Well I was finally able to take this new app for a test drive and I must say I'm a little disappointed with Carrara Studio. The interface, while better structured than Ray Dream is a bit more cumbersome and less versatile. There are times when selecting and manipulating objects in Assembly becomes a real pain in the ass. Especially with the production frame which I haven't sucessfully been able to move or resize with ease. I do enjoy the new features like Global Lumination Caustics and Bones. And the rendering time is so much faster than RDS. However I can do without them for something that can at least run smooth on my 500mhz G3 with OS9 (even with Open GL). Not to mention the app seems to butcher any old RDS files I import over. Maybe I need more time to work around with the app, but I think I'll stick to the old and orphaned Ray Dream Studio for most of my modeling needs for the time being.

Hi bh404, I also run Carrara on a 500/G3 (a pismo actually). I find it only runs smoothly if I create a trimmed down extension set specially for Carrara. Oh and about the production frame, you can remove it by going to the view menu at the top (click show production frame) I know this doesnt address your other concerns with the software, but I thought I would at least let you know how I got it to run smoothly. That was a big problem for me also at first. Cheers, Max

Moving and scaling the production frame can also be easier if you select the camera you're viewing through in the sequencer tray first. -Kix

Hey Max. What extension would I have to trim/remove to get it run faster?

With the Production Frame, if you are trying to re-set the aspect ratio, you can go to the Render room, set your output dimensions, then when you go back to the Assembly room, you'll find that it has changed there. This way you have more control over the exact dimensions. If you want to change what it's looking at, click in the window with the "D" key and drag the mouse for a new camera angle. If an object is selected, its anchor point will be the center of your camera rotation., If not, then the cameras anchor point will be. Hope this helps! I've been enjoying Carrara's interface and find it fast and simple on both platforms.

Regarding the extensions that I turned off: Well, basically I shut off any extensions that werent needed directly by Carrara. I just went down the list in the extension manager and if an extension didnt seem necessary to run C, I turned it off. Which means that whenever Im running this light-extension set I cnat do much else besides using C. Cheers, Max