I just played with Maya LE for about an hour today b/c my boss is thinking about buying it. I have to say that Carrara is not that far away from a program like Maya. If Carrara would add bones and integrate Amapi as another modeler then it would almost be feature for feature Maya's equal. As it is this is what Carrara needs to be the best: 1) Integration with Amapi: Carrara's modeling tools are getting old. Carrara needs to get away from this whole triangle crap. If Eovia can make this happen then Carrara will start to really kick butt! 2) UVmapping: Carrara has an awesome shader tree that IMHO no other 3d program can touch. Now it needs to let us map/paint a bit easier. Carrara sucks when it comes to preciesion texture map (decal type) placement. 3) Bones/Physics: This will round out Carrara's animation capabilites. We know its coming so 'nuff said. 4) Kick Ass API: Plug-in's rule and there are alot of amature plug-in writers out on the 'net. It would be awesome if this api was freely available so that amature programers would have an incentive to start making things fit into a regular 3d program. as of right now most of the 3d programs on the net are standalone and do not do much b/c they cant talk to any other program. Imagine if Carrara turned into the after effects of the 3d world? Well these are just what popped into my head after playing with Maya...we'll see what C2 ends up being...I hope it is great! Have a good weekend... -brenthomer

I agree with all you said. But I would add one more to the list. Antialias. The antaialis in Carrara is really bad (from RayDream renderer...) Infini-d's antialias and alpha channel - mask (when you open it in photoshop) was much better and cleaner. ____ Yes, placing texture maps (jps, gifs) is very very difficult (and when you place a mask it looks pretty bad...) I would say unacceptable

well I hardly ever get the rendering stages of my stuff so thats why I probably didnt think of that :) Eovia has said that the new C2 render will be awesome, so I am assuming that the AA problem is taken care of. As for alpha mattes I would say dont give up yet. Look around in this forum for how to do it. The normal intuitive way is to put the mask in the transparency channel but that is incorrect...you need to put it in a blender channel...Anotine & a few others have screen captures showing the process...if you do it the way the engineer's developed it, then it works great. If you do it the way a normal sane person would, you get some weirdo edge.

Brent: I tried looking for the post you mention in the archive .But I dind't find It. I remember seen some examples about this discussion but never the blender channel solution. Could you point me in the right directions? Thanks

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=106&Form.ShowMessage=635179

This post showes how to creat a planet using transparency maping in the cloud chanel- the last post showes the full expanded tree (the aura setting can be omited, it was for the atmospheic glow). I think there is an example on eovia's web site under a tutorial for putting people into a 3D scene.