Nice modelling! I think the spline modeller will always remain a complete mystery to me. How come no Amapi this time?

I think Amapi Pro is a more of an all round modeller then Modo. Modo is part of the SDS Nendo/Mirai winged edge craze that is going on at the moment. I don't think Modo does Nurbs at all. I think Modo was created to fill the gap that was left in the Market when Mirai disappeared. That being a VERY powerful but easy to use modelling, texturing and animating tool with a nonlinear work flow. Since Mirai many apps have emulated its feature set (Wings, Silo and some of the big name apps have borrowed ideas). One interesting application that is on the way is Madsie Freestyle. No real demos are avaliable at the moment but the developer seems to be on a similar path to Modo albeit he wants to release a freeware version and also make a pay version that is not too expensive.

The thing is what exactly is so pro about the features that they have included in the pro version? Blurry reflections are avaliable in Bryce (nothing really pro about this), Transposer is only useful for people with Poser (again not many 3D pros are poser users) , Cadstyle is just a set of import filters. I think that the Inclusion of Amapi Designer is a great idea and my hat goes off to Eovia for this. The network rendering is definately a pro feature. With Amapi the split between pro and designer felt natural because not everyone would want nurbs or be willing to pay for them. The pro and standard versions of Carrara feel very artificial. It is almost like they did not have enough reasons to justify the split so they threw in some plugins to justify it. The core application does not seem to have changed enough to warrant an upgrade.

The inclusion of Designer is a good idea for those that dont have it. It looks like a great application.

I think TS seems like a great app but the impression I get is that there are lots of half implemented features that dont really work as well as you would expect. Instead of developing features properly it seems like they have spread themselves too thin and made an app that covers a lot of ground but not with much depth. I wonder what 7 will be like.

I think as a new buy, pro is okay value but as an upgrade I am not yet convinced. I also dont like the idea of pro and standard versions. It smells of a company trying to make an extra buck out of the customers instead of trying to give the customers the best value for money. This is the reason I got Carrara 3 because it was a great product with amazing features added and if this pace of development continued then it would be an amazing pro level application in no time at all. I really hope they are keeping the best fetures underwraps till the release date is near.

Am I the only one that was expecting a bit more from this release? Version 2 to Version 3 was a big jump. Apart from adding some bundled plugins to the package there isnt much here that is that impressive. It seems more like Carrara 3.5 then Carrara 4 :( Mabey it is just Eovia understating how much is in their release is like they sometimes seem to but I have not been impressed yet.

I still use Amapi 5.15 and when I take objects into Carrara as a3d I find that rendering errors can sometimes occur I think due to the construction . I found that the rds format seems a bit more stable for export and it preserves quads. You would probably have to convert all Nurbs surfaces to meshes then export as I doubt rds supports nurbs.

I have had some errors of this sort. I find that it is best not to save to anything but bmp or psd because errors can occur. During the time that I used Strata I found that there were far more errors that occured, moving to Carrara in terms of bugginess was a dream becuase the problems are relatively few. My main problems is: Importing an OBJ created with wings as a vertex primative, subdivde smooting it then rendering with GI and indirect light can cause a render time error that freezes the program. I found that importing the object, Saving the scene and restarting the program seems to eliminate the problem.

Is this a US only offer?

I really am curious myself! I did hear a romour about greatly improved animation tools but no-one knows anything for sure.

I dont think Eovia missed out at all on Bryce. They really do have their hands full making Carrara and Amapi the respected successes that they deserve to be. Having a third quite distinctly different product would just be confusing to the buyer. I think Eovia will move in the direction of making the Amapi Carrara combination a complete 3D suite with great modelling and rendering tools. They can inmplement all of that Bryce/Vue stuff into the interface and produce a package that is better then both because it is usable for more then just landscapes. What I would like to see is an alternative to Photoshop that integrates fully into the 3D design workflow. Anyone who knows Painter well, knows that with some enhancements it could be a serious contender with PS as the 3D Texture creator of choice. If Eovia bought Painter from Corel and improved on the tool set, and fixed the bugs, they could capture a serious segment of the 3D amateur/profession market no problems.

My Predictions for Carrara 4 -New look interface more inline with Amapi Pro The reason is that the current look is quite old and although Carrara is a pro app is is often dissmissed by people due to looking a bit childish. -Rendering of Nurbs surfaces -Improved UV mapper (please) -Greatly improved SDS toolset in the vertex modeler My Wants for Carrara 4 -More control over specular highlights. The current model is quite basic and limited. A microfacet based specular shader would be great. -More control over texture rotation ie rotation of a texture uv space. -Ability to perform operations of groups of objects like apply shaders, smoothing. -Ability to rotate the GI Skydome -Better support for area lights. Things get messy unless the best render settings are used. -More control over radiosity settings like the number of bounces and finer controls over light quality. -More accessible SDK -Tabbed interface. Having indows on top of each other can get messy. -Easier assignment of bones influence

Something about the lighting in the render looks odd (A very helpful comment I am sure :) ) I love the crate it looks awesome.

I do the same as Shonner. I like the production frame, it helps me visually crop the render before I do it if that make sense. Very useful I think.