One thing about the C5Pro displacement maps, they do not really do true mesh forming as DCG's version. When I tried exporting a displacement map from Carrara (with Carrara's) the mesh (an obj sphere) was not distorted after I imported into Vue 5I. DCG's will.

"This is true. The only way around this is to deselect cast shadows on the glass object. Which in many times this will work, but I realize that their are many cases where it won't."

Problem with that solution is then the light cones become super XRays beams, and will pass through about anything. I didn't even get into photon attenuation.

Of couse the problem is that the visible (light cones) are really post rendering effects, not raytraced effects.

The above example does not employ the visible light cone with particle/shadow effects. But certainly is a good example of raytraced light effects.

BTW, I compared "Anything Groves" and C5P's displacement texturing on identical objects/textures. Carrara's native displacement maps are much quicker and resource efficient.

Well, if folks accept the idea that a PC can auto-replicate it's way to making art, then we might all as well pack up our art tool boxes and head back to the caves in France. There we can start back on the wall paintings do some real art.

I've owned Vue5I for about 7 months now, and it is probably better at doing pure landscape work; however, after playing with Carrara's surface replicator I'd say that it will work fine for most landscape art. Vue does created unique individuals when it does its ecosystems. I really dont think it would take that much more resources for Carrara to do the same?

To compare Carrara to Vue is a bit...useless, as Carrara's overall capabilities leave Vue way behind. I am very disappointed with e-on's marketing, as Vue5I is likely one of the most undeveloped 3D applications ever released in recent history. It was really a beta, not a well beta tested product when it was released! I think about 12 patches were released over a 5 month period!

I've been hammering Carrara5 most of today, and I only got one exception (don't really know what I did) but the program did not crash, and exhibited no outlandish behavior afterwards. That's damn good for a beta!

My only complaint (which has been one for some time) is Carrara's poor implementation of visible, volumetric lighting with shadows. They won't stream through glass! The light passes through, but the nice foggy beams stop cold. Also, the color of the glass (or other transparent material) is not picked up and transmitted beyond the, glass. trueSpace excels at this, and even Vue5I will do it, but for some reason, Eovia lets this one get through revision after revision?

Sure, I can remove window panes, so (as an example) the multi-pane windows will cast a nice shadowed spray of foggy light, but that is cheesy!

So, when I need that kind of scene, I go to trueSpace, or model in Cararra, and import to Vue.

If someone at Eovia is reading this give us some good realistic volumetric, visible, foggy particulate laden lights! Do this before C5Pro hits the streets. This tired spotlight (and other light effects as well) has been pretty much unchanged from the old RD days!

So far, this is my only real complaint with C5Pro, and it has been ongoing since Carrara 2. If someone can enlighten me (no pun intended) concerning some possible ignorance that I posses? (And yes, all the requisite light rendering functions are active).

The organization of the new material editor kind of threw me off a bit. Not 'cause it is bad, but because it is quite (organizationally) changed. I haven't spent much time with it yet (I don't have the install on this box -- my other 2, with C5Pro installed are busy with V5I scenes!) The functionality seems pretty much the same, however?

I do know that Carrara now has true displacement textures. I use the Anything Grooves plug-in, and it does the same thing; however as I previously stated, the full integration of the feature seems much better than the plug-in, and I suspect the resource efficiency of the Eovia implementation will be much better.

One thing charlesb might comment on, is whether or not the surface replicator hooks in to the Carrara plant editor to generate a random tweak for each created object instance? This would produce the random individual variations within a Carrara plant species when populating instances. I cant check that right now, and all my playing around with this tool involved rotation and scale variation should have just replicated some trees without the rotation & scaling changes would have my answer.

As I get more first hand experience/information, I'll pass it on.

Message edited on: 10/30/2005 20:04

I downloaded the C5Pro beta yesterday. I have been using Carrara from Ray Dream days (though I used trueSpace more -- hardly used Ray Dream was too clunky).

Carrara 5 Pro, so far, is the best upgrade ever for this product. Going from rev. 3 to 4 was a bit of a disappointment for me, but this version is worth it!

Carrara's equivalent to V5I ecosystems (which I purchased 7 months ago), surface replicator, has some real advantages. For example, you can create 3D "shadow instances" (so to speak), of objects, or real instances that can be manipulated. If you have a close-in scene with a lush background, you can populate the background with thousands of shadow 3D objects to save resources. You can then populate the close-in area with true instances that can be precisely manipulated (you can convert existing shadow 3D objects to real instances).

Im not trying to initiate some Carrara vs. V5I debate, but as an all around application, Carrara 5 Pro beats V5I hands down! (BTW, Im writing this on my 3 GHz PC as my other workstations are each rendering large V5I files).

Carraras Poser imports are superior to V5I, and while Carraras rendering engine has less minute user control, it is much easier to achieve a quality render. I spent 3 days screwing around trying to get a decent 6000 X 3300 pix render with V5I, and it was not a huge file! Vues render to disk is not very good. My Windows Task Manager would show an initial resource load of ~ 225 MByte. This would (over about an 8 hour period) balloon up to ~1.95 GByte then V5I would simply go away without any fanfare! I was not setting the render option anywhere near the max.

It is true that some of the added features were available as plug-ins, and I have all of the major ones. But Eovia integrated them in, and greatly improved their functionality, while using fewer resources.

I wont go into more, but Carrara 5 Pro seems much closer to a high-end application than rev. 4, and the new interface is almost a piece of art!

After about 5 hours of playing with the beta, no crashes!

Message edited on: 10/30/2005 18:09