Does Metacreations still own Carrara? If not who owns it?

Supposedly Adobe does. Check out the Adobe website and do a search for Carrara. That explains a little.

The message I found there states that Adobe was in the process acquiring Canoma, not Carrara. The message also comments on what Canoma and Carrara can do, but it doesn't state that Adobe bought Carrara. They only bought Canoma. Meta Creations still owns Carrara.

It seems as though both Adobe and Metacreations are in a state of denial, since neither wants to comment on the subject.However news reports seem to contradict what they say.I would rather lean towards what the reports say, since there obviously is something going on behind the scenes.Either that or a bunch of us have been screwed, without even a kiss.

Does anyone know where I can get a demo of Carrara?

I have never seen a demo of Carrara, but when I read the specifications on Metacreations.com I simply went out and bought it (the $350 was not cheap fer me either). I like Carrara, and in fact have it open right now rendering a scene I am working on.

Ugh!

Not sure about Carrara, but my preferred place for looking for internet related shareware/demoware/freeware/adware is TUCOWS. Amapi 3D 5.15 for Mac and PC is now at one of the 400+ mirror sites all over the world - www.tucows.com - Multimedia tools/Image Editors. Just thought you might want to know if you're interested in the Amapi trial. For the trial password to unlock save/export, register at www.tgs.com/amapi (PC Demo or Mac Demo), no need to download again if you went to Tucows first. -Philip

Carrara has the potential to be a great program, if they would just fix the stability problems. At my company, we switched from RayDream 5.5 to Carrara, and liked what we saw, but the stability was too poor to use. If they ever release Carrara 1.1 I'll be a happy camper. So, I agree with the original author (krbtv)- Who owns Carrara, and more importantly, who is going to write the patches?

Did you use RDS 5.5 for rendering or for modeling? Do you use Carrara for both? Perhaps Amapi could be a better and more stable modeler, a free trial version is on all Tucows mirror sites now (www.tucows.com)for Windows and Mac, and it exports to RDS 5 and many other formats. Here's something that was modeled in Amapi and rendered in RDS 5.5: http://www.tgs.com/Galleries/Amapi3D/Spotlights/Megalex/megalex.html Other samples in the user gallery at www.tgs.com/amapi and in my own collection at www.staigerland.com/amapi/samples.html Anyone out there used Amapi and Carrara? Is the 3DMF export the best for this or DXF, 3DStudio...?

I use(d) RDS and Carrara for modelling and rendering. Carrara has problems with both on my dual monitor Athlon system. It crashes when I render output as AVI files - so I must animate as an MOV and translate back to AVI with a post process. There also some bugs regarding cloaking in animations. The shader editor is outstanding in Carrara and is stable. ANyway I will try the Amapi modeller and see if it works. Thanks for the tip!

Ok, please let me know what you find works in terms of file formats. On the Mac, Amapi has 3DMF import/export, and VRML 1, 3DS, DXF and a few more. I wonder which format you find works best to get data from Amapi to Carrara. Here's some stuff done by a 12-year old in Amapi: www.staigerland.com/amapi (look for the mech - cartoon shader). -Philip

Carrara sucks because there is NO support. It would be a fine program if it had support. The future is not certain and should program fall through the cracks! Which I think it will with the new standards that Newtek and Kinetix have set! Then owners are stuck with a 3D app that half works hoping for a miracle of ownership to come falling out of the sky. In worst cases, what if someone does buy Carrara and they decide to restructure the entire program based on the existing framework, make it as good a Max or LW and sell for a Few Thousand retail as a profession level and not an entry level 3D app under a new name. No patches for current owners either! Well you are still in the same boat.