a:m and eovia carrara studio comparisions wanted

johnathan · 2003-08-08 11:26:42 UTC

hello,

my primary focus these days is realtime 3d delivered over the web, and while i’m in love with arcticpigs, it’s stuck (much like myself) in version 8.5.

i’ve noticed that eovia’s carrara studio has several free 1st party plugins for 3d output, namely webxport and shockxport. cross-platform support for exporting to an existing plugin with a sizable userbase is very attractive to me. so, the question:

keeping in mind that i’m getting old, and i can’t just pick up new software like i used to, i’d love to hear from anyone with experience in both a:m and carerra that could give me some indication of the similarities and the differences between the two applications.

thanks!
-jon

ps: please spare us from any attempts at evangelism.

Wegg · 2003-08-08 14:17:20 UTC

I used to really love Raydream. . . and I guess Carrara is extended from that. . . but I really doubt you will get anywhere near the same robust character animation sools out of that package. Just a guess though. . .

johnathan · 2003-08-08 14:45:56 UTC

i believe that raydream was the precursor to carrara – and it was the ap i was trying to make characters with before i picked up a:m 7.

what drew my attention to upcoming carrara studio 3 was its improved support for spline modeling, which i truly believe is superior to any polygon-based system. when i saw the 3d web export options, i got really interested!

i really want to get into interactive 3d, but i’m not sure that the animation:master / arcticpigs path will ever really pan out – and hash has basically said that they won’t develop any other exporters. regardless, its a big jump, and i need more information… i just don’t want to have to spend $400 and six months to find out myself.

if niels added support for dynamics and a few more minor tweaks, i’d be happy to tell the unsupported mac users to just buy a pc. :twisted:

-jon

ngrava · 2003-08-08 16:34:01 UTC

I’ll bet there is some way to export your animation to DirectX(www.obsidiangames.com - AMXtex) and from there, comnvert to some web 3D format.

-=GB=-

Bill_Young · 2003-08-08 19:10:13 UTC

Originally posted by johnathan
i believe that raydream was the precursor to carrara – and it was the ap i was trying to make characters with before i picked up a:m 7.

Actualy Carara was a Cross breed between Raydream, and Infini-D. Infini-D was developed out of the Center for Knowledge and Comunication (CKC) Lab at Umass Amherst as a project that started from Professor Sandy Hill’s (One of my favorite Umass teachers) ECE660, and 661. I can’t for the life of me remember the two students names who created it and later went on to form Specular, but many people from the CKC wound up employed by specular at one point or another including Raf. Thats where he wound up making his first Dennis Animation, “Windows World.” I both loved and hated Infini-D as it had one of the cleanest, easy to learn interfaces for a 3D program but was far to limited in what it could do for more complex things like character animation. When it got “Metatized” with Raydream and a Bryce like look most folks at the CKC lost interest in it’s future. Raf and I had been searching for software for some time to start a more advance animation class there. Needless to say A:M fit the bill quite nicely, and now is the primary software used in that lab. Still there is a warm place in my heart for Carrara because of it’s origin.

Kevin_Sanderson · 2003-08-09 20:33:13 UTC

You can upgrade from Ray Dream to Carrara for $229. I don’t know how far back it goes, but I have heard that Carrara 2 does upgrade from Ray Dream Studio 5 for certain.

johnathan · 2003-08-19 13:32:43 UTC

ngrava, good to know, but that would require me to learn how to animate using a third program! i’m really looking for direct realtime support. a:m provides this thru arcticpigs, and carrera does this with their own plugins.

it looks like i’ll need to dust off my ol’ raydream serial number and sacrafice some more money to the 3d gods.

-jon

runejw · 2003-08-20 05:40:57 UTC

I own AM2000 and have just ordered Carrara Studio 3

AM is probably much better for animating characters, has a lot of nice features (hair, particles, sprites, advanced constraints) and also from reports renders faster and better in the AM2003 (v10.5) version than previous AM-versions.

Be aware that for AM you need to pay $99 every year you want to get updates. So to continue receiving bugfixes in 2004 you need to pay that sometime early 2004 to get the new CD for that year which allows you to download all the versions/updates released in 2004 etc.

The stability has been a problem in the past for AM, but according to reports this has quite improved.

The quality of effects features impementation was so-so with AM2000 (v8.5), and even moderate use of particles/effects de-stabilized the program. Not sure if that has improved.

Also quite limited modeler and import/export features in AM.

C3 looks very good to me who is primarily interested in rendering quality for still-images, speed, stability and overall user friendliness.

From what I’m seeing at the Yahoo-group for Carrara there’s also primarily good comments about C3 (although some want especially stronger animation features).
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/carrara/

Take one example: AM now supports radiosity and caustics. C3 supports radiosity and caustics too. But from what I’ve read there are 2 important differences: C3 is quicker - and in AM you cannot render caustics & radiosity at the same time - this is not an issue in C3.

I also quite liked the C3 interface (dl the demo of C2 and try it) - and this is an important aspect to try in any app - it is a personal thing how you like any given interface.

Finally some work done in C3 convinced me it can be used for quality work also:
http://www.jwhitneystudio.com/

Final purchase tip:

Buy Carrara Studio 1.1 for about $32 (!) from
http://store.yahoo.com/purplus/carstud11.html
(other shopping.yahoo.com have it for this price also)
Buy the upgrade to Carrara Studio 3 for $229

= total $261
Only sad thing is you have to wait to receive the version from 1) before being able to order the upgrade, and two shipping costs of course which may bring the total higher…

Cheers,
Rune

johnathan · 2003-08-20 15:47:43 UTC

after installing the carrara 2.0 demo, i had multiple instances of deja-vu. the interface is straight outta poser 4, and the metaball menu hasn’t changed a stich stince raydream 5. the killer for me is that their ‘spline’ modeler is really nothing more than a shape extruder, just like raydream 5.

without more research, i’m gonna have to conclude that their modeling tools haven’t changed at all in over 5 years. version 3 touts great advances with their vertex/poly modeling, but i ain’t never going back to polys!

that being said, it just might be worth modeling in a:m, then exporting an obj into carrara to bone an animate for their shockwave and/or viewpoint exporter.

maybe.

-jon

still no closer to a decision. :annoyed:

runejw · 2003-08-21 03:27:57 UTC

So if you only want to use patches and not polygons, doesn’t that exclude just about anything but AM?

Not even SubD modeling?

Anyway the comments on the Carrara forum are that the vertex modeler has improved a great deal:

>This is the first time I post pictures in this mailing list, but it
>has really become so fun to model in the vertex modeller in C3. I
>always had lots of ideas, but now I am actually able to realise them.
>(VM in C2 was just frustrating.) The models were made from scratch in
>the beta and took a few hours each, but regard them as work in
>progress. I look forward to figuring out the UV editor. Hope you like
>them!
>
>John
>
>http://users.skynet.be/fa023784/3dpictures.html

and another link showing some cartoon work:
http://www.crtoons.com/carrara-stuff/three-dee-worx.html

Cheers,
Rune

hoochoochoochoo · 2003-08-21 04:19:50 UTC

i’m gettin old and wrinkly too Jonathon and agree your point about picking up new software…

it just might be worth modeling in a:m, then exporting an obj into carrara to bone an animate for their shockwave and/or viewpoint exporter

If you only want to do that then stick with AM, I found it the easiest software to create low-poly models (yes, after you’ve exported low patch count models from AM). I found most of the later Carrara apps like working through “boxing-gloves” so didn’t stick around long.

Only other thing I’d add to this thread is-

So if you only want to use patches and not polygons, doesn’t that exclude just about anything but AM?

nope!
you forgot “wings” and though it’s been a struggle it was worth picking this up…

runejw · 2003-08-21 10:14:51 UTC

nope!
you forgot “wings” and though it’s been a struggle it was worth picking this up…

Wings 3D is great!

In my mind I just happened to have it categorized in the “poly”/“sort-of-subdiv” box.

Sure it is one of very few apps that can export to AM’s .mdl format, but you don’t work directly with patches - AM’s unique flavour of spline modeling… so that’s why I didn’t mention it.

Anyway I don’t like the modeller in C2, so hoping for definite improvement in C3. If it isn’t … well, then this new “Silo” app is the next thing I’ll check out:

Cheers,
Rune

johnathan · 2003-08-22 07:55:51 UTC

it seems that this subd thing is as close to splines as the poly crowd is going to get. i might play with wings, but my only concern is making realtime 3d animations for the web, so it still looks like my plans are:

a: hope arcticpigs gets an update one day, and/or gets ported to mac

b: model in a:m then import an obj into carrara. the modeling still seems to blow for anything but polys, but the web export is still alluring

c: stop trying to swim upstream and learn to love little trianges (not likely :))

-jon

hoochoochoochoo · 2003-08-22 09:04:28 UTC

it seems that this subd thing is as close to splines as the poly crowd is going to get

Darn 'puter sent my reply before I’d finished typing… grumble grumble spit.
OK, old fogey section over - Jonathon, it really isn’t as bad as you think but your line was sort of gently explored on the feature requests section not too long ago. That kind of line could bring on a war of the Mac vs PC variety…
Back to trying to help, are your web-animations character based or objects and fly-throughs? That could make Carrara more palatable.!
I stand to be corrected but v10 or 10.5 has no feature built in to aid export to the web so if you ever turned and swam with the stream you might find tools more suited to what you are trying to do…

johnathan · 2003-08-25 09:17:51 UTC

don’t get me wrong, i’m not asking for poly tools to be added to a:m. i’m just saying if i ever jump ship, i’ll prolly swim to sub-d. :shrug:

-jon

hoochoochoochoo · 2003-08-27 09:09:21 UTC

did you ever explain what kind of stuff you where exporting for the web?
As I’m continuing to play with flash I got to look at some of the 3d type of stuff. hash is great for low patch models which you might (depending on type of animation) then export as obj or dxf to apps like swift. These apps don’t model or if they do do it at such a low level but what they do is export to web or flash ready format.

Maybe thinking from another angle would help??

johnathan · 2003-08-27 09:59:46 UTC

the problem is, my goal is to create realtime 3d interactive animations. a sample of my work is here: http://www.bluemoonrising.com/darkly/deep/index.html. it features very simple interactivity, but is already far beyond what flash can do.

animation: master and arcticpigs are a great channel for this, while i can live with 8.5p+'s moderate instability, i’m worried about future development for ap. it’s ie/windows only and it seems not to play well with systems that aren’t fairly recent. these factors reduce my audience a bit.

if i have to export out from animation master, i’d need to re-bone, re-animate and re-develop the interactivity in a program i’ve yet to even touch, let alone get proficient in.

carrara looked promising since it meant learning one program that i used to have some experience with which natively supported realtime 3d thru shockwave and viewpoint plugins. pitty i’m already completely familiar with the non-poly modeling tools, since the haven’t changed them at all in 5 years!

-jon

hoochoochoochoo · 2003-08-28 03:34:47 UTC

as I see it you have a problem then if you stay with ArcticPigs and if they are stuck on version 8.5. (It may be however that they are waiting for stability from the AM side before committing to new development?)

I will shut up now as the only remaining alternative is to look at a competitor to ArcticPigs but as they happen to be MultiNational, they may stick around a bit more…

Director 3D

and here’s a French outfit with cool Dolphin and “Bot” 3D Shockwave samples.

TacoTaco · 2003-08-30 21:49:12 UTC

I upgraded to Carrara 3 at Siggraph. I think their renderer is one of the nicest on the market for low to mid range 3d market… Here is an example of a plane I exported from A:M off the CD, in .3DS format, imported to Carrara, and rendered with their global illumination settings

http://polygondragon.crosswinds.net/random/plane_on_a_stick.jpg

For an all Carrara render, here’s something I whipped up in about 15 minutes

http://polygondragon.crosswinds.net/random/nvlogo.jpg

enjoy.

-TacoBallZ
AKA TacoBallZ on #hash3d on irc.freenode
and #carrara on efnet

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