Perhaps it is minor, but I find it annoying that Eovia has never responded to a single bug report I have sent in -- not even as much as an automated email saying "email recieved." They've been responsive about questions (only took them two days to show me where the pdf manual was hidden), and even more responsive about marketing. But as far as I can tell, they aren't reading or caring about anything resembling a bug report. It's disheartening.

I certainly agree about marketing. I've received... maybe... 25 marketing emails from them in the last 3 years. They seem to think that if someone tries Hexagon and doesn't buy it, then that person should be hammered with emails until any lingering affinity for the product is extinguished. And at the same time I've waited over 10 months for a solution to a crashing problem I had with a certain scene. (It would be nice to be able to render it someday) - Joe

Well, I'm lucky I don't have crashing problems with scenes. There are still a few things that lock up Carrara...I think version 4 has finally stopped dropping dead during a modelling session. Bob Stockwell has been great about replies. When I have a question about price, or when I was innundated by ebots, he got right back to me. There are elements in CP4, though, that makes me wonder if they even listened to their beta testers. Or even bothered to hire any.

Trust me guys. They listen. Oh do they listen:)

Maybe to you, they do.

Of course! Only through me! :) Isn't it nice to be me.

nomuse, My Carrara crashes vanished as soon as I installed WindowsXP on my system. I was using Windows98 because the Carrara box said it worked with it. Nothing else I had crashed in Windows98. So I guess it was a misprint on the box.

Sorry to say that, but if you want serious (professionnal) support on your product, buy something like Maya, and pay an extra annual fee of 1299$ for platinum support.... Otherwise welcome to the club :))

Having a ticketing system w/ some system of response should be basic tho. I unfortunately have had very similiar experiences. Lots of marketing at multiple addresses, but 6 days to just respond to request. v3 says XP, but it does have errors more frequently, not really crashes. v4 can really crawl on some renders, I hadn't experienced crashing tho. Could let go of processes better tho. Video card drivers and memory issues would be first on my list. Do you get a message? Have you done a thorough test of ram with memT86? Run an extended test. I have seen ram pass regular test fine, but not extended which takes much longer. Just minor deviations in timing or voltage can cause bad problems. I would really check video card and drivers first tho.You may already have check lots of stuff tho so forgive me if I am covering old ground.

I do find it odd how people have so many errors. I know that Carrara has some issues here and there. But some people seem to have a lot of problems. I've never had a release version of Carrara do a full on crash. I've had it freeze during physics calculations or during renderings with obscene render settings. And these are mostly due to the limits of my computer system and it not being able to handle the calculations.

I'm pretty sure v.4 fixed whatever it was that was crashing mine. Have had a lock or two since, but that doesn't really bother me. I do dislike its inability to let go of memory/processes; working on some long shader trees I've had to quit and restart a couple of times to keep the refresh speed up.

Now memory issues I agree with. There is still a memory leak in the VM. If you model for too long you need to restart Carrara to get the performance back.

I'm running a dual monitor system with an Nvidia card. The code will stop refreshing the screen when I do mouse moves after a few visits to any other rooms (switching to shader vs model vs render room etc.). I too have problems when working with models (especially with complex spline models). I was working on a chain the other day using a link I built in C3 as the starting point. The whole project turned goofy after that. Weird results when duplicating objects and all sorts of CRAZY behavior. You can also get the code to do all sorts of super weird stuff if you have to create gazillions of objects. I built a scaffolding once which had thousands of individual spars in it. After duplicating and moving bigger and bigger blocks of spars, it started forgetting where I had moved things and where stuff was. Restarting has almost always worked for me. I've ended up with corrupted files on rare occasion. To come full circle, the screen refresh thing is VERY tenacious (happens EVERY time I use the code but the moment it decides to kick in and the way it behaves is always somehow random). The worst part about it is that I can't reproduce it on command. If I could flawlessly reproduce the bug, I'd report it. -Kix

Heh. Same here -- the majority of the bugs I've had, I was working quickly and doing a million things, and there isn't a way I can narrow it down to "THIS keystroke sequence crashed it." Which is bad news for me...when I'm naming groups before export to Poser, I spend a lot of extra time doing "detach polygons" and saving, before and after applying the name. All I know is that Carrara used to crash all the time while naming groups, and it doesn't crash for me now, and saving after every keystroke is still faster than recovering from a crash. Most of the annoyances I've encountered are technically not bugs, however. It would be more accurate to call them poorly implemented and documented features. Such as the preview window in the Texture Room having no memory (very annoying when working on a small object). Or none of the radio buttons having memory. Or the way the standard control-A to select all, control-z to undo, spacebar drag to move view doesn't work in the UV Mapping Room (nor does it have memory for size, options, or selections). Come on, fellows -- if you are going to go with this "room" analogy, the basic view and navigate controls should be the same for all. I also understand why it would be counter-productive for the programmers to engage in dialoge with bug-finders. Simply put, most of the user complaints will be user error. The programmers haven't time to walk users through the manual, email after email. However, an automated "your bug report was recieved. Please do not reply to this address" would be great.