Hello. I am in Sydney Australia. I am an owner of the product Raydream studio 5.5 formerly a product of metacreations. Some time age, metacreations created a new product which was to supercede this, this was called Cararra. Metacreation change business to E-commerce and sold off the rights and software to other companys. Carrara apparently was sold to Eovia com. Recently I heard users of Raydream Studio could purchase an upgrade to the new version Carrara Studio, as long as they could show they were the actual owners of Raydream Studio ( RDS ) for about 150 USA dollars. I have heard a bit on Carrara, in the past some of it good and some bad. I would like some feedback and especially like to know how easy is it use and would people recommend I change to this product or not ? Note: I would using this to create mostly models and props for other software such as Bryce or Poser also former Metacreations products. I also understand that Carrara Studio comes with the previous version of the modelling sofware Amapi 5.5 which used a type of modelling lines called Nurbs.. I have only vaguely heard of Nurbs and would like more information on them - generally - as to what they are, how useful they are for an amatuer computer artist like in making 3d figures / objects etc.. TIA Pc_artist Sydney Australia.

NURBs or Non Uniform Rational B-splines are a type of aproximating spline. This means that if you have 4 control points positioned like the coners of a square, the resulting spline would be a circle. NURBs allow you to creat complex surfaces with only a few UV coordinates. I made the model below using NURBs It's near impossible to produce such effects with a polygon modeler. Modeling with NURBs is alot like modeling with clay. Its 100x faster and easier. Im not sure the same applies for NURBs in Amapi tho.

Heres a picture of the control points and the resulting surface.

It's near impossible to produce such effects with a polygon modeler Actually if you use a decent poly modeler you can easily do this type of model. I have seen some awesome organic models come out of nendo and if you bother to look at litst work you will see some awesome organics made in Carrara's VM. I have determined that pretty much any type of model can be made with any modeler type providing you are comfortable with it....So if you like splines you will probably love NURBS, but if like me, you like modeling in poly's, there are no worries...you just have to use a different approach then you would with a spline/nurbs modeler.

I just have to point out that the mesh and render are not Max. It's kinda like a mac version of max called PiXELs that costs the same amount as carrara.

Izuel, actually you can get Pixels3D V 3.6.5 for free (for MAC). It is an awsome program with many types of nurbs, lattices, sculpting, shaders, IK, shaders etc.

cutcopypasste, you can also get ElectricImage 2.9 for $99.00 (MAC), full working version. Includes their modeler, animation (with bones) and rendering engin (Camera, supposed to be really fast). An additional $99.00 will get you ToolBox texture editing software & many QT tuts. Check this post: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=106&Form.ShowMessage=321277 Might be worth looking into next time you need to upgrade. Heck, might make a nice present or a friend with a MAC!

Yea, you can get 3.6.5 free but its not that much. I bought the pro package for $700 dollars which includes Pixels 3.7, particles, shader maker pro, the extras pack, printed manuals, Tempest (when its released), Pixels 4 (also when its released), and alot of other goodies. I'm in it for the free upgrade to pixels 4 tho :D .