ok, so for those in the know..how does Cinema 4D compare to Carrara?

Try the demos. While Carrara does have more features, C4D outshines C3 on the ones they both have. Compare the features, see what you do need and then try the demos. Actually one important "unlisted feature" of software is the community and support. Check out the different forums and available tutorials and training materials. Great features are only great if you know how to use them.

great advice..thanks...:)

yep,try demos,this the best way to see what is the best for you.
cinema4d is a cool program but it only rocks if you have all plugins and that is to expensive.just my 2 cents.:)

Message edited on: 09/01/2004 01:12

I'll probably get modo for my next new system. I've been watching the videos of it at www.luxology.com

Well, I think modo appears to be a little epensive if I got it right from their website. And Carrara? I will wait until all you enthusiastic people will have bought it and report the first big bugs contained in the software. I really like Carrara but sometimes this progy is strange. Version3 has still to many bugs which will be substituted by new bugs in version4 I believe. And I agree with some others here: If you sell a pro version than include all of the important plugins and not just cad style (which I do not need) and transposer (which I do have but which needs improvement). Eovia tries to make much money (which is sort of ok) but we users should be careful, try the demo first and report our experience with the demo to the community. pre-ordering a software because you can get a free t-shirt like one person here reported seems to be a little stupid.

Isn't right that Carrara was born from the Raydream and Infini-D? Well, i Just open my old Infini-D 4.5 to doble check and I was right: By that time particles use to collide with objects other than the ground. Where is it now? Eovia should bring it back as "New PRO feature". ********* what about Beta version for pre-orders? **********

Claudiomil, Thank you........I agree 1000%. Personally, I would love to see C4 as a new updated version of Infini-D. Infini-D was (is) an awesome program. Infini-D 5 !!! Infini-D 5 !!! Infini-D 5 !!! Infini-D 5 !!! Infini-D 5 !!! Infini-D 5 !!! Infini-D 5 !!! Infini-D 5 !!! :)

modo is very cool,i waited long for the release,but 895,-us dollar only for a poly modeling program is to expensive,i like the morph tools but modo is to expensive.a price between 200 and 300 us dollar should be fair for modo,anyway amapi is my favorite modeling app and has more import and export options,amapi supports many file formats,modo only 4,i think.

I think Amapi Pro is a more of an all round modeller then Modo. Modo is part of the SDS Nendo/Mirai winged edge craze that is going on at the moment. I don't think Modo does Nurbs at all. I think Modo was created to fill the gap that was left in the Market when Mirai disappeared. That being a VERY powerful but easy to use modelling, texturing and animating tool with a nonlinear work flow. Since Mirai many apps have emulated its feature set (Wings, Silo and some of the big name apps have borrowed ideas). One interesting application that is on the way is Madsie Freestyle. No real demos are avaliable at the moment but the developer seems to be on a similar path to Modo albeit he wants to release a freeware version and also make a pay version that is not too expensive.

$695 (the introductary price) for modo doesn't seem too bad. It looks like a solid modeler with a customizable GUI. What sold me though with CPro4 was the special upgrade price. And the simple fact that you can now move, stretch, and rotate objects in a scene properly now. It's kind of sad in a way that Eovia's marketing team uses this as a selling point on their site. It's like they're only marketing C4 to RayDream/Carrara users and not the world. Eovia needs to show why their software is different/better than everyone else's for the price. But then there is the alternate universe where Eovia thinks only professional CAD users are interested in their software. www.shonner.com

i thought the introductary price for modo is only till the end of august.i wait and want to see more about modo and what users will say about the tool.and yes,modo is only for polygon modeling,no nurbs. im going to check Madsie Freestyle out if i can find it.but at the end, i dont want to buy another modeling tool,cause i have amapi 7/pro(my favorite),silo and lightwave 8(for animation). btw,Mirai is not dead,there is mirai 1.5 in the making,maybe it will be released this year.

You have Silo and Lightwave? modo would be over-kill for you. I have ZBrush and Amapi D/P 7, so modo wouldn't add much more to that for its price. But I am still on the lookout for a better NURBS modeler that doesn't dish out red "-" marks after each chamfer or boolean cut. www.shonner.com

Im not gonna rush for this UG as i think its somewhat limited for the price, Blurry Reflections, 3d Motion Blur and Vector Motion Blur should be in a V4 upgrade wether you buy pro or not as I already own Transposer and Amapi 7, plus the Landscape and Sky look a lot like the old plugins from the raydream days. Where are the improvement's to the shader and render setting ie subsurface scattering etc, particles not even touched. Plus the cost. Standard Upgrade 105 for less than 10 additions or Pro for 162, with XSI and 40hrs of tutorials now only 350 (yes 200+ difference) its getting harder to go for these Ugrades take into account that Carrara will need to get to ver 6 before we see resonable cloth and hair inc. FWIW im not going to abandon Carrara as Im very happy with version 3, Amapi 7 and Transposer, V3 is one of the best apps on the market for its specific market but a V4 tag needed more possibly a 3.5 would have been a better title.

Is the Yahoo Carrara group making similar posts about C4? Or is that group still just a pep rally for people that work at Eovia?

hey SHONNER,i have and use zbrush since last august,makes a lot of fun.:)

It's because of ZBrush that I'd like to know if C4 has render-time displacement mapping... Even Poser has render-time displacement mapping. :-)

I'd be happy if a Greeble plugin was made for Carrara. Maybe Digital Carvers Guild will make one. Then we could all be rendering Deathstar surfaces.

sub pixel displacement and normal mapping would be cool.anyway,the zbrush displacement maps are working with anything grooves very well.

The UG is now in beta phase, I understand from the Yahoo list. The complete list of features will be available later. I agree that with the current information a 3.5 title would have been more appropriate (fixing issues instead of opening new realms), but the total Pro Package is an unbeatable deal!

What is normal mapping?

Attached Link: This is where this knowledge comes from

mmm, maybe that the map shows up where you expect? Only joking ofcourse In 3D computer graphics, normal mapping is a more advanced version of bump mapping. While bump mapping uses grayscale variance, normal mapping uses the three color channels (RGB) for the three normal axis (XYZ). Like bump mapping, it is used to add details to shading without using more polygons. How it Works: To calculate the light on a surface, the vector for an incoming light source is dotted with the vector normal to that surface, and the result is the intensity of the light on that surface. Imagine a polygonal model of a sphere - you can only approximate the shape of the sphere, and how good your approxmation looks depends upon the number of polygons you use. Each triangle on the face of the sphere will have a specific light value, and this light value will be uniform across that entire triangle - giving the sphere a rather jagged look. With normal mapping, instead of just one normal vector for each triangle, there's a multitude of them, and thus the shading on the sphere looks much more realistic - from a a distance, it doesn't seem to be made up of individual triangles.

Attached Link: http://www.monitorstudios.com/bcloward/tutorials_normal_maps1.html

Interesting.. . thanks. I found more detailed info here. . . I'm still not quite getting it, but I will look a little more. Markd

So do you want to use CS to GENERATE this kind of thing, or are you trying to display them? Or something else? I think it might be possible to do a shader that modifies the normal based on RGB to XYZ mapping. . is that what you are looking for?

Have you seen what a nice blurry rendering one can do in Carrara Studio 3? Look what FWTempest posted 1 September in the Carrara Gallery... I think that there must be more workarounds for thinks like motion blur and soft clouds. And would you start a renderfarm with Carrara? It is a shame that there was no sound editing and better motion paths in Carrara already as in the likes as Truespace and Animation Master.

WOULD I start a renderfarm with Carrara? I have before by using multiple computers at crunch time. Using the batch render option and telling each computer to only render so many frames as sequential stills. Then dropping them together onto a video editers timeline. Render and voila! Added sound and everything. BUT... it was a pain to manage, if a computer went down, figuring out where to restart, etc... A true renderfarm has a computer parse out the work and do all the managment of files so that when it is all said and down it is completed as FAST as possible, and everything is in one place instead of spread out all over the network. I, for one, am looking forward to that one feature alone! :D

Think of upgrading to Carrara Pro 4 as just buying a few new plugins for your Carrara 3. It is worth getting for the special price right now (I'm not sure what I'll do now with two copies of Amapi Designer 7 I won't use). A new user paying $599 for it would seem insane, though. And that's probably why Eovia is offering it for free to people buying C3 right now. I wonder if buying another copy of C3 is a cheaper way of getting CPro4? :)

Message edited on: 09/03/2004 13:02

Is this 5-node network rendering limit a limitation of the software? Or is it a licensing limit on the Pro version and we'll be able to buy additional licenses for larger renderfarms?

sorry for my late answer about normal mapping. i dont want to generate normal maps in carrara,i want to use them in carrara,it would be a cool feature but it is not a must.:)

Carrara needs a new content CD with models made by Carrara instead of the same old RayDream models.

I just looked at the XSI hompage and I cant even figure that out! It is soo complicated. Man, I dont think I will ever enjoy using those huge complicated pro apps.

xsi is a beast but i think you need much time to learn it.:)

Daigoro- From what I could tell, using them is only useful in real time graphics, where the GPU can help out. . . how would this be useful in CS? Markd

XSI does require a lot of time learning just one feature of it. It is a tweaker's paradise, though. Give it time and it will have plenty of online and printed resources like Max, Maya, and Rhino enjoy.

I just ordered a book from Amazon that explains how to make morphs for Poser 5. I'm going to use Amapi Pro 7 to do the modeling. I hope the learning curve is short there.

Message edited on: 09/04/2004 21:01

@mdesmarais,i know,i just thought about game models and stuff like that.:) @Shonner,your right,i have the learning edition of xsi,it was in a magazine but im not interested and i will stay with what i have,what is more then enough.:)

I really belive that a lot of these "upgrades " should be more of an UPDATE and be free to those who already bought this program. the only thing i see here for the most part is improvements of whats already there and for that they are only fixing what is wrong with it in the first place and these upgrade prices are getting way to much and I for one am done with getting any more upgrades of carrara ! and many other programs as well, I really think these companys are getting out of hand with all of these pricey updates

yup... I agree... Wings3D, C4D CE, and Carrara Studio 2 is all I require :D

I sent an email to Eovia expressing my concerns about the pricing for current owners of transPoser and Amapi Designer 7; and got a reply. To paraphrase, they took it into account that people would have already bought transPoser, else the upgrade price would have been much higher. They stand by their decision. Basically, it tells me they don't care about their customers. I am really going to have to think very hard about doing business with a company I no longer trust. /rant off

I just want to point out something about Amapi 7 in Carrara 4 Pro. The upgrade between CS 2 and CS 3 was $169. The current upgrade price between CS 3 and CS 4 Pro is $199, so the difference is only $30 and not only did we include as many new features but for those $30 you get Amapi 7, TransPoser, CADStyle. So are you expecting a $10 discount for each of those products that you already own ? Besides you still own your copy of Amapi 7 or TransPoser even if you buy the upgrade to Carrara 4 Pro meaning that you can still sell them to someone else... Charles

Who are you going to sell them too if everyone already has them? Im thinking a choice of upgrade options are expected, so we get some use out of what we buy...maybe a 'Pick 2' option... its about customer service..giving the customer what THEY want and not what the company wants..that way the company makes money and creates consumer loyalty, SO the customers dont discuss different upgrade options that include switching to the competition...

I am curious. What do you really expect ? If we had an upgrade for $169 which did not include Amapi 7, TransPoser or CADStyle, would you be happy ? Is that a $30 discount you are looking for ? Charles

im expecting some form of customer service and a level of support from companies that doesnt really seem to exist anymore... more than a feeling of...'yeah we know you may not want this stuff, and a bunch of you have already bought it, but oh well'... if they had an upgrade for 169.00 and didnt offer anything else..that would be fine..BUT the fact is they are offering something else...and have come across like 'oh well'... its coming across as another company...trying to be in a competitive situation...but then disregarding what their customers are saying and asking for... its great to bundle everything with it..heck..they could even bundle..Carrara 1, 2, 3...InfiniD..and Ray Dream 1-5.5....and a Yugo..would that make the offer any better? Id say no..youre giving me a bunch of stuff i wont use and dont need..when you have a few other products that i just might get some use out of and are on the same price level as what youre offering... so why not cater a bit more to the people who are going to buy the product and offer several options...if you already own Amapi 7 you dont necessarily want another copy of it..if you dont own it then theres a reason...maybe you dont want it... its all well and good to give me CAD style...but i wont use it..i dont use CAD..id rather have VectorStyle..that i could probably get some use out of... or whatever...what good is a Tshirt to me??!!...other than to look like a huge fanboy...lol..give me a six pack of crew neck Haynes tshirts...those i can use... a deal isnt a deal if youre getting a bunch of stuff you wont ever use... it comes down to..were you really selling that many copies of something else that giving a choice of a substitute would cut down on profits sooo much that youre going to be feeding your family cup o soups for a year..or maybe it just might create a better sense of loyalty among your consumers that will ensure them coming back and purchasing your productsi the future.. heck, it doesnt even have to be a package thing you offer forever..make it a special introductory deal... when youve got how many competitors out there wanting you to come over and use their stuff and are willing to give you everything and throw in a trip around the world and a price at a fraction of what they normally sell their stuff for...id do all the PR and goodwill i could to keep people coming back and trying to sway them over to try out my product...

My main concern here in my situation, is that I had just recently bought transposer at the full price, just a month before. Now I find out that I wasted my $129.00. Not only does it now come free with Carrara Pro, but it does have a bug that Eovia support admits, but seemly is doing nothing about. I sent a poser file that wasn't importing correctly to Eovia support, and the gentleman at Eovia support looked at it, and confirmed the problem was with transPoser and he would get back to me. It has been a month, and haven't heard back yet. I guess this has colored my vision some. I just don't like wasting that much money.

i agree...Carrara is going through some company wide changes and is just starting to get the software on track...cmon, now more than ever is the time to listen to what the customers are saying and asking for...and not just say 'oh well'... if Eovia comes off as uncaring there are plenty of other places to go...