I have received a $50 amazon gift certificate and would love to purchase a program that does landscapes, but I would love one that I could use my renders for commercial work as well as personal. I think that one of the programs that I looked at yesterday said that you can download it straight from the site, but the program could not be used for any commercial work. I have Poser 5, PSP 7, PSP X, and Adobe Photoshop CS. I haven't really checked out the PS CS as yet, so not sure what it all can do. Should I even consider buying a program just for landscape work? I am thinking that Adobe Photoshop CS can do some of it, but not sure. Confused as heck...LOL I have looked at the Carrara 2 and can get it through amazon for around 65 bucks. Do you think that it would be worth me buying it with my gift certificate? I don't know what else I would buy with it as I do not normally buy too much through amazon to begin with. I have read several posts under this forum which have explained quite a bit as far as differences between certain programs and that has helped immensely. Thanks for the reading...but I am still confused as to whether I should buy the Carrara 2 or if I should buy a different program. I would use it for just simple basic backgrounds that I could use for whatever I personally feel like...commercial or personal. Thanks for all of your input with regards to this subject matter. Have a wonderful day! ;o)

Carrara is a well rounded program, Carrara 4 is a better choice for landscapes, If all you want to do is landscapes take a look at Vue 5 from www.eon-software.com, Bryce 3D from www.daz3d.com or Worldbuilder from www.digi-element.com. Hope this helps. P.S. You can buy Carrar Studio 3 from Purplus for $63.00 http://store.purplus.net/carrara3.html I bought mine from them and am very happy with there service, it renders better and has way more features then Carrar Studio 2.

oh okay cool. My searches only showed the one Carrara item. Will check out the link that you provided. Thank you so much for your input. I know that Carrara has really upgraded versions, but wasn't sure if I could afford anything higher than the version 2. LOL I wanted to buy something that would be close in the range of the gift certificate with maybe me having to only spend a wee bit more. Most of the other programs are way out of my league right now...price ways. I think that I will buy and work with Carrara and see if that works out. Take care and huge hugs! ;o)

Photoshop CS (which is a HECK of a lot more money than fifty bucks -- even Photoshop Elements which is the consumer version is about 99 bucks) is an image manipulation and painting program. If you're thinking about painting your landscapes from the ground up, you can do that with Photoshop elements, but it's basically going to give you a blank canvas and say, "paint away!" Bryce is good for landscapes (look at the galleries here). Carrara, prior to version 4 was pretty weak for landscape work, but the current version is excellent. Maybe someone can weigh in about Carrara Basics -- does it have the landscape and terrain engine? Good luck. - Dex

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=614282&Start=1&Artist=Patrick%5F210&ByArtist=Yes

I think $63 bucks is a great deal for Carrara 3. I disagree with SFDEX, you can do some pretty good landscapes with it, it includes a tree generator and terrain generator. The plus is that you can do so much more with it. You might want to backgrounds for many other types of scenes also. You might even get interested in doing your entire scene in 3D. I've attached a link to a landscape I did in Carrara 3 with the Anything Grows plugin used for the grass. I think that plugin is 30 something dollars, the rest is all Carrara 3.

Patrick

Message edited on: 10/02/2005 22:48

Thank you so much Patrick for taking the time to reply to my message! Your Carrara images are fantastic and I have just enjoyed immensely browsing through your lovely gallery of images. It has truely impressed me and I believe that I am going to buy Carrara. My bump to the version 4...seems to have more power than the version 3. Again thank you so much. Take care and have a fantastic week ahead. Hugs ;o)

I stand corrected -- Patrick. You're right, there were some great terrain things in C3. (Heck, there were even some great things back in the days of RayDream Studio 5.) The improvements in C4 were astronomical, though, so Sue, if you're going to bump to C4, I think you'll be very happy. Good luck!

Thanks! ;o)