I received the C3 Beta today and my first impressions are positive. I really like the UI improvements it makes things much faster to navigate. I haven't yet tried the new modeling features but I did render a test scene that I did in C2 with a imported Poser character. I rendered the scene in C2 using Global Illumination, indirect lighting and it took about 8 minutes. I rendered the same scene in C3 and it took about 3 minutes. I changed nothing and it appears all the same settings were present. The only thing is that the image rendered in C3 was quite a bit darker. I am not sure why... Maybe I should post the two images... All in all this looks to be a solid upgrade and lots of new stuff in there. If you were holding off on that C2 upgrade, C3 may be a winner for you. Regards, Paul

Sounds like a definite improvement. What are your system specs?

I am running now on a Dual G4-450 Mac with 1GB RAM and OSX. I also have a Pentium 4 2.5ghz that I want to try it on too. But most of my tinkering is on the Mac. Has a major speed improvement for sure. -Paul

where i can get a test version of C3?

Sounds impressive, I'd like to see the times on a G5 (wish I had one to try it!) Is that OS 10.2 +?

PAGZone,

Since I run Intel, I'd be interested in the same C2-C3 comparison on the P4 2.5 box. I'm looking at upgrading to a Dual AMD, if I can find the Asus board for sale somewhere.

isulaelu, eovia is sending the prerelease version to customers who preorder. Not sure when the cut off date is. Best regards, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild 3D plug-ins for Carrara http://digitalcarversguild.com

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins

Willf, Yes it is OS 10.2.6. Oh I want a G5 bad... ;-) I will have to wait till early next year though. Hopefully they will announce new configurations then and it will be a second revision of their new board. First revisions tend to have some glitches. milamber42, I will run these on the P4 too, I am curious to see the difference myself. -Paul

Thanks (I planned on Revision "B" also for the G5)

As promised, I loaded CS3 on my PC and here are the results: My test scene is a simple Poser figure (The Daz Farie) with default textures and 2 lights, one set next to 0 just for the flare effect. Global Illumination was used as render engine, with indirect lighting turned on. Mac is a Dual G4-450 with 1GB PC100 SDRAM and OSX 10.2.6 PC is a Pentium 4 2.53Ghz with 512MB DDRRAM (333) and Win XP Pro. Really not a fair comparison as the Mac is several years old (early 2000) and the PC is pretty recent. Anyway Carrara 2.1: Mac - 7:39 PC - 2:43 Carrara 3 Beta: Mac - 2:02 PC - 0:49 Quite a significant performance boost in rendering. However the scene rendered in C3 is darker on both platforms and I have yet to figure out why. Maybe some switch or light setting defaulted to something other then what was set in C2. So if you have an older Mac you get a major speed boost. Now I just need to figure out why I am using this old Mac when my PC is obviously faster...;-) Can't wait to see what a G5 does this in... Cheers. Paul

Paul , Check your skylite settings ,if you have them set in c2 they dont quite make it to c3.This should brighten up your image. Regards Mike

Thanks for the info PAGZone.

Thanks Mike. I checked my settings and it looks like they are both (c2 &c3) set the same. The ambient and sky presets were identical in either version.

There is a new option in the render tab for Sky Light. I checked this and raised the intensity to 100% but it is still darker. This is likely the issue but if I like how the scene is lit with CS2 GI, shouldn't CS3 be close to the same or do you have to always tweak the scene when a new version comes out?

Here is the C2.1 render...

Here is the CS3 beta render with no setting changes...

Mabye it is a bug that can be fixed before the final release.

Well I found out from Eovia it is not a bug. they moved the skylight controls to the render options. SSo to get the same effect as in CS2.1 I had to enable the skylight option and set it to 400%. Now doing this kills the render time and it takes 7 minutes on Mac. Not sure on PC yet so the previous benchmarks are no longer valid. I am now wondering if this is the cause of the speed improvements on the other tests I have read about on Yahoo... Hmm.... Not much of an improvement there, about 20 seconds. Well I guess that is better then nothing and perhaps other scenes will give better results. Regards, Paul

How 'bout the interface, though? Especially the modeler- that's the one thing that drove me nuts about Carrara 1 and 2. I can do fine in a setup like MAX or Raydream, but I need all my functions where I can reach them, not squirreled away in some bizarre place. The other stuff like the crappy imports and transparency bug I can at least live with to get the better effects, but when making a scene takes twice as long as it should because you have to hunt through a menu list to make a cube, and then it does it at some wierd scaling because you can't see what you're doing...

You should like the improvements in the UI. It is much faster and easier to get to things now as all the windows are tabbed and easier to navigate. view some of the screen shots on the Eovia site to see the improved UI. Regards, Paul

can't tell much from the screenshots eovia have provided... durn, I am really interested in seeing a screenshot showing two things... 1) the new modeling tools in the vertex modeler... I mean, is there a move>normal, or an extrude>region...etc... are there edge tools to compete with even those found in Wings3d... I mean is this really and finally a real modeler or is it still a blast from the past? 2) the new extrude set in the Spline modeler... what is it like, what does it do... can you "box" out something in the spline room now? oh, how I wish I could see if these things have been addressed, and or how they work... whether or not this will really help my modeling or whether I wait for MOdo and continue to use Wings or C4D for my box modeling needs... I prefer to render in Carrara over all others, but never, and I mean never do I model in Carrara Studio 2, and... not only would I like to change this, but... I would just love to see Carrara finally being the app I have always thought it should be... :D