Hi there - I have used Ray Dream Studio 5 a little bit over the last few years, but not very intensively. I'm wondering a few things I am hoping some of you can answer: 1) Physics - never got going with it in RDS; how do the physics in 5.5 compare to Carrara? 2) Rendering - I think I read that Carrara doesn't output animation in NTSC 29.97 fps format... What I want to do is make animations I can dump to my digital video camera, but I believe I need to be able to render at this rate. Is there a way to do this with either package? I have Adobe Premiere and After Effects, but I can't remember if I can translate existing "footage" to 29.97. 3) I heard there are some open issues with Carrara, but not what they were. Could someone let me know? That's all for now - thanks in advance! Andrew

Andrew - Only answer I can give you is regarding question 2. Yes, AfterEffects can "pull down" your footage to 29.97. All you have to do is select the frame rate in the render options when you're making the movies. I don't remember exactly how to do it in Premiere, but I'm also sure it's possible. Good luck!

Andrew, I use Carrara all the time to produce professional television elements and the 30fps rather than 29.97fps is not a huge limitation. As Azchip stated, you can use After Effects to correct it if needs be. Another thing you might want to consider trying is field-rendering which is basically making two images per frame. Animations being produced for television looks much smoother if they are field rendered, however it also depends on the effect you are trying to achiev e. A quick and easy way to do this is render it in After Effects with field rendering enabled in the render module. You have to experiment to find out which field your editing system draws first (upper or lower) and set it accordingly in After Effects. Another way is to render in Carrara at 60fps but as this would increase the render time dramatically I wouldnt recommend it. Email me if you have any questions or if I've confused you. -Robert Lech