Black__Days opened this issue on Dec 30, 2014 ยท 71 posts
Antaran posted Tue, 30 December 2014 at 8:03 PM
Well, I think you will find a rather diverging set of opinions about it. I don't find Carrara faulty or buggy at all - it hasn't failed me yet.
In fact, there have been very few instances where I've reached the limits of it, and in some of those it was really the limits of my knowledge of it. Where I hit the wall, there are usually some workarounds or, at the worst - a commercial plug-in to add the functionality that I find missing in the core software.
It depends on what you want to be able to do with the software. For basic 3D which can combine modelling, scene setup, rigged DAZ content, morphing, basic UV-mapping, advanced shading, texturing, surface-painting, easy object replication, pretty nifty rendering and even python scripting (there is a plug-in for that) - I don't know of anything better for the buck AND easier to learn.
Blender is free and can do most of those things (except DAZ content), as far as I know, but I find the interface a hell-and-a-half to lean. I tried multiple time, including following tutorials for it - and ran away screaming each and every one of those times.
Carrara UI is visual, clean and once you understand the concept of different functionality tabs/rooms - very logical and a piece of cake to learn.
You can find example of my Carrara work in my Gallery (by NO means the best there is - there are better and much more talented and advanced users out there, but I don't use outside renderers, so it can give you a sense of what Carrara's native renderer can do in mediocre hands...)
Also, DAZ forums has the recent Carrara challenge with some work by Carrara newcomers, to give you a sense of what a newbie experience might feel like. It's in voting, too, so if you stop by in the next couple of hours - take a minute to vote, please! :)