Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=705316

I dug up this on Carrara 2-

***"What's New in Carrara Studio 2

Ultra realistic rendering
Photon Maps are the first algorithm capable of a truly global approach to image rendering. This feature combines, in a single rendering engine, all the strengths of the previous two best approaches: Ray Tracing and Radiosity.

Using a truly remarkable rendering approach, Carrara Studio 2's Photon Maps are able to compute the Global Illumination of a whole 3D scene. This adds a wealth of rendering features: Phong Shading, Reflection, Refraction, Radiosity (including diffuse lighting, color bleeding, etc.), Caustics (light reflection and refraction), Area light emitters (with no limitation on geometry and complexity), Sky dome Illumination and Environment Illumination.

Bones Skinning
Bones let the user modify, deform and animate objects or a group of objects in real time in order to create realistic characters. The Bones feature is as simple to use as playing with a puppet. As always, Carrara Studio brings you a high-end feature yet with a very simple and straightforward interface. The task of attaching bones to an existing 3D object, known as the Bone Setup, has been also simplified. Unlike competing products, Bone Setup can be achieved in a matter of minutes instead of hours. By automatically calculating influence zones and helping the placement of the bones Carrara Studio has made such ease of use possible.

Subdivision Modeling
Subdivision Modeling allows the design of complex and highly detailed Characters. Thanks to the use of simplified polygonal objects automatically subdivided to add details, this approach greatly simplifies the modeling of easily animated realistic characters.

Native MAC OS X Version
Carrara Studio 2 has been completely ported to Apple's latest Operating System. Carrara Studio 2 is now available for both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X.

A Wealth of Improvements in Usability, Stability and Productivity
Because Eovia knows that some of most important features of its products are their ease of use and stability, numerous efforts have been made to improve features that are not always very visible. Such improvements include an enhanced object selection tool, Free and Volumic particle system, new Physics Engine, and enhanced Anti-Aliasing.

Quick Feature List

Modeling
Subdivision Modeling - Metaball Modeling - Terrain Modeling - Text Modeling - Spline Modeling - Vertex Modeling - Formula Modeling - Boolean Operations - 3D Primitives - Adobe Illustrator import

Animation
Bones Skinning - Time-Line Based Animation - Interactive Keyframing - Editable Motion Paths - Physics - Behaviors - Story Board - Inverse and Forward Kinematics - Multiple Tweeners - Multiple Constraints

Texturing
Procedural Shaders - Bump Mapping - Multi-Channel - Projection Mapping - Highlight - Shininess - Glow - Reflection - Transparency - Refraction - UV Mapping - Rotoscoping - Hundreds of ready-to-use shaders

Special Effects
Particle System - Volumic Sky Simulation - Volumic 3D Light Effects - Lens Flares - Object Deformation

Rendering
Global Illumination (Photon Maps) - Radiosity - Caustics - Sky dome Illumination - Environment Illumination - Ray Tracer - Hybrid Ray Tracer - Zbuffer - Cartoon renderer - Depth of Field & Motion Blur

General
SMP-Multiple processor Support (Mac/Win) - SmartFlow - Multi-Monitor Support - Interactive 3D - Multiple 3D Views - Full version of Amapi 3D 5 - 900 3D objects

System Requirements

Windows
Pentium II 300 MHz or better
Windows 98, 2000, ME, XP or Windows NT 4.0
with Service Pack 3 or later
64 MB Physical RAM (128 MB recommended)
16-bit Color Display (24-bit recommended)
3D graphics accelerator card recommended
CD-ROM Drive
100 MB free hard drive space

Mac OS 8, Mac OS 9
Power Macintosh G3 266Mhz or better
Mac OS 8.1 or later
(Mac OS 9.1 or later recommended)
128 MB of Physical RAM
16-bit Color Display (24-bit recommended)
3D graphics accelerator card recommended
CD-ROM Drive
100 MB free hard drive space

Mac OS X
Power Macintosh G3 266Mhz or better
MacOS X 10.1 or later
128 MB of Physical RAM
24-bit Color Display
3D graphics accelerator card recommended
CD-ROM Drive
100 MB free hard drive space

File Format Support

GIF JPEG
BMP (Win)
Corel PHOTO PAINT (Win)
PCX (Win)
Adobe Photoshop 2.5
Targa TGA (Win)
TIFF
Adobe Illustrator
PICT (Mac)
True Type fonts
QuickTime
AVI
Sequenced Image Output
(for all 2D file types)

3D File Import and Export
3DS (Win)
3DMF
DXF
OBJ
RDS (import only)
VRML 2 (export only)"***

And the linked thread has some interesting pictures:)

Message edited on: 03/29/2006 08:16