Hello all.

I am looking for a solution for crating game assets and cinematics for cutscenes that won't break the bank. I looked into Maya LT, but it's $795 and doesn't even have a renderer, so i would have to get Marmoset or Octane Standalone, which pushes the price north of $1000. That's a no go, since I am paying out of pocket for this stuff.

Is Carrara, particularly Carrara with Octane, capable of this stuff? Is the render quality in Octane, from Carrara, as good as what I can get with Maya LT?

Thanks in advance for any help or guidance you can offer here.

Yes.

If you mean modeling and rigging figures, Carrara can do that. And the only app I have ever managed to rig a figure with. Although I much prefer Hexagon for modeling, and unbeatable for the price.

It's compatable with Unity; a free game engine. I couldn't get it to work, but I get frustrated easy and lost fast in tutorials.

It renders quite well so you may not need octane. Some thing I have half heartedly argued with my peers about.

Has a pleasantly easy learning curve.

And a fun group to fall in to. I'm the doom sayer of group and dartanback is the one with his head in the clouds, we are the extremes of the carrarests yet friends. You'll find artiest from the premade users end to the everything from scratch end, so as far as help, we got you covered.

It can do cinematics, like anything the results will be how much time and effort you put in too.  I think the renderer in Carrara is very nice.   I was just playing a little with LuxRenderer with LuxCore as well.  THere are toon plug ins available.  It also goes to what look are you going for, gamish, real, toon.  There are some game engine based animation package out there too. 

Thanks for the replies. Can you recommend some good learning materials for Carrara? Free is of course preferable, but paid works too.

I will be doing things that run the gamut from cartoonish to photorealistic and everything in between.

Carrara Cafe has a lot of the tutorial links, SciFi Funk has a number of film related tutorials for Carrara.  I would check out the Carrara 3d Magazine C3DE.  Paid tutorials there are several, from Infinit Skills Carrara, Advanced, and Realism Rendering to Mark Bremmers VTC ones Other things can also be adapted.  Books like digital lighting and rendering.  Taking a look at Howiefarkes Carrara Scenes (I think there is a free snow one still available can also help take something apart that gives excellent quality.  There are plug ins some free like yatoon and paid ones Digital Carver Guilds toon pro! (along with many others).  LuxRenderer can be used and there is a nice bridge plugin called  Luxus, its in the process of moving to a new release that will have GPU based rendering and live interactive using LuxCore.  Octain itself can be used. 

I am not sure if I can put links in here to these, if you have problems finding them, PM me.  Here is HowieFarkes Gallery here on Renderosity http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?user_id=237321&page=1  though it should be said his scenes are heavy and render time heavy, so keep that in mind if doing a shot with thousands of frames :)

Sony MOvie Studio HD if your on PC for putting together, The ultimate or whatever they are calling it now has a basic version of HitFilm, there is also HitFilm 3 Pro which is a nice package and can take 3d models and use them in video along with tons of effects none of this description does it justice.

if your wanting to do sculpting outside of polygonal modeling, Stu uses 3d-coat and Carrara together quiet a bit, its got a basic version thats reasonable, all the way up to Zbrush.

There are some game related things you might consider such as Source Film Maker, which takes game assets for unity I think and then you can put them into a film studio with lighting and animation in fairly real time.