thanks all for responding i did get carrara. when things settle down at work, i'll plunge into it!

hi all- thanx for your help. thanx willf, i downloaded pixel3d and will check it out after work tonight. boton- yeah, i plan on using premiere and after effects to composite and print it. 'it' being a demo reel. i'm not looking to be a production artist, so i figure it's not important to build it in 3d max, which is 'the standard' in the states. your using matrox is helpful.

long b4 i understood the concept of the alphabet, i was drawing. my mom literally couldn't supply enuf paper. as soon as i was old enuf to handle power tools, i was making christmas decorations for the front lawn. in jr. high i discovered pyrotechnics- not bombs, painting the sky with colored fire. about this time i discovered i didn't have the patience for traditional 2d animation, but i did like moving images, so in high school i was designing sets and special effects for plays- puffs of smoke and the like-which i've continued up until now. i wanted to get into film, but that didn't work out. while working in theater, i discovered there's nothing like the visceral experience of a shared live event. anyway, awhile back i collaberated with another scenic designer who had moved to 2d graphic design and i decided to check it out. while exploring all the possibilities, i discovered that in these times, anyone with a computer and a camera can be a one-person film studio. 2 years ago a friend unearthed a series of stories he wrote in college about a futuristic pleasure city named 'nightown.' these stories have so ignited my visual imagination that i want to develop them into virtual models, illustrating them with camera fly-throughs and illustrating some of the stories in anime. they're fun and pretty dark. also, i've always wanted to design for amusement parks- rides, layout, and landscaping. i figure with the escalating costs and dimishing supplies of land and building materials, more attractions will move toward 3d simulation, like the spiderman attraction at universal studios. designing for that is really attractive. did you know there's a company that actually builds and sells a holodeck for the design industry? it's about a 10' cube. when the 3d technology that's used in industrial design moves into the entertainment business, i'd like to be positioned as a designer/content creator. so why carrara? infini-d was highly recommended to me. lightwave has proved too shaky on the mac. i like the amapi interface. it's a lot like using hand tools.

thanks, litst so.... is there a way to get the old particle emitter from the old metacreations version of carrara and plug it into 1.1? in carrara studio 1.1, can you create a null object and set it on a motion path? could you then get spheres to track the null and make bubbles that way by cloning them? in my innocence, i can imagine work-arounds to the issues you address, which i really appreciate. could you turn the scene so the leaf is the floor and then turn it around in after effects? well, you needn't respond to all this- just pondering... if it's stable and quick to learn, i can find these answers for myself.

thanks, all, for your help. i'm just learning amapi 5x and like the feel of it very much. it's seems about as close to working with real world hands tools as you can get, and that's my background. litst, when you say the particle system in carrara can't do much, could you elaborate? i understand carrara doesn't have a physics engine. is this so? thanks again

hi- thanks, robertzavala, for responding. by weak, i mean even the simplest tools won't function, ie: the bevel;the knife: it can freeze or crash when calling up the numeric pad; the numeric pad has no effect on the move tool and must be done manually; object files become locked and unchangable- even copies of the files; sometimes the interface draws in such a way as to make it unusable. in other words, i haven't been able to compomplete a single model, let alone place it in a scene. also, it doesn't have a chamfer tool, which i can't live without. the particles, physics, and vertex maps all sound great, and are the reasons i bought it, but i doubt i'll ever use them. the 6.5b upgrade is even worse and i've had to deinstall it. it installed some ati extensions that screwed up my system's screen drawing, and i'm still trouble shooting that. tho they say it works on some macs (SOME macs???)they're not yet forthcoming about the necessary system configuration. but they promise to exchange my mac dongle for a pc dongle for free, now i just have to find out the best pc configuration to run it. i hear dual athelons are the best. it's the rendering i was attracted to. i hear it's up to 70% faster on a pc than mac, tho. just proves you need to do your research... i prefer amapi's modeler interface, btw- closer to using real world tools, which is my background. thanx, and keep those opinions coming, folks!

is it stable? how about it's animation and rendering times? do the effects really work?

hi- ok, carrara is a weak modeler. how is it at animating and rendering? i'm considering buy it, as eovia has an upgrade program from amapi. i bought lightwave 6.5 recently. talk about weak! it's completely unusable! all i want is a stable modeler/renderer to use on a mac to produce some animations to print to video. anyone have some suggestions? all opinions are of interest. thanx