Carrara 5.1 review
DownloadCarrara evolves from nearly a decade of MetaCreations' 3D development experience with products such as Ray Dream and Infini-D.
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Carrara evolves from nearly a decade of MetaCreations' 3D development experience with products such as Ray Dream and Infini-D. Carrara will provide a comprehensive, high-end feature set coupled with a blazingly fast rendering engine and revolutionary work-flow approach, SmartFlow.
Carrara will enable the ultimate creative freedom for 3D artists and designers, as well as 2D creative professionals moving into the world of 3D.
Carrara will become a significant component in MetaCreations' family of 3D products that includes Bryce 4, Poser 4 and Canoma.
The MetaCreations' product family contains all the tools necessary to create rich, professional quality 3D objects, environments, human figures and animations. Carrara will contain the most important features found in many high-end 3D packages, such as a hybrid Ray Tracer, advanced shader editors, multiple modelers, real time Metaballs, particle systems, 3D light sources, lens flares, motion blur, key framing, physical effects, deformers and much more.
Carrara will introduce a revolutionary workflow called SmartFlow that will significantly shorten the learning curve for new 3D developers while providing maximum productivity to the power user.
SmartFlow provides an intuitive, progressive interface environment that will allow users to "walk" projects through a series of production steps, with each compartmentalized area featuring the tools required to complete any task necessary. Storyboarding capability within Carrara will enable the fast and effective pre-visualization of animations.
Physical effects will allow users to apply characteristics such as weight and bounce to modeled objects for incredibly real animation effects. Carrara will also support the industry standard MetaStream file format to allow the creation of high quality, compact 3D objects for streaming over the Web.
Here are some key features of "Carrara":
User Interface
NEW – Redesigned User Interface
NEW – Custom Keyboard shortcuts
NEW – Update Notification
NEW – New Presets
NEW – Tips Dialog
Now in both versions – Sound support
SMP/Multiple Processor Support
MMX Support
SmartFlow
Assemble Room
Model Room
Texture Room
Storyboard Room
Render Room
Scene Wizard
64 Levels of Undo/Redo
Hot Keys
Drag and Drop
Browser Tray
Properties Tray
Multi-Monitor Support
Carrara SDK
Preferences
NEW – Select Language
Maximum Undo Level
Multiple Monitor Settings
Window Mode
Full Screen Mode
User Interface Color Scheme
User Interface Effects
3DView Manipulators display size
3DView Nudge size
3D Units
Production Frame Safe Area
Imaging, Scratch Disk
Browser/Wizard
Drag and drop object into scene
Drag and drop objects into Browser
Save object in browser
Save Shaders in browser
Save Effects in browser
NEW – Redesigned Browser/Wizards
NEW – Wizard mode in browser
NEW – Edit Wizard in browser
NEW – Save atmospheres in browser
NEW – trees presets
NEW – particules presets
NEW – clouds presets
Interactivity and Previews
Software Interactive Rendering
Improved – Open GL rendering
NEW – Multiple lightmaps
NEW – Camera Navigation with 3-button mouse
Bounding Box Rendering
Wireframe Rendering
Lit Wireframe Rendering
Flat Shaded Rendering
Gouraud Rendering
Improved – Textured Rendering
Sketch Rendering
Antialias Wireframe
Wireframe Working Box
Improved – Reflections
Transparency
Solid Working Box
Object Silhouettes
Rendering Mode Degradation
Level of Details
Front View
Back View
Left View
Right View
Top View
Bottom View
Isometric View
Camera Views
1,2,3 or 4 Views.
What's New:
Poser Native Importer:
Error while converting Poser figure to vertex object
Problem finding textures
Problem when conforming figure (message: incompatible figures)
Problem importing "Skeleton Man.crz"
TransPoser (Pro Only):
Crash when importing a scene containing an IBL light
Network Rendering: figures imported with TransPoser are not rendered on the render nodes
Replicator:
Problem with shadows when rendering replicated objects in the batch queue
Surface replicator: problem when replicating on an object inside a group
Object replicator preview doesn't match the rendered image
Shading Room:
Problem with shader selection menu
Unstacking a lighting model generates an error
shading room: using a terrain distribution shader on a deformed object crashes the preview.
Misc
Smooth Objects Scene command: should not affect volumetric primitives
Graph editor: create key frame in the mini-graph doesn't update the ui
Matchmoving: importing a Syntheye file referencing a movie with a number of digits different than 3 makes the import fail
Forces in particles - transformation of force give unpredictable results
Vertex Modeler: Crash when scaling a vertex object
Duplicated objects will not attach to the bones
Error message appears when performing 3D boolean operation with a deformed object
Dual monitors: Windows cannot be moved to the top of the secondary monitor
Mac Os X:
Some custom shortcuts are not reloaded from the preferences.
Saving 16 bits displacement map internally does not work
Crash when pressing play with OpenGL enabled.
Requirements:
Power Macintosh G3 266Mhz or better
128 MB of RAM (256 MB recommended)
16-bit Color Display (24-bit recommended)
CD-ROM Drive
300 MB free hard drive space
3D graphics accelerator card recommended.
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