This might be a biased community, but if it is biased for good reason that is still useful to know... :) I have version 1.0, the one that came out only a few weeks before Metacreations went under. I now have an option to get 5.0, and am wondering if it is a good choice, or if there is some other tool in the same price range that would be better. I have a lot of experience making 3D art, but next to none with making fully original models. I would like a program that is easy to work with, and well suited to such tasks as modelling new clothing and props for Poser figures, or buildings and scenary I could then use in Vue D'Esprit. Carrara 1.0 looked realtively not too complex, although I was using it with no training, and it went under so fast no user community could develop to help me learn. As a result I tabled for the last several years the idea of learning to model... Is Carrara 5.0 likely to be better off in these regards?

Going from Carrara 1 to now Carrara 5 is like night and day. Carrara 5 has improved in so many ways and it has remain very easy to use. Creating models is now much easier than in version 1.0 and in Carrara 5 you can import poser files directly with out the need to have poser installed. Yes any model that you create in C5 can be exported to be use in Vue but I once you get C5 I don't think you will be using Vue very much. Carrara 5 can handle some very fancy terrains and scenery. It also has one of the best and fasters renderers out there. You get alot of value for your money. you may also visit http://www.eovia3d.net to see some of the stuff that people are doing with C5.

I can ditto that...even as newbie to C5P my terrains look MUCH MUCH better(Terregen quality) and not having to deal with a node editor thrills me beyond words :) AS much as I like Vue, it will only be used as an "exporter" now of all my .vobs(the ones that can be)

So Carrara can do plant generation? I need to go over the eovia website and see the full out feature list. Coming from the perspective of only one step past 'Model creation? what's that?', this will be a goood choice? I mean, I'm at the stage where I look at the latest outfit for sale for vicky 3 or whoever and think 'that's some nifty wiz-bangery voodoo those guys know, must have taken years to make that thingy.' Yeah, intellectually I know better, but it sure feels like these model makers are in on some magical secret and I'm over here on the other side of that secret, wondering how I might get in (cause I can visualize so many ideas that well, just don't exist yet, and it drives me nuts knowing they could be made, but for my lack of knowing how to do it).

Go through ALL the stuff at the Eovia web site,including the movies in lots of places. If you have not ordered Carrara5 before you are half way through I will be a monkeys uncle!

Yes, it can do tree generation, from scratch. Although, to be honest, the tree/plant creator area looks scary...lot of numbers etc I'm not a math wizard by any stretch of the imagination :( I have managed to replace leaves on the supplied trees & there are LOTS of options... I guess I'd take the Bryce tree editor and magnify it by 10, that is for existing trees. I should note here the tree aren;t saggy/droopy. Hope this helps :)

Buy Carrara 5. You cannot go wrong especially that you are even asking the question. No 3d software offers so much for so little cash.

If you have not ordered Carrara5 before you are half way through I will be a monkeys uncle! +++++++++++++++++++++++++ The only reason I haven't already placed an order was that the website refused to let me put a pre-order of the boxed version in my shopping cart. I like physical copies of my apps, with user manuals, boxes, and all that junk... So, after that happened, I thought it would be a good idea to start asking around and making sure that once that website issue clears up, I won't be making a $249 mistake. :) Here's a question, does anyone have a gallery with very 'foresty' images? I have Bryce 5 and while it has a nice tree maker it didn't give me trees that I liked as much as those I got from Vue. Going through the eovia website I'm seeing a lot of things I like, but I'm a 'tree nut'... Even if most of my work lacks trees, when I use them I want them to be a "certain way". Pretty sure I'm ordering this. I'd be getting it even if it didn't do trees to my liking, but then I'd just be 'using it for indoor work'. looking into eovia3d.net now...

Trees by the "thousands" with The Carrara 5 Replicator--images on the Eovia Home Site.

Arcady...I own Vue5 Infinite (since March), and I'll be doing my landscape stuff (most of it) with Carrara5 Pro from now on. After my experiences with e-on, Eovia and Carrara5 Pro are a source of joy -- imperfect joy perhaps, but much more hassle-free fun is now back in my creations -- and I'm using the beta download!

Carrara 5 will not disappoint! It is really (in my critical opinion) easily worth the $$$

BTW, the Carrara tree maker has 2 levels of edit. One essentially modifies existing forms, the other you can create vegetation from scratch -- or highly modify existing forms. One improvement C5 has over C4 & 3, is the ability to see the updates while in the advanced editor module as you make changes. The earlier versions didn't give you that fast feedback -- had to leave the advanced editor to see the change update.

I honestly could not recommend Vue5 Infinite to anyone at this time; however, I can recommend Carrara5 Pro. And, believe me, I am software agnostic -- a true 3D secularist. I really do like what works as advertised.

Do you need Pro though, could you do these landscape elements with just Full? It looks like it from the eovia site, but the people posting great tree filled landscapes that I've seen so far are Pro owners. (Also, so far I've noticed that it looks like the same tree replicated over and over rather than the same type of tree, though I don't know if that is a problem common to Vue also, I have Vue standard not infinite).

If you can afford it, upgrade to the Pro version in my opinion the extra capability is well worth the money. Honestly, Im not a Carrara evangelist; its just that this is the first revision of Carrara that has really grabbed my attention (I also use Poser, trueSpace 6.6, Bryce 5.5, & Vue5I).

The tree replication in Carrara does indeed lack the random individual populating that V5I has, but you can easily modify individual tree characteristics for a given species (say about 6 different variations in color & shape for a species), and distribute them with user selectable random rotations & scaling in all directions. I wrote an email to a Carrara plug-in developer, suggesting he might try creating a plug-in that would use Carraras random seed ability for the trees when distributing, and he said he was going to look into that possibility.

Ive done several distributions doing the above mentioned process, and its pretty difficult to see any real sameness within the forest. Since C5Pro now has a translucent shader channel (the beta didnt have it), foliage is going to look a lot better. One thing, the Carrara trees do need more work on the default textures, as they are procedural and I dont think look that good without tweaking. However, I always tweak anyway, as nothing out-of-the-box seems to satisfy me. Also, if you need animated foliage, then Carrara wont be able to help you there. It has much better overall animation capability compared to Vue (has a real physics engine), but not animated branches, etc. On the other hand, Carraras trees have individual leaves and the pine needles are little spiral-wound individual needle groups like real pine trees. This gives the user the flexibility and capability to create really excellent close-up trees.

This brings me up to another cool feature. If you want, you can convert a distribution group to real instances. Be careful though, as the system resource requirements will go through the ceiling if you do this with a large (up to 10,000 object) distribution group!

I cant get into all the details concerning the precise terrain layering of noise, objects, texturesetc, but it is almost astounding what you can do!

I consider Vues occasional superior features incapable of surmounting Carraras numerous superior features. For example, I recently rendered 2 very similar scenes, at the same resolution and (as close as possible) quality settings. One was done in Carrara5 Pro, the other in Vue5I. I used raytraced soft shadows in both scenes. It took 139 hours in V5I after I stopped at ~80% complete, and turned-off the soft raytraced shadows. Carrara did the scene in less than 6 hours, and even looked better! Then you have these really excellent volumetric clouds, real sky simulation (I just did a South Western scene with a nice solar eclipse)it goes on, and on!

Believe me; I was not nearly so pleased with Carrara 4 Pro. It was just an all right upgrade to a decent application. Carrara 5 Pro is a different animal altogether. Just the change in the Carrara user interface was almost worth the admission (not quite though).

Unless you have the monetary resources to buy anything you want, you might want to try the Carrara5 demo when it becomes available, as well as the Vue5 demo, and make a decision based on your own hands-on experiences. I know there are a lot of satisfied Vue users (I personally think Vue4 is a much better deal than Vue5 Infinite for the money), and Im trying not to sound too much like I have an investment in Eovia beyond the (mostly) pleasant time Ive spent with it.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=928839&Start=1&Artist=arcady&ByArtist=Yes

I have regular Vue 5 already, but of course that does not even have a distribution function.

Translucency looks to be listed as a feature of Carrara Full, so that will be good for me.

I noticed that you mention Carrara has individual leaves and pine cone needles. This doesn't create problems with polygon counts?

Would the procedural shaders aspect get in the way of tree closeups?
Consider the image I've linked and thumbnailed.

Would I have trouble making something like that in Carrara?

Attached Link: http://www.eovia3d.net/gallery/showimage.php?i=468&catid=newimages&cutoffdate=25

"Im not a Carrara evangelist; its just that this is the first revision of Carrara that has really grabbed my attention" Ditto. Carrara Pro 5 delivers one knock-out punch after another compared to previous versions. And if you have Amapi Pro 7.5 or Hexagon 1.2 already, getting Carrara Pro 5 is a given.

Shorelines are done with Photoshop or with Carrara add-ons like Anything Goos which rough up the edges of objects.

Go to Astro films and view the movies made in Carrara. Sailing ships making fabulous bow waves as they sail along WOW! WOW! stuff. (The exact site will be on a thread lower down)

Go to Astro films and view the movies made in Carrara. Sailing ships making fabulous bow waves as they sail along WOW! WOW! stuff. (The exact site will be on a thread lower down)

arcady, I believe we've talked over on the Poser forum. I can't speak toward the terran questions, still on that learning curve myself, but you may have noticed a couple of my clothing items pictured in the P forum. They aren't the best, but they are passable. All were built in Carrara (most in 4 Pro). Carrara can do as good a job as any other progrm for Poser content at a lot less cost. It's easy to use and, as I'm learning, is very powerful in it's own right. I bought it as a cheap modeller, but I'm finding it's got SOOO much more! mike

www.astrofilms.net

We haven't talked carrara on the Poser forum, but if somebody else did, I'll search it out. Last time I posted about Carrara to this site Metacreations had just announced the future of software was in making 3D widgets for banner adds and it was therefore dropping all of it's product line... :p -- I remember those days... when I got in a flame war on some stock site with a bunch of investment fools convinced that Metacreations had just managed to become the new Microsoft, and me and a few others trying to tell them that the only reason the 'dot' hadn't crashed yet was that it was still in the process of crashing through their thick skulls... :p Will check the animations.

c5 standard is a much better bargain than vue 5 E w/o a doubt. Still can add on w/ plugins and can actually export ;)

Message edited on: 12/08/2005 01:31

Here is one: Carrara 5 Pro Shore Line
I used one of the scenes that comes with C5Pro (compliments of Johannes Rosenberg), and played with the shoreline to get a prominent foam effect. The foam effect was created by adding a shader custom noise distribution between 2 altitude settings to control the placement of the white foam color. I then added a noise layer to the terrain matching the foam shader layer altitude to created a 3D foam effect (the terrain noise actually forms part of the terrain mesh displaces it).

Also note the damp sand effect just above the foam line. I simply placed a slightly darkened sand effect layer at the desired altitude.

The water is also 3D not just a bump map. I used a water shader, and used its bump channel as the displacement map simply copied and pasted the bump into the displacement layer. Ive done this with the wave/ripple shaders, and you can create decent wave/ripple effect with it.

HOw aboutmoving from Carrara 4 to 5, is it worth the upgrade? Are there any functionalities that were previously only available through plug-ins that are now part of C5?

H&B

Message edited on: 12/08/2005 06:01

Full comparison between 4, 4Pro, 5, 5Pro

LCBoliou--thanks for your shoreline image and notes. I have it printed out in front of me. However I am having one of my 73 year old "thick" days! Any chance of screen grabs of your various settings please?

"Are there any functionalities that were previously only available through plug-ins that are now part of C5?" These four at least. * Displacement * Fresnel effect * Anistropic lighting * Exclusion or inclusion lists for lights.