Hi, I like the look of Carrara, but is it worth buying given its current status. Can anyone point me to any reviews / sites with good images ? Basically I currently model on another platform and render stuff in Bryce. However, Bryce's renderer is starting to annoy me since it doesn't render fine detail all that well and doesn't give me the control I'd like. I'd also like a rendering package which has a decent modeller built in and the ability to do some nice shading. Are other packages better ? What's Carrara's support for Poser like - is it likely to get any plug-ins for animation ? How's its texturing capabilities ? Finally, what spec machine do you need and where is best to buy it ? Is it becoming difficult to get hold of these days ? Many questions ... Regards, Max

I'm just getting into Carrara and my comment would be; it would be great if it actually did what it was supposed to, it's got more bugs than a swamp. However, my comments are limited sofar to the vertex modeller. If online support ever becomes available then maybe it will be worth the money. You might consider waiting a while to find out what happens wthi Metawhatever!

Carrara has been pretty stable on my system. Been using it professionaly since January and would have to be dragged back kicking and screaming to use RD5.5 For the price, I think it's the most full featured package available. The several plugins that I've added to it (Lost Horizons Software Carrara Powerpack and Digital Carvers Guilds Anything Glows, Glare and Zenstars Tree Druid) have added incredible additional feature sets for very little money. While there are some software bugs, most that I've seen posted are usually associated with hardware/software issues. The newer your equipment, the more ram you have, the better Carrara will perform. It virtually never crashes on my system. Is Carrara a Lightwave or Maya. No. But, currently, I don't need that additional performance, abilities or price that comes with either one of those packages either. You can make Carrara jump through some pretty interesting hoops. If I couldn't rely on the program, I wouldn't use it professionaly.

I have Carrara myself, and have not had anywhere near the bugs or problems reported in this forum. As a matter of fact, everytime I read a thread about somebody having a problem doing this or that, I try it out myself and see if I can do it. One in particular is the infamous boolean subtraction problem. I am using it on a 233G3 iMac with 160 real ram/240 Ram Doubler. The plug-ins available so far as mentioned above are great. For the price I paid for it, it is worth it. I would not have been able to drop a HUGE chunk of change for the more high-end apps. and more or less built a application pac with Carrara/Poser/Bryce. However on the down side there is not much support except for this forum, and no one seems to know where Carrara is going, if anywhere. Again alot of problems seem to relate to hardware issues.

Heres a review for your perusal http://macworld.zdnet.com:80/2000/06/reviews/carrara.html

just a little word about Mark reply, I'm may be wrong but i think that the most full featured package available for that price is animation:master 2000, it's even cheaper than carrara and also deal with sound, bones, muscle motion, gravity, clothes, radiosity, hairs, alpha channel for live and CG mix ... At first AM2000 is a little bit harder to manage but far more professional with time.

Thanks for everyone's help. I'm still not sure - I'd like Carrara and like the look of Carrara but it's a fair chunk of money to gamble on liking, especially given its status. Getting hold of a second hand copy is definitely an answer. Anyone selling ;-) ? Mind you, my PC needs upgradign first ! Oh well ... Regards, Max

Check E-Bay

I've had Carrara for some time now and still figuring out how bestto use it.I mostly use Ray dream studio 5.5, If your careful, you shouldn't have many problems with it. I find Carrara to be very much like 3d studio max. I really can't make an informed judgement on it yet, the render engine is fast,texture good lighting is good,modellers are jumpy, but I've yet to use one that wasn't. I really do wish you can get support for this program, and plug ins and extensions that work. I just bought TRUE SPACE 4.2,(looks something like but acts almost exactly like light wave. I'm still learning to use it but so far it works pisser! It even has a good bones program in it stock, out of the box. But just like light wave its plug in city and each will run ya about $150 to $600. ouch! Poser 4 (three words love it, love it love!) just wish I could inport from more formats.

The problem with Ebay is that people often aren't willing to ship outside the US. Out of interest what features does Carrara lack that the blurb says it has (i.e. what features are promised but missing ?) Regards, Max

Well first I found that not all the import and export formats work, you get the geomitry but not the texture map. A work around this problem is to reload each texture map seperately.Bummer! It doesn't import poser 4 figures, meta creations said to use the plug ins from ray dream but they didn't work. It does take a little getting used to, but all and all, It gives you alot for your money, but no support.Bummer! True Space 4.2 works pisser, I'm still rearing but so far so good.

Carrara V Ray Dream? Look mate it's like this: The modeler is (Cough) W*nk. In the Poser 4+ manual it uses RDS 5+ as an example. Forget that - The Vertex modeller only accesses one element at a time - and if you want to make clothing for poser figures: Forget It!!! On the subject of the rendering engine: It leaves black holes on figures imported from poser - This can be a little irritating. (To put it mildy!) On the Plus side: It as a Huge workspace - Just don't expect Collision detection to work as expected. You can model in B-Splins,Vertices,etc... But as an ad on to Poser - No! The manuals are typicaly Meta... And if you want to search the Net for tutorials - Good Luck! Most of them are for RDS5+ or Max. Take my advice and get a copy of RDS5+ (Even better if you can get it second hand) Let this be a warning to any other Poser addict out there. I got it cheap and I still think it wasn't worth it. Stay with P4/B4 - Despite their compatibility problems. LOGO