Warning......Extremely frustrated individual about to go on a rant. Now let me see if I understand all this. MetaCreations comes out with Ray Dream Studio, a program that is so filled with bugs it is almost useless. They then go out of business and the program is sold off to another company. This company then upgrades the program so it works better but you have to dish out another $100.00 or so to get your hands on it. Do I have my information correct? If so that has got to be the cheesiest thing I have ever come across from a consumers point of view. RDS cost enough to begin with, and though I have had the program for over a year, I have only recently sat down and started learning the program earnestly. But the more I use it, the more I find wrong with it. Certain commands lock the program up. There are times when just opening one of the menu bars sends it into one of its tiffs. In short I spend about three times longer fighting with getting the program unstuck than I do actually using it. Seems to me that a company who gives any concerns to their own reputation would never release a product so flawed. I have been told that RDS does not exist anymore in the format I have, which is Metacreations RayDream Studio 5.5. I guess it's now been incorporated into this upgrade that cost more of your dollars. But from my humble point of view, to anyone searching for a 3-D package, I would stay well clear of RDS.

Sorry about your problems. You do realize tho that Carrara has been out for more than a year? That means you probably bought RDS after Metacreations already had cancelled it. As for the hundred bucks you wont find a better offer. In fact for you its going to be $150 b/c you arnt upgrading from the correct program. Think of the $150 as dumping RDS and getting an entirely new 3d program + a ton of great plug-inns + a $400 modeler. The fact was that the point release patch for carrara was good enough but free AMAPI and the plug-inns made it almost criminal not to pay the extra $$$ I never used RDS but everyone says that Carrara is a lot better. I guess you can move to another 3d program but where can you go for $150? I suggest you go download the demo for Carrara and see how you like it.

I will agree with you in feeling a little ripped off. I had trouble in the beginning with RDS locking up and crashing allot. I ran Norton disk utilities several times and things stabilized for some reason. I bought RDS 5.1 for $299 and 4-Elements for $99. Then RDS 5.5 comes out which I paid $100with 4-E included. I felt I paid for 4-E twice. When I got my RDS 5.5 upgrade, Metacreations was pushing Carrara for another 1 or 2 hundred dollars. My rule is never buying version 1 of anything. Youre asking for trouble. I wasnt totally happy with the RDS upgrade ether. Some function was lost between versions. Then Metacreations dies and sells off everything. Cheese! I gave up on RDS's future and started to consider getting 3dStudio Max. Then I found this site with a RDS/Cararra forum and found that Eovia is selling Carrara Studio with 100-bug fixes, Amapi etc. for a RDS upgrade price of $149. Everyone was raving over Carrara so I bit for it and so far I'm not very happy with Carrara. I'm having transfer pains between the RDS GUI and Carrara's. I finding discrepancies in quality of some of the functions. I felt I bought RDS again in a new Mac package that is less than intuitive for this PC user. But as everyone says, for the price RDS is worth it. Too bad it's gone. Ive tried 3D Max, and it seemed like RDS with more bells and whistles. But the price! In Carrara, I fear I bought a lemon that will take more $upgrades to sweeten or disappear all together for another repackaging of old rope. I like RDS and for the price it's great! I think you should try using it a little longer. Buy Carrara if you cant afford a better program.

I can certainly sympathize with anyone who is frustrated with buggy software (Windows ME anyone?) but I've found RDS and it's ancestors Ray Dream 3D & Corel Dream to be fairly stable and reliable on a Pentium 150 under Windows 95A with 64 megs of ram. I didn't say they were quick, but my most common error is "memory suballocation error 4" which I believe is caused by my own impatience - not allowing the sreen time to refresh, etc. Having said that, I will gladly agree that Metacreations burned every bridge in their marketing of RDS 5.5 and in selling their beta version of Carrara as a finished product. I believe they knew they were going out of business and were scraping for every dollar with no thought for their customers. Now it's up to Eovia to rebuild those bridges. The free bug fix is a good start, as is their bargain-basement upgrade price. The opinions expressed in this forum on the bug fix and upgrade are encouraging so far, but as a user who is very pleased and comfortable with RDS, I think I'll wait a bit longer before upgrading - but that's mostly because I'll need a system upgrade to run Carrara. That's my two cents Jim Z. a.k.a. Julian Boolean

The speed increase from RDS V5 to 5.5 was a vast impronement and was worth the $99 upgrade in itself. I agree that MC "pushed" Carrara out just to capture some $$$ (and Infini-D also). However, that's not the fault of Eovia but they do reap the ill-will of former users. That's why they bundle Amapi & many plug-ins along with the debute version for a fair price (at least IMHO).

I give eovia full credit for Carrara Studio 1.1. I'm very happy with eovia and the state of Carrara, I waited for over a year and a half for Carrara to have a patch that made a difference. And eovia delivered. I bought nearly every program Metacrapations made, Painter, Painter3D, Bryce, Poser,Ray Dream Studio 5, KPT 3-5-6,and when they sold everything off and abandoned us, I was angry to say the least. IMHO Metacreations pissed in their own cereal. But i hung in there, and now I have a version of Carrara that's 89% more stable and functional than it was. No it's not perfect, yet, but at least it works now. And we have new plugins coming out for it, and a future for it. For me, I can't afford 3D Studio Max, so Carrara was the best solution for a reasonable price, and I love it. I would definately recommend upgrading your RayDream to Carrara, you get a true bargain, and Amapi 5 to boot. I don't think eovia is trying to piss anyone off, I think they are doing a great job of giving life to an orphaned program without charging a fortune for it. Metacreations=bad Eovia=good Upgrade to Carrara and you'll be pleasantly suprised. kaom

I've used Ray Dream Studio 5 from the time it came out 'til I bought Carrara, which was a couple years at least. I can't remember RDS ever locking up on me. It was extremely stable. If you're having trouble, I think there is still a patch to be had somewhere. Don't know where, though.

Several days latter and the frustration level has gone down quite a bit, probably because I have not been on the computer in that time. Anyway I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who responded to this, you have all given me somethings to think about. One of the greatest pleasures I have found since I started working in 3-D are the folks you find here at Renderosity. From getting rookie questions answered to getting good tips on posted works, and in this case being able to vent a little frustration and get some good advise in return, you guys always seem to come through. Thanks again everyone.

I just (ten minutes ago) ordered Carrara as a sidegrade to Amapi. I did it out of final frustration from the cheesiest deal of all times - in my less than HO. That cheesiest would be trueSpace. I looked at Strata and at Inspire (old Lightwave) and this seems to be the best deal around for a general purpose modeler - which I need on occasion to supplement Rhino and to amuse myself. So if you are thinking about jumping ship - just be really careful if you think you might go over to TS. Best of luck. Riv