Pursuant to the possibility of upgrading from RayDream to Carrara (now using RD studio 5.5, but I used it for years in previous versions) I have downloaded the Carrara Demo.

I'm not familiar with the interface (other than working in Bryce) and it is taking a while to figure out by trial and error where and how to do some of the operations that were second nature in trusty ol' R-Dream. Apparently there are no help files included in the Demo and since I am evaluating this for possible recommendation to the graphics department of a publication, it makes that job more difficult and time consuming.

Am I overlooking something? Are there any help files for download or just the "tour" at the web site (which does not go into any very helpful details).

I'm thinking if old Ray Dream will by some odd chance work under Mac OS X, I will just continue with it... I need a "workhorse" that will let me jump in, do the job and move on. Funky interfaces and guessing games are nothing but frustration under a deadline publishing environment.

Enough rant, and thanks for any suggestions....

I wish I could express how much I can relate to your dillemma. Let me say this. C will render a bucket truck times faster than Raydream which makes it very desireable straight away. C is still being developed and enhanced and is a living code. You can find a lot of help here when you get a book that will get you through the interface stuff. Write Eovia and see if they will e-mail you the pdf which has the help file in it. I don't know what kind of response you'll get but it's worth a shot. The next version of C is OS X native. Hope this helps in some backward way. -Kix

There will be on OSX native app as well as the Classic version so Carrara (and RDS) will run in either OS. It took me about a month of working with Carrara to get used to it after being familiar with RDS. The hardest part was forceing mtself to use Carrara when it seemed so much easier in RDS. That being said, the core of the app is still the same with 3 major changes: UI, speed of render and shaders. I'd still recommend Carrara for the price VS preformance issue.

Thanks for the info and advice... I did get some sort of pdf manual after emailing the folks... haven't had time to get into it yet.

One thing to consider too, Eovia has announced that Carrara 2 will be released in June. So in less then two months we will have our hands on C2. If I were in your shoes I would consider that. I would also find out from Eovia that if you do by C1.1 now, will they give you a free upgrade to 2. Many companies that announce new versions do this. That being said, I have not had ggod success running C under OSX classic, but many in this group have. C2 will be fully optimized and run native in OSX supporting Multi-processing. Cheers PAG

Thanks, PAG for the info. I may just wait until June and see what C2 has to offer.