with. It is such a dramatic improvement over 2.0 that I would have gladly payed more money for it. I agree with nomuse, although it might be premature for me to say this, but it doesn't feel at al like Beta software. I made a small animation just to try it out and I am extremely satisfied with the results.
Thanks Eovia!

I am very happy. Actually, I think I have sold a first picture done with C3 (and a bought car model AND hdri rendering AND som experience with the whole she-bang) that actually will pay back the whole upgrade. My normal activities are not selling 3D renderings, I just provide graphic design in a broad perspective. But with easy-acces software like Carrara (which I started using as RayDream) it just broadens my toolbox as a designer, without turning into a programmer-type of dude. Because I am, like, really weak with numbers. If you are a professional that wants to incorporate 3D in his or her work, Carrara Studio is a good choice. If you do not have enough spare time to grab it, it is unlikely it will drain your resources, if you produce your first images with it, you will earn back the investment easy. And, beside the boring stuff about money and all, it is so much fun fiddling around with this program! So much powerful tools! When taking a moment to step outside this community, there are a lot of people (and that is A LOT) that will react strongly when confronted with a 3D version of a logotype, that takes minutes to construct, now bevels are extremely easy, and that is lit with hdri. C3 is a powerful tool, and as a member of the Yahoo Carrara Group, I can assure you that the people who make 'it' happen are really interested in keeping their customers happy and inspired. I would like to say, that I think it is very special when a piece of software generates the amount of warmth, happiness and enthousiasm, Carrara 3 provides. Maybe I overrate this, but I feel like a god when I have such forces at the tips of my fingers...

Attached Link: http://www.freid.com

O.K. After working with it all Labor Day Weekend, I have to hand it to the Eovia team. This software is right there in stability an usability with software made by much larger companies like Adobe. I think Eovia has puled it off completely. Even the none recommended OpenGL that has not been finished yet runs very well in my system. I can not express how satisfied I am with this upgrade. They not only added more stuff, they cleaned up the interface and optimized the code and squashed the bugs. I have only encountered one bug, if you are using the Area rendering Tool with Global Illumination, you can not cancel de rendering. But this is very minor compared with bugs like having it hang importing a texture Map, that I sill experienced in 2.0

I'm glad I found this thread because I just got my pre-order in for Carrara 3 before the last day. I'm upgrading from Version 1.1 which was a dismal upgrade from MetaCreations Version 1, and Ray Dream Studio 5.5 (which I still like using but it crashes all the time). Initially I felt cheated when I purchased the MC version and then they bailed out so soon afterward. When Eovia took it over, they offered a 1.1 patch to the MC version mainly to update the splash screen I think. Then it was followed up with Carrara Studio 1.1 which I bought but it was identical to MC's Version 1 and a big rip-off since I had the same program with MC's Version 1 and Eovia's 1.1 patch. What I've seen on Eovia's site regarding Version 3 is impressive and a great leap from RDS/Carrara 1. I never particularly liked the Poser interface either so I hope this has been improved.

I've only started playing with my beta version, but I have to agree with everything so far being quite smooth and trouble-free. The only thing that seems odd to me with the interface is that the size transformation menu is in the "Motion" tab. That seems a bit strange, since most people don't think of re-sizing as a function of motion (not me, at least). But this is teeny-tiny quibble, and doesn't in the least detract from my enjoyment of this version. Like Hoofdcommisaris, I am using 3D to enhance my design biz, and it's a pleasure to have a peice of software that is simple when I need it to be, and complex when I need something more robust. Now I'll start looking for ways to incorporate Carrara into more and more of my projects. Yeehaa!