Customer Reviews

Carrara Studio V3 - Eovia

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Carrara 3 is a very powerful modeler, renderer, and animator rolled all into one. In recent years there has been a great deal of competition for 3D Studio Max, the top of the line from low end software packages such as TrueSpace 4 and Carrara 3. Brand new these low end competitors can cost hundreds of dollars, but this is compared to the thousands of dollars that high end tools like 3D Studio Max and Maya cost.

Now I am reviewing Cararra 3, an older version of this series. Daz/ Eovia or whatever they are called these days, I think are up to version Carrara 6 or 7 now. This version, version 3, costs only about $60 to $80 in most places, but don't be fooled by its cheap price and the fact that it is an older piece of software. This software will have more firepower than probably most people will ever need for most tasks whether it be for animating, 3D art, or whatever.

My favorite modeler is TrueSpace 4, which I have reviewed in this forum. But Cararra 3 has some definite charms of its own and I have begun to like all my modelers for their strengths as I have begun to do some serious modeling. Cararra 3 definitely has its merits.

Carrara 3 is laid out where you do all your activities in various "rooms". For those of you who are familiar with the layout of Poser 5 (the 3D human character application --which I also review in this forum) or any other Poser application, the layout of Carrara will be familiar. (In fact, the same people who created the interface for Carrara also did Poser.) There is an arrangement room where you do all you placement of all your 3D objects that you have created, there is a spline modeler room, vertex modeling room, metaball room, render room and animation room.

The arrangement room is where you set up your scene. You can insert basic primitives (cube, sphere, cone, cylinder, icosahedron, planes) into the scene and after you have modeled other objects they can be positioned in this room. Basic primitives can be deformed and edited, but not directly, you must convert them to vertex modeler format, but the vertex modeler room already has the same primitives that can be modeled, so you don`t really need to use the basic primitives in the assembly room for modeling. Actually the basic primitives in the assembly room aren't meant to be edited or modified (although you can if you convert them), they are just meant as being used for very basic modeling.

Carrara 3 has an excellent spline modeler. Basically what it does is that you can draw two dimensional shapes on a plane or a series of planes to create a three dimensional shape. I have only begun to learn how to use this powerful tool, but I have already managed to create a park bench with it. Low polygon organic shapes can be easily created with the spline modeler and inorganic objects with soft curved contours.

The vertex modeler supports all the basic modeling techniques used in all 3D modelers. Extrusion is supported (both direct and path), deformation, welding of vertices, Boolean operations. You can take objects created in the spline modeler and convert them and edit them further in the vertex modeler (but you can't convert it back!). I like the variety of tessellation and triangulation techniques supported by this modeler as opposed to my TrueSpace modeler.

There are also various specialized tools and elements supported in Carrara 3.

You can create text, both in the assembly room and in the spline modeler. The text objects work differently in both rooms. The text objects in the spline modeler for example can be modified and shaped using spline modeling techniques in the spline modeling room.

In Carrara 3 you can create environmental primitives such as fire, smoke, clouds, fog, etc and particle systems.

Carrara also has a tree modeler and a terrain modeler. Although a modeler can create these without these special tools, these tools are there to make the job easier. Beware though of the tree modeler. It can create easily very high polygon count objects that can slow down a system to a crawl.

Carrara 3 supports metaballs in the metaball room. They are pretty much like metaballs anywhere. This is essentially a kind of virtual putty which have the property that the closer you bring them together, the more they begin to blend together into a single shape. There are negative metaballs to create recesses or smooth depressions in a positive metaball surface. These can be used to create organic shapes.

Cararra also supports sudivision surfaces with control meshes, somewhat like TrueSpace 4 NURBS to create organic shapes.

There is a good key frame editor in Carrara. And you can animate using storyboard technique or by directly key framing.

You can animate virtually anything in Carrara. You can animate metaball objects, spline objects, subdivision objects, vertex objects, lights, colors, shaders. You can animate with paths, and make settings for objects to behave according to the laws of physics. In addition, "bones" are also supported which will allow you to create skeletons for robots and organic creatures to make them move realistically. Special modifier tools exist too that can be animated (such as if you want to stretch an object like a rubber band, or to bulge an object).

Carrara has an extensive shader library which will allow you to texture and color anything to make it look like anything you can imagine. The shaders can become quite complex and Carrara supports and unlimited number of layers of shaders.

You can manipulate lights and create a variety of light types including bulb, sun, spot lights, ambient, shaped lights. There is also an anything glows light where you can make any object a luminous object. Want a glowing cube? Select it apply an anything glows setting to it and it will glow and give off light into the 3D environment.

Carrara 3 has an excellent renderer. This render engine has something closest to photo realism that you can come to for a low end and older renderer. The renderer supports lens flares, caustics (light passing through a magnifying glass and being seen reflected on an object behind it is an example), volumetric lighting ( the fingers of light through the trees on a hazy morning is an example), radiosity (light as it bounces around in an environment -- also referred to as ambient light), atmospheric or sky light. It also supports non photorealistic renderers as well. Want a scene to resemble a painting by a great French or Italian master? Carrara can do it.

Carrara also has environment settings in which you can simulate the conditions of the atmosphere on earth. It actually has a sky, that can be animated, with clouds and sun and moon.

This is just a sampling of all of its features. But in this review, I have highlighted the most important features that it has.

And as a bonus, this software comes bundled with another modeler and animator called Amapi 5 (I now have an in depth review under the listing of Amapi 5). It is not as powerful as Cararra 3 or even TrueSpace 4, but it has great modeling tools as a wonderful complement to my other 3D modelers. I especially love its hull and surfacing tools and its double sweeping tool, and its extrusion tools.

I like Amapi 5 because its interface is similar to TrueSpace 4. It uses a full screen interface rather than a viewport screen as Carrara 3 does. The only bad thing about Amapi's inteface is that the view port has some limited movement, if you want to move completely freely in Amapi space you have to create a camera and move it how you like.

It has a library of shaders all its own and a supports virtually unlimited multiple layers. But I don't think it supports full animation of shaders. There may be some limited animation capability however, but I don't think it supports roto scoping, that is playing a movie within a movie or using a video as a animated texture.

It also doesn't support "bones" for character animation.

It also has a limited selection of types of lights and its renderer doesn't support things like lens flares, caustics, volumetrics.

But Amapi 5 supports true NURBS. You can create objects in one of two modes in Amapi 5, polygon, and NURBS. Unlike TrueSpace 4 NURBS, true NURBS uses spline curves to draw objects. If you read my review on TrueSpace 4, you would know that TrueSpace NURBS is actually a kind of subdivision technique. Amapi uses true NURBS for drawing NURBS objects. It basically uses an internal mathematical operation to calculate curves in 3D space resulting in smoother objects.

My criticisms of Cararra 3 are more based on my matter of preference. I guess you can tell I prefer the full screen editing interface. Although I have learned to work with Carrara's style of interface, I like TrueSpace and Amapi better. One other thing I do dislike about Carrara is having to switch from room to room when creating and modeling and then you really can`t see how it looks in the assembly room. Yes, you do have a small viewport on the lower right of your screen which helps you see what is going on in the assembly room as you modify the object, but if you are working on small details it is hard to see until you go to the main viewport in your assembly room. In TrueSpace and Amapi you do all your modeling/modifications in the same environment. But one disadvantage to this style of modeling is that it becomes easier to model or modify the wrong object by mistake. But I prefer the same area modeling because I can switch back and forth between objects as I like and I can see how the modification to the object I am working on works in relation to the other objects in the scene. If for example, I have a car crashing into another creating a dent in the other car, it is awfully inconvenient to switch to another "room" to deform the car being hit and then switch back to see if you deformed in just the right area.

But all in all, with this bundled package you have incredible power. This is professional level software, but you don`t pay professional level price.

Great product. Even though I have an old computer, Carrara Studio 3 renders quickly. Steep learning curve but product runs smoothly. Definitely need a good manual. I recommend The Carrara Studio 3 Handbook by De La Flor. The book that comes with the product basically tells you what each feature is, not how to use the features. The objects I have developed came out awesome and easily port to other products like Bryce and Poser. I'm very excited about the UVMapper feature, although I haven't used it yet it's why I bought Carrara 3. I used to work with Carrara 2. 3 runs better. I highly recommend this product and the only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is lack of good how to manuals. Thank you Clearancenter and Amazon!

In the quest to lead 3D software, Carrara wins points on cool interface, relatively easy learning curve, but most of all price. The trade-off is its limited documentation. It has no tutorials, only the user manual. Eovia's website features a tutorial section, but it's more like a showcase of how this or that was done. The Help menu leads you to a PDF version of the manual, but it's the same thing as the printed one. And worst of all there are no keyword search option of any kind. In the end you'll have to spend a good buck buying at least one good Carrara book.

Seeking a 3D software application as my first 3D animation tool, I researched many forums and web sites. Carrara Studio 3 was mentioned in several as a "user friendly" and easy to use package. After using it for about a month, I agree wholeheartedly. It has a crisp, visually appealing interface, it includes not only a modeler as part of CS3, but the CD includes a full free version of another Eovia product, Amapi ( for the record, the free version is 2 versions older than the current ).

CS3 has a very nice rendering engine; it may not be the "best" or fastest but it is still very good. It includes many built-in templates that let you start creating 3D material almost immediately. By now I also own another 3D package, and have tried many others, but for easy, enjoyable, and quick 3D images I can't beat CS3. And the price is unbelievably low.

I hesitated about giving it 5 stars, but for a starter package it deserves 5 stars.

This is a great software to start your career in 3D modeling and animation. Really good for people that don't know the first thing about 3D. I'd recomend the carrara 3 handbook by Mike dela Flor.