Attached Link: http://www.fotoonz.com

Hi All, There's an outfit selling Cararra 3 Studio new, in the box, for $49.00. Would it make sense to buy this then UPGRADE to Carrara 5 Pro, for whatever that costs??? I am in desperate need of a good rendering alternative to Poser 6. Poser's output quality is okay, if you set things up right, but I get dumped constantly due to memory problems. I have 2gig of fast DDR2 DRAM. I have Vue 5 Infinite. It doesn't seem to do a good job on Poser people, and that really isn't what it's made for. I have Lightwave 8.5 with the Greenbriar plugins, but that isn't in any way practical for transferring big scenes. Cararra looks to be the best choice. Is this $49 thing a scam??? You can see on my site the renderings I'm doing. Is Cararra a good option for this??? I seek the voice of experince! :-)

I bought C3 for that price, it's a great package. I also used it as a upgrade path. They did a great job on C5.

purplus is legit on that. And it would save you lots of dough.

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.

Well, that's what I'm going to do, I think. You hate to buy a whole new app just for rendering, but there it is. It seems to be the only way I'm going to be able to get my work done. I haven't experienced this many hangs and crashes since I first got involved with 3D (CAD) in 1980. I see that C5 Pro supports sub-surface scattering. Nice.

Hmmm... I guess the next thing to worry about is whether Cararra can handle some of these humongous Poser scenes without croaking?? I've been trying to render a scene consisting of ratracer's Cafe II and two figures all evening. I think I've crashed six times (about every other test render).

I've found Carrara's render to be pretty stable. I've put it through an 8,000 by 8,000 pixel render and it handled it. Also, people have pushed the latest version C5 with thousands of polygon modelled trees (each tree can be upwards of 10,000 polygons) without Carrara croaking, although it can take alot of time depending on settings, but that's true with any app. I think you'll be happy with it and C5 supports Poser figures natively yet also includes TransPoser 2 to give you access to Poser's Dynamic hair and clothes. Andrew www.awbenson.com

C5 is pretty stable and is an excellent renderer and does lots of other things. Go try the demo.

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.

I'm impressed for sure! Making the jump from Bryce; very exciting indeed) Now all I have to do is stop thinking in terms of primitives lol.

I never intended to make art.

It sounds like just what the doctor ordered. So, I ordered it. Thanks for the advice! Gordon

Dr ordered LOL!! I need a prescription for symmeterical modelling!! :P

"I've been trying to render a scene consisting of ratracer's Cafe II and two figures all evening" I've done that many times with C4 Pro. No probs so far. Renders fast too.

Attached Link: http://www.fotoonz.com

C5 Pro arrived on my front porch yesterday. I'm liking what I've seen so far. Very nice user interface. Well thought out. I moved a scene over to Cararra, just to see how that works. It supports all the 3D info, but not the lights and cameras and so forth, is that right? That's fine. I like the way Cararra deals with setting up the lighting. I've always hated Poser's miserable lighting setup. Cararra's is much like LW in that respect. I like being able to toggle between working on the models and working on the scene, also. Very nice. So, I've got a lot of learning to do! And still have to get 'toons done in the meanwhile, of course, so I'll be squeezing the learning in between times. I put a new rendering up on the site today.