I foun a deel on pozr4 in eeebaaa shud i get it or carrarraarra4?  ummmmm  i du faces paintine real 1s  hurre it expirs n 45 mins
this the rite plac to poset ummmmmmm   here?

Hi Cy, I also use 3D for architectural viz. I'm pretty much with all the above comments on Vue vs. C5Pro. I also have used Turbocad up to v.11 Pro and actually TCAD (v.7) is where I built my first 3D model! Nowdays I use ACAD almost exclusively for 2D and a little 3D work, but not necessarily because I want to just because that company has a stranglehold on the industry. I had to give up on TCAD v11 Pro because of the bugs in the layers and styles dialogue boxes for now. Maybe v12 will have sorted that out. I don't know about Chief Architect, but I have found that with almost any 3D software a spline has to be exported/imported in order to build off floor plans. Illustrator is a good app for exporting vectors ( to become splines in 3D) that are accurate enough to be used as the basis for architectural viz in 3D. The method I use for building 3D from plans is just to make a 3D mass model with only a little detail in the CAD app and then export it as .3ds. The more detailed modeling begins in the 3D app as I bet you know. This works OK for Autocad and especially well for Turbocad. Now my only problem is getting accurate placing relationships and 'snap-to's' in Carrara 5Pro without resorting to very time consuming workarounds. For now, I've had to return to Cinema 4D for really accurate scene building, but C5Pro is really a lot of fun to use, so I keep hoping they will get rid of the limitations that seem to be inherent in the rooms and construction box scheme. C5 Pro is really powerful except for that. Vue may have an edge on it in creating water and atmospheres EASILY but not much. Like the others have said, use Xfrog for trees etc. I've also tried Onyx Tree Pro and it makes excellent trees for arch viz which are highly configurable from low to extreme high poly realism. Good luck, wb

I am always working toward the most subtle and accurate lighting in my work - the printouts I use are usually combed over for realistic effects - or at least a convincing approximation of realism. My projects in real life use subtle relationships of surfaces (color, texture, reflection etc) and lighting. Bounced illumination and the color that it carries is everything! Ever noticed the ceiling of a large meeting room? Chances are that it will show the color of the carpet - which can be either good or bad..... Interior scenes are more responsive to subtle accurate global illumination than outdoor ones. Outdoors, one or 2 bounces max is enough. Accurate lighting is a must for me, whatever time it takes. Thats why I bought the 'Pro' version of Carrara 5.
wb

Message edited on: 03/08/2006 07:40

Hi, thank you for the good pointers. wb

I completely agree with you. That cajomi tutorial is spectacular and continues to be very helpful to me too. An update would be welcome - from anyone for that matter! By the way, Johannes is working on a terrain editor of some sort on his own it seems. It will be great to see what he comes up with. With his new terrain editor and the procedurals and displacement functions in Carrara 5, we'll have it ALL!...almost. I just hope there will soon be some way to properly and intuitively scale and orient architectural elements (models, entities, group elements and etc.) in relation to each other and to that tiny little workbox in Carrara. Those are the biggest hang-ups for me. For the moment I'm exporting either landscape bitmaps or masssive file size poly models from Carrara back into Cinema 4D to make some architectural scenes. I can do that in many terrain editors, but I'm trying to give Carrara a good go at it. I'd really prefer to render my scenes in C5 Pro. but I can't get my head around trying to assemble them there. wb

I took a look at the book in Borders book store yesterday. I am still very new and inexperienced with C5 and I still found found the book almost useless. The Eovia C5 User guide (not exactly satisfying either) has considerably more information. This forum and others like it along with Eovia's user guide are the best thing I've found to learn Carrara. A littel bit better for NEW users would be the tutorial site: lynda.com The much earlier book "Carrara STudio 3" by the same author is even better than this last one - even for C5 users it seems to me. You can get the earlier book for around 5 or 6 bucks at: http://www.thebest3d.com/

Just in case anyone is still interested in this thread.... I too have been interested in these tutorials and did get around to checking them out for myself instead of taking another's word for it. These are very, very basic tutorials and they have some limited usefulness - introductory, basic - just as MarkBremmer says above. They left me with the same questions I had before looking at them and I've been working with Carrara intermittently only about 3 or 4 weeks. If you are absolutely new to Carrara, then they might be somewhat helpful to you - or help you decide whether you want to purchase. No mistake, what is there is well done, just very limited. wb

I think it is a very good idea. As you might be finding out, the user guide leaves something to be desired. Carrara has some good capability, but the practical uses of the functions are buried and difficult to get to unless you have little to do but test render for days on end. This training could save you very considerable time in deciding how well Carrara works for you. By the way, your gallery has some really nice work in it that I very much appreciate. Congratulations. Carrara might be just the renderer you want! good luck, wb

If you are new to 3D modeling, then you will eventually want to render what you model and that may become your most important question at that time. Carrara has an excellent render engine and shading system for the price - or really for any price. It does have a few needed functions that the big boys have but they are somewhat specialized functions. Yet since you do say that cost is secondary, I would take a serious look at Cinema 4D as it is said to be the easiest and most powerful 3d complete program to learn from the beginning. (Carrara is not acknowledged for it's native modeler - even tho many do well with it and have for years.) Cinema also has an add-on facility (a plug-in) to get Poser models in and out which works very well... from Robert Templeton. Aalso, if price is secondary, I would look at MODO too. MODO will soon have a rendering engine of the first quality and its modeling ease is unequaled.

I am learning Carrara because it can do some wonderful atmospheric scenes. If I was primarily interested in modeling only, I'd look somewhere else. Try out some demos - especially Carrara 5. Once you get a feel for one 3D program, the others come a little bit easier.

Carara and Hexagon for modeling is a very good combo. Carrara and Silo is also very good.

good luck,
wb

Thanks for this great tutorial. Has helped me get my understanding around several Carrara concepts I had not figured out yet. regards, wb

GoBack works just fine for me. I regularly use Autocad, Cinema4D, Photoshop and PaintshopPro. And occasionally Painter, Carrara5 Pro, Dreamweaver, Rhino, and sometimes Turbocad 11. No problems at all on Win XP.

I checked your tutorials out and they look very very helpful. They are just the kind of thing I need at my early learning curve of Carrara - especially the one on Anything Goos. I need to understand the mixers and layers in shaders.
Suggestion? Aside from a little spelling error, they are excellent for me. Thank you for posting.
wb

Thank you both, The model room works for me - maybe the assby. room function is disabled in the Demo version - but is something to remember when I get the real software. regards, wb.

I have some experience with Vue5e, Max 6 (as Viz2006) and with the Carrara5 Pro trial version. No experience with Maya.
Of your available choices I would go for the Carrara because it is stable and has an excellent texturing, assembling and rendering function. I have found both Vue and Max to be disappointingly unstable - crashes - even for the pros. If you are going to build scenes, Carrara seems second to Max-except that Max crashes so often. Max is very unforgiving of "wrong" inputs. If you know Poser6, then you know something, at least, about Carrara user interface as they are a bit similar in important ways. Rendering in Carrara (which would include very advanced textures, shaders, lights and so forth) is far advanced to many other software except maybe the very highest end. If you decide on Vue5, do get 5Infinite because the lights in Infinite only support accurate shadows which are an absolute must for good rendering. I also use Cinema 4D and in some important ways, Carrara seems comparable - not all ways - but some very important ones - especially if you don't want to model in Carrara. (Hex, Modo and Cinema are superior modelers)
You mention that you will assemble in Poser - much easier in Carrara. You also mention that you will render some scenes outdoors - infinitely better in Carrara.
Maya? Don't know - download the trials as suggested above. I also know that you would want to think about the community that supports your learning curve - ie: forums and tech support. Carrara seems very good to me so far - I asked a question on the official Vue forum at Eon over 10 days ago and no answer yet. I've ordered Carrara5 Pro. I want in on an affordable upgrade path and a good renderer/scene builder/atmospherec modeler. If cost is no object whatsoever, but reliability is; I'd look at Maya and then decide between Carrara and whatever you find out about Maya. This is a great forum here and at the Eovia site as well.
Regards, wb

Message edited on: 01/13/2006 19:39

Thank you Mark - just wht I was looking for. And yes, naturally, there are quite a lot of separate models to do this to!!! Guess I'll be figuring out how to model in Cararra soon! ;)