I would like to continue adding requests for simple features to this thread.

This post however is not about adding features, but about removing outdated features. Some of the features in Carrara are so out-of-place in a modern 3D app that a CG professional considering buying Carrara would walk-away with a laugh because he/she will immediately realize that certain aspects of Carrara are relics from ancient times.

1. On top of my list of features to be thrown-out, is the tiny preview window in the Render Room. This preview window was, if I'm not mistaken, already in RDS 3.0, and was not of much use even in those days when slow 50 MHz 486 CPU's and 16 MB EGA video cards ruled the earth.

But in these days and ages of Live Render Preview, that even Poser has, the Carrara's preview window does not convey any useful information. It's so outdated that it will cause a CG professional to have second thoughts about buying or using Carrara.

I am not wishing for Live Preview at this time. One solution would be to keep the 'Preview' button and do a 640x480 render with all of user's render settings. This way the user gets a fast and accurate preview that gives a clear idea of what the final render looks like.

2. Then comes the Anything Glows light type. In the ancient times of 50 MHz 486 CPU's this light type was a cheap, and probably efficient, way to implement light emitting objects by adding spot lights on an object's facets.

In our times of multi-cores, multi-threaded 4GHz+ i7's, when even Poser has true light emitting objects, and had it since PP 2012, the Anything Glows light type is a true outdated feature. The CG professional wants light-emitting objects or textures, not a gimmicky Anything Glows from ancient times.

I am putting the replacing of Anything Glows light with light emitting objects a la Poser, or better yet light emitting textures a la Lux on my wish list. It is not exactly a featurette, but also certainly not a multi-year development, and will add, I believe, tremendous value to Carrara.

3. In the Texture Room, the filtering mode for a texture map has a 'Summed Area Table' option which simply does not work. Try to use it and you will see seams appear all over the place very quickly. I have never seen a bug report regarding this, which proves that nobody ever used this filtering mode. So what's the point of keeping a buggy feature that nobody even uses? Can't it just be eliminated? This could simplify the renderer and eventually make it slightly faster.

4. In the same Texture Room, texture maps have an 'Interpolation' option which is checked by default. Interpolation means that the renderer calculates the exact color values in the render space for only a limited number of points. For nearby points it Interpolates based on the few exact values it calculated, so the renderer works faster. This feature made sense in the times of 50 MHz 486's, but in our times when even laptops have supercomputer-like performances, it has no purpose anymore and can be eliminated. Let the renderer calculate the color value for each point exactly, without doing any interpolation. The result will be a more professional looking Carrara.

Of course no interpolation means slower renders. Fortunately there is a very good solution to this. It's called Embree. You want Carrara's renderer to be faster, a lot faster, possibly 30x faster? Then use Intel's Embree technology. The renderer in Carrara could get a phenomenally mind-blowing speed boost by using Intel's technology, whose implementation in Carrara shouldn't take more than 6 months for a developer who is familiar with the renderer's code.

5. In the Render Room, there is a 'Full Raytracing' checkbox at the top of the options. This option is off by default, because raytracing was slow with 50 MHz 486 CPU's, so it had to be turned-off for quick test renders.

But with today's fast CPU's, this option does not make sense anymore. Let he renderer use raytracing all the time, and use Embree to speed-up its operations.

As a comparison, Shade's renderer, which is a jaw-dropping world-class renderer, does raytracing by default and Path Tracing as an option. You cannot turn-off raytracing in Shade. Obviously Shade's renderer belongs to 21st century, and it shows.

6. In the same Render Room, Under the 'Indirect Light' option, there is an 'Interpolation' checkbox which is checked by default with a default precision value of 10%. This feature made sense when PC's were slow, but with today's PC, it can be eliminated to rejuvenate Carrara. Let the renderer calculate GI or AO without interpolation. The renderer can become slower, but fortunately, as I mentioned above, there is Embree to come to the rescue.

These were some of the outdated features in Carrara that I think should be eliminated. There are some others that I will make the subject of a future post.