I have had Carrara for about a week now. I have only been messing around with 3d modeling for about a month. I have been building lots of models in nendo...I loved nendo for its simplicity. The program got out of my way and I could make what was in my minds eye. Then I noticed my models where not yet alive. They all had form but they had no function or context. I want my models to live..."I want them to arobasize" (I know...spelling..but its a great quote." As a video editor I have had a fair amount of graphic tools at my finger tips. Last summer I took the time to learn after effects. I can now do very sweet animations with it. This year I looked at lightwave...holy cow...what a confusing product. Then I found nendo...what an easy product. NOw I have found Carrara. Compared to lightwave and max Carrara seems a walk in the park. I have gotten further with Carrara then I have any other 3d program outside of nendo. I imported my nendo models and have seen some great things. The problem is that I dont know where to start. I still am having some interface problems (I have a human figure...for some reason..no matter what the view in the model room I cant rotate the model around to see the front side!)and I am still somewhat over whelmed. I can learn complex software very easily. With-in hours I was kickin out cool after effects animations and within day's I was taking names on the avid. The trick tho has been that there was always someone who could get me started. It may have been the senior editor at my first job showing me how to set up user preferances on the avid or a "brian moffet" training tape for after effects. I need some good tutorials. I still plan on using nendo to do my base shapes (its a sweet modeler) but I would like to touch up the models in Carrara when Im done in nendo. I need to know how to use shaders. I have the manual. It tells the process...it doesnt tell how tho (does that make sense to anyone but me? :) ) Is there a great source of lessions somewhere for carrara? I plan on buying the carrara bible when its done but even with a release date of this week you never can tell about release dates. Oh well thanks for listening and give me some suggestions as what I should do to get going....I have some objects that need life!!

Hi brent, Well you might check over at 3DCafe.com in the tutorial section... They have some RDS tutorials, not sure if any Carrara tuts have been done yet. Also check our link here at Renderosity on the right side bar - Tutorials. Most Ray Dream Studio tutorials will work with Carrara. You can at least get the general idea and shape it to Carrara. Also - Check out some of the Tuts in the Carrara Tutorial Guide. Tey seem to be pretty good. I hope this helps you out, Clint

Actually I found Lightwave to be very robust and easy unlike 3D studio max which is not a walk in the park. It is about as bad as Autocad 2000. But I do believe that Carrara can be a very good complete 3D solution for beginners and pro's alike. That is the main reason why I bought Carrara too. It is much faster in producing an end product than lightwave.

Doesn't lightwave cost like, $3 gazillion or some absurd amount...? What made me choose Carrara: Interface looked very easy to work with. I wanted an app I could master quickly; so that I could spend years becoming a better artist and not spend years becoming a better user of the tool. I hear it takes people on average 3 years to master 3dsMax. I'm of the opinion that an app should be masterable in days or months at most. The rest of your time should be spent learning how to use your creativity better. On a student discount (I take classes nights after work) it was $199; the same price as Rhino on a student discount. So it was cheaper than the 'proffesional modellers'.

The Carrara Bible is out, ordered it this morning at amazon, and it shipped and will get it tomorrow. If you want to wait til tomorrow afternoon I will look at it and see how it shakes down. Since I AM a newbie, I will be looking at it with those big blue newbie eyes of mine and will be able to tell you if it makes more sense than the manual..lol

Actually Lightwave cost just over $2000.00 and you can get it for less than $2000 at some outlets. 3DSmax cost close to $4000.00 Furthermore, If you wanted to learn programming would you expect to learn it in a couple of days, no! It takes 2 to 4 years to master C++ even after you graduate. The reasons why it takes so long to master Lightwave wave is because they are taking other things into account such as the dynamics of how the program works Lightwave is so much more than modeling and rendering! It allows you to edit every instance of the process in your production.