Hi all, I realize that i don't know much about most of you folks, even though i'm a moderator for a few months now . So i'd be curious to know how you came to 3D art . What was at the beginning of your passion for this technique ? What made you make the step forward ? Is it just a hobby for you, or is it more professionnal ?... That kind of things :) And why Carrara ? litst litst.@freesbee.fr

I think I came to 3D via POV-Ray, which I still like, although I haven't messed with it lately. I've always like cartoons and computer animation, and when I came across POV-Ray while BBSing (I think it was still on version 2 then), and had to give it a shot. Mostly it's a hobby for me, although I did get a chance to do a 3D screen saver for my old job, in POV-Ray. Since then I encountered Poser, I found it at a deal. But then I wanted to be able to make my own characters, so I started looking for a modeller. I picked Carrara because it was not expensive, and I thought it was part of the Metacreations Suite. Of course, I bought just at the time that Metacreations was selling off all its 3D stuff. I didn't surf Renderosity in those days, big mistake. I don't know if I would pick Carrara if I had it to do all over again. I think I would have leaned more toward Inspire3D, with an eye toward migrating to Lightwave. That said, I'm still pretty happy with Carrara. I got it for a deal, too (I have trouble paying full retail for stuff, you see). It meets my current needs, as my big interest these days is creating characters for Poser. After only doing one, I'm totally hooked. One thing I can't remember is how I came across Renderosity. Maybe someone posted the link to comp.graphics.3D (or whatever group it was I read in those days), but I'm really glad I found this place!

I started out with Poser. I needed it for use in modelling cartoon figures as an amateur pastime (hobby). In those days, Poser 1 was extremely primitive, so I waited for Poser 2 before starting. This was prior to the extensive use of morph targets and textures that we see now. Poser was a product offered by Fractal Designs, which gave me a discount on one of the early Ray Dream versions (3 IIRC). Since I needed something for modelling and props, I bought that, then continued with the updates through 5.5, by which time Ray Dream was a product of MetaCreations. Carrara was their upgrade from RD 5.5, so I picked it up. Then came the MetaCreations shake-out. I bought Amorphium at the time, to see if that modelling technique was better for making props. Poser went to CuriousLabs, run by the guy who had originally created Poser on an Apple II computer (the one invented by Jobs and Wozniak). Carrara went to Eovia, and I'm happy to say both current versions of Poser (4.03) and Carrara (1.1) are stable and easy to use in most aspects, and they work well together.

Great question litst! I've been a musician for 25 years and always played with drawing so I have an "Artsy" side to me. I've been in the computer industry for 21 years now. So the marriage of the Art and Technical brought me into 3D art. :) Clint

Gee - I remember it was my first year of law school and I was surfing the web and came across an image of an Imperial Probe from Star Wars. I said to myself - wow that's cool. I'd always been drawing and inking (I'm a former comic book junkie) but had never used a computer for art. So I contacted the author of the image and asked him how he made it. He told me it was made with a prog named Ray Dream Studio. So, with the few bucks I had at the time, I went out and picked up RDS - there you go. Hey anyone know who that author is?? Maybe it's one of you guys!

I just thought it would be cool to mess around with 3D modeling stuff so I went out and bought Ray Dream 3D a while back. I don't really consider myself an artist so I do it more as a hobby though I haven't really come up with anything that I would go out of my way to show anyone but thats because I lack motivation and I really have to sit down one day and plan stuff out first. Eventually, I bought Ray Dream Studio 5.5 and tinkered with it for a while until my younger brother cracked my installation CD by dropping it and "accidentally" crushing it with the seat's leg. I stayed for a while without being able to model since I usually format my computer from time to time while trying out some programming things (I'm a programmer afterall) and during my time at Stevens I managed to get my hands on Carrara. I'm working on learning the new interface and features and hopefully I will have something semi-decent to post up soon. Don't laugh though..... ^_^

I fell in love with the moving image when I was 12 years old. I started making 8mm movies back then, animating my toys, building space-ships by combining tank and air-plane models, and getting my friends to "act" in my productions. I went to college and got a degree in film, then worked in the industry for a bunch of years. I started creating computer "art" in the mid '80's when I had a Commodore 64 with a paint program. (16 colors! WOW!) But I was hooked. I fell away from computer art for a few years and then about three years ago found RayDream 3D for 99 bucks. I bought it and started playing. Now I have RDS 5.5 and do projects for fun, for work, and on a free-lance basis. It's quite a trip to see something I created in 3D space splashed across my TV set in a commercial.

I started out going to the Colorado Institute of Art a little over 3 years ago for Interactive Multimedia Programming. We got a taste of 3D early on with Bryce, so I rushed out and bought Bryce, and realised that I loved 3D. 11 years ago I went to school for mechanical drafting, I didn't realise it then but it was a prelude to the 3D world I would be entering. now Autocad is part of my life, and then I found Rhino, which combines the best of Autocad and 3D software into one envirnment. But Bryce was what got me hooked, it was so wasy to use, the first time i sat down with it, it was like I had seen it somewhere before and just knew what to do with it. I too bought Carrara just as it was being sold off, and was left feeling mighty pissed off. I am a struggling professional trying to eek out an existence in the Multimedia world,here in Denver where I live the demand isn't that high(for now that is). I'm trying to get a full time job using my 3D and Multimedia skills, but for now I am a freelance worker. I have made money with Carrara though, I did some spinning logo animations that went on CD-Rom's for a real estate company. I've also done album artwork and some video work with it. I bought Carrara because of the price and because I had bought so many other Metacreations products and loved working in them.Ray Dream Studio was what I had used for modelling before Carrara, so it seemed like a logical step to buy it. Now with the new patch I'm much happier with Carrara, and hope for continued support, and many new useful plugins.I found renderosity in a search engine while looking for Carrara help and tips, thank god I found this place. kaom

I was exposed to 3D very early. While being born that doctor's hand came down on my butt and was undeniably a complete 3D experience! Much later I bought Bryce 2 on a whim. Until then I had only done 2D so was impressed by how easy it was to change viewpoints with 3D. Next came Poser and eventually I thought it would be useful to be able to do my own minor models so bought Amorphium. I am still surprised that this mistake didn't destroy any further desire to model. I bought a used copy of Carrara but that turned out to be a pirated rip-off so I don't have much experience with this program. That should change soon as I am expecting my copy to arrive from Eovia any day now. I suppose I'd consider myself a 3D virgin though I've done some heavy petting... Mostly I do this stuff for my own amusement but I have sold enough work to pay for my last round of software and a new IBM Pentium notebook.

I guess I took the long way 'round to get here. I've worked in the graphic arts end of the printing industry for years and have always used the Corel suite of programs. Versions 5-8 of the Corel suite included a program called CorelDream which was actually a stripped down version of Ray Dream 3D (which was pretty stripped down to begin with). I was fascinated by it, but Corel's documentation and instructions for this little gem were terrible. Watching "Babylon 5", I realized that I HAD to make my own 3d spaceship models so I purchased Ray Dream 3D and later RDS & Metacreations Painter 3D. Now I rant... I upgraded from RDS 5.0 to 5.5 because Metacreations said that they would allow users to apply the $99 upgrade price toward RDS 6.0 (which they knew would never come - urge to kill rising...) Now I stop ranting... I had been considering a move to Caligari Truespace, but now that Carrara has been almost fixed I'll probably stick with what I know and get the Carrara/Amapi suite instead. I never did figure out how to use Painter 3D (has anyone?), but RDS has become my number one hobby. I've always been a big fan of sci-fi, fantasy, and cartoons, so those are my favorite themes. A good friend of mine who happens to be a Bryce/Poser user turned me on to Renderosity. It's interesting to see how so many people can use the same tools and get such vastly different results - it's inspiring and educational, and that's why I visit almost every day. I do not have a favorite cheese, but that's another story. - Jim Zipperer a.k.a. Julian Boolean

Well...I came to 3D art about 4 years ago when I was living in the dorms at Texas Tech. A friend of mine was big into art but the 2D stuff. One day he was showing me some stuff on the net that had been made in Bryce 3D. I thought it was pretty cool and went out and bought the program (student version) From there I moved on to Bryce 4 and eventually to Carrara and now even Max (Max mainly b/c of Carrara v 1.0.1) I mostly do work for my own pleasure, but every once in a while I'll do something for a client so I can afford to live! I wouldn't call myself a true professional by any means, but renderosity has really helped me to grow in the area of 3D graphics. I usually check out the pages here a couple of times a day to see if there is anybody that I can help...and learn from the ones I can't. Jared

Oh wow. Totally by accident. I'd been illustrating with an airbrush for years and was being driven slowly insane by cutting masks and friskets. I'd gotten Photoshop to "touch up" some images and was really a computer beginner. You know how once you get a computer, you start getting all the computer catalogs. I saw a plug-in for Photoshop from Metacreations (Kai PowerTools 3) ordered it and started getting propaganda from MC. Ray Dream Studio 3.0 was $99 bucks or something like that. So, I thought "What have I got to loose?" I fell in love. I have now killed off more brain cells between my computer and software than I ever lost to toxic paint fumes and maddening tedium. My workstation sits next to a lonely drafting board and seldom used rapidiographs now. I wouldn't go back though. :) Mark

I was walking through CompUSA looking for a new video game and seen a copy of Bryce4. That was all it took.

I've always been interested in 3D art. I remember as a kid going to the library to find books on how to make perspective drawings. I spent days on setting up vanishing points and drawing frame works so that I could draw the cars I designed from different view points. When I was in Junior and Senior High School I took all the art and drafting classes they offered. I then went on to study Architecture and Structural Engineering at a local college. I came to 3D computer art through an old DOS computer CAD program called Generic CAD. They came out with their 3D modeling program Generic CAD 3D (a very original name) and was thrilled by all the possibilities. The program didn't go over very well (there wasn't much you could do with a 3D program that could run on a 286 processor) and was soon dropped by Generic CAD. It wasn't much of a program, but I sure had a lot of fun with it on my old CompuAdd 286 with 640k of memory and a 20MB hard drive. I looked around for another 3D modeling program for years but they were either too expensive or were not worth using. Then I came across RayDream 4 and got hooked again. I've upgrade through all the RayDream versions and am now using Carrara v1.1. Keith

Well it all started one afternoon when I was 8 and I was home alone with a roll of 8mm movie film and a camera and I burned up a whole pack of AA batteries learning about stop motion photography combined with tinker toys (and one spanking later). I was really into Star Wars and Star Trek and I really like art work but stick figures are as good as it gets with me. Later in High School I moved heavy duty into photography and I'm still very enthused about it and I learned a lot about light and framing. Later I moved into computer programming and one day I downloaded a shareware version of Paint Shop Pro 3 and started learning about graphics and the computer. I wanted something a little more heavy duty so I bought Corel Draw 7 which happened to have a little program attached to it called Corel Dream. NOBDY could produce any good graphics of the project I was working on in Grad school so I cooked up a really awesome 3D picture of the testing aparatus and added text with Corel and really got into it. Later I bought Ray Dream 3D, Ray Dream Studio 5.0 and later 5.5. I learned on the net that Carrara had come out long after it was discontinued by Metacreations and I was able to get a copy of EBay and scrounged up the patch at the time. I didn't pick up using Carrara until I heard about Eovia and I started using Carrara when I felt it had a somebody on the development end to fix and improve it. I'm not going to quit my day job but I've really enjoyed my 3D outlet Carrara has provided. -Kixum

I became interested in 3d art sometime about 14 years ago in 1987 when I bought an Amiga computer and was introduced to raytracing. I had this demo animation called Amiga juggler which was basically a figure created out of primitives standing on a checkerd plane. He juggled glass spheres that realistically showed reflections of the surface and figure. Since that time, I collected tons of demos like these and was introduced to a program called Calegari. Problem was it cost over $3000 dollars. I never was able to figure it out or afford it. Nonetheless I used to love studying the 3d renders at that time. The first 3d program I used was called Scenery Animator for the Amiga. With it I was able to create animations through USGS DEM files adding 3d models for effect. Many years went by until I purchased RayDream Studio 4 and Bryce, then the real fun started. Now I use Carrara, Bryce 4, Vue Desprit, Poser4, Strata 3D Pro, and thinkdesign for messing around with. 95% fun, 5% work. I still have yet to fully master any one program, although I am finally making progress with Carrara, Bryce 4, and thinkdesign. I guess for me, the fun ceases when you stop learning. So I make sure I know very little! ;-)

Thanks for all your replys guys and gals, :) Here's my story . When i was a kid, i played a lot video games, and i used to program my own little games on my Amstrad . In the early 90s, a soft came out, called 3D Construction Kit . It was the tool Incentive Software was using to make 3D games, such as Driller or Dungeon Master . So i bought it and started to make my own 3D games, with only 64k Ram . That was my very first step in the world of 3D . Then i left school ( i was 15 ) . After spending all my time doing nothing with my life, i said to myself " now that i have the time, maybe i could do something with my life !!! " . Sounds logical, doesn't it ? ;) I wanted to do something that matches my two principal interrests : drawing and computers ... Computer art ? Sounds logical too . So i saved money to buy me a PC, discovered internet and found the demo of Raydream 5 when looking for graphics progs . I spent a lot of time playing with it and when Carrara came out, i got it . I'm glad i found this place, it made the learning progress much easy and cool . For now, i'm still an amateur but i'd like to go professionnal one day . litst litst.@freesbee.fr http://www.chez.com/litst

I started in 3D with TurboCAD 3D, this cheezy cheap excuse for CAD, (i prefer autocad now). Yet, i was able to make 3d objects and render them, which was mindblowing. I then found bryce 2, totally stunning, after which i had to upgrade to bryce 3d, and then version 4. The problem with bryce is that its renderer just isnt all that powerful. So i needed more. 3dsmax had the power, but i lacked the knowhow, so i went to rhino. Excellent program, you can make ANYTHING in a relatively short time, yet again, lacking rendering capability. Enter...Carrara, the perfect vehicle by which to render my creations. It's built so much like bryce that the familiarity alone made it plausible to use. And now, since the current update, its better than ever. I have dipped my hand into a few other packages, most notably Alias|Wavefront, but i just cant grasp that yet. Good luck to all future 3D artists!

I finally found a minute to post here :) I started my "computer art" interest in grade school with my C-64. Let me tell you...the light pens back then sucked :) I started with Geos paint, then a friend bought deluxe paint from electronic arts for his Amiga @ his post production studio. That thing let you do animations! I learned to do 2d animation for money on the side. When I wnet to college the Toaster just came out. I tried to learn 3d then but the render times where to crazy. I made some spinning logos but the fun stopped there. Then for the next 5 years or so I only edited..no graphics. I was addicted to video games at the time so I decided to try to make some spaceship models. Thats when I found the worlds most superior modeler, nendo :) That lasted a whole 3 weeks when I realized that I had to have a render and an animation program. I looked all over for something with nendos ease of use. Lightwave and Max where out...to hard. Mirari was to expensive. So when I was looking at ebay for product Ideals I saw carrara. Realizing that it had to be the utlimate solution (hey it replaced like 3 different programs for metacreations :) ) I bought carrara. I cant do anything really complex with carrara yet but I can use it to impress my clients. Nothing on the market is as easy to use as this program right now. Hopefully someone will introduce bones by the end of the year. If they do I am sure I will have a long future with this program.

long b4 i understood the concept of the alphabet, i was drawing. my mom literally couldn't supply enuf paper. as soon as i was old enuf to handle power tools, i was making christmas decorations for the front lawn. in jr. high i discovered pyrotechnics- not bombs, painting the sky with colored fire. about this time i discovered i didn't have the patience for traditional 2d animation, but i did like moving images, so in high school i was designing sets and special effects for plays- puffs of smoke and the like-which i've continued up until now. i wanted to get into film, but that didn't work out. while working in theater, i discovered there's nothing like the visceral experience of a shared live event. anyway, awhile back i collaberated with another scenic designer who had moved to 2d graphic design and i decided to check it out. while exploring all the possibilities, i discovered that in these times, anyone with a computer and a camera can be a one-person film studio. 2 years ago a friend unearthed a series of stories he wrote in college about a futuristic pleasure city named 'nightown.' these stories have so ignited my visual imagination that i want to develop them into virtual models, illustrating them with camera fly-throughs and illustrating some of the stories in anime. they're fun and pretty dark. also, i've always wanted to design for amusement parks- rides, layout, and landscaping. i figure with the escalating costs and dimishing supplies of land and building materials, more attractions will move toward 3d simulation, like the spiderman attraction at universal studios. designing for that is really attractive. did you know there's a company that actually builds and sells a holodeck for the design industry? it's about a 10' cube. when the 3d technology that's used in industrial design moves into the entertainment business, i'd like to be positioned as a designer/content creator. so why carrara? infini-d was highly recommended to me. lightwave has proved too shaky on the mac. i like the amapi interface. it's a lot like using hand tools.

From the 2D world. Way back the CorelDraw suite included a 3D app based on RayDream, they called it CorelDream, I think that CD 6, it caught my imagination and I started looking for other apps. Here I am.

It would have to be with POV-Ray in one of the 1.x incarnations. I tinkerered around with that for a while, never really creating anything of note. I was doing a lot of work in Corel Draw for the units I was assigned to (Challenge coins, unit logos, party flyers and the like), and when Corel Dream came out with one of the versions, I tinkered with that too. In early 1997 I bought a copy of Bryce 2 and since then I have gone to Bryce 3d and 4, and I'm looking forward to getting a copy of Bryce 5. A lot of my earlier furniture models were done with Bryce, but they were getting almost too big to be useful. I guess it was late last summer I got a used copy of Carrara, and have been busy learning how to use it since then. Besides Bryce and Carrara, I use Poser, Nendo, DoGA, and sPatch. I use Corel Draw and PhotoPaint for most of my texture maps. Occasionally I'll do an image with Bryce still, but mostly working on various model projects in Carrara takes up my free time. I used to do a lot of woodworking, but I don't have the space here (nor the time) to do it, maybe after I retire from the Air Force.

Always had an interest in drawing and computers. Merged the two when I picked up a cheap copy of Poser 2. When I finally got a copy of Ray Dream I spent about 7 weeks working on "Racing The Storm". Put it up on my tripod site and nearly forgot about it. I nearly excreted a block of ceramic building material when Computer Shopper Mag. wanted to use it in an article about low end 3d software. Been hooked ever since.

The above graphic (done in TurboCad 3D) is why I got into 3D graphics. This graphic depicts a clear crystal (of undetermined material) cut with laser precision. The purpose of this form is to reflect light. In order for this to happen, a highly reflective metalic cylinder surrounds the crystal while leaving the very ends of the crystal uncovered. Light enters the object at either end and is shaped by the crystal facets so that the light is eventually trapped at the core. The light cannot escape except through energy transference. This is a light-to-heat or light-to-laser invention. So that was what got me started. Now I create and view 3D graphics for a hobby and learning experience. Charles (sittingblue)