http://www.computerarts.co.uk/news/default.asp?pagetypeid=2&articleid=18181&subsectionid=841 !!!
It’s called however CE version and has a PAL rendering limitation of
PAL = 768 x 576 pixels
It doesn’t state clearly however if the resolution limitation is only
for film or still images also.
Anyway for the price of a magazine, this is a “no-brainer”.
Wow, will buy :drool: :buttrock:
Cheers,
Rune
Some more details in a thread on the C4D forum
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=80410
Seems resolution is even lower -> 600 x 400 but upgradeable for a very reasonalbe price to unlimited…
Rune
3D world have also given this away on their CD this month. The upgrade to the fully capable version (effectively Cinema 4D 6XL), known as CE+, is only about £79.
Definitly worth the price.
Unfortunately the mag doesn’t get to the stores here before the end of the month… wait, wait, wait…
I have the C4D v5.2 SE from a magazine last year, and even that was worth the price of the magazine 
I was thinking a lot about buying R8, but I want radiosity and caustics too, so then it’s R8 + Adv Render module=$1000 at once…
I also tested LW 7.0 demo ($995 upgrade-from-anything-offer from Newtek Europe until 15.th sept w/LW8 upgrade incl) but I decided I didn’t want to spend that amount of cash just now, so eventually landed on Carrara Studio 3 and ordered that - which is roughly the same price as some of the plugins that many LW’ers seem to not want to live without http://www.evasion3d.com :shrug: Also, well, the interface needs a bit of an overhaul in LW is my opinion - although many like it just as it is.
(Now Carrara 1.1 is on the next Digit magazine and upgrade from that to C3 is $249 I guess… http://www.eovia.com )
Anyway did some renderings already in the pre-release beta of C3 and it hasn’t disappointed me yet
http://home.online.no/~ru-j-wi/carrarastudio3.cfm
In any case C4D CE will be a nice alternative app to model in :buttrock: - I especially like the particle system (any object or object-hierarchy can be a particle) and quick (volumetric) lights. Also I think C4D is one of the quickest/most stable to import/export DXF/3DS-models for example.
Cheers,
Rune
What made you choose Carrera?
I looked at it when I was looking to purchase software, but Animation Master looked the better package for what I wanted - primarily an animation package. I would have purchased Cinema 4D if I could have afforded it then, I had managed to test out C4D XL 7 and was blown away…but it was out of my price range.
But now thanks to 3D World, I have the best of both worlds…A:M for my character animation…and C4D for anything that I feel requires a polygon approach.
AM crashed all the time - very destructive to the creative process…
No response to bugs I reported. Never got access to their mailing list (I was effectively denied access to one of their “features”). Basically I felt a bit ripped off - like it was a $300-scam, so I didn’t want to get ripped off another $99 and another $99… per year when they maybe were going to fix important bugs…
C3 has Caustics, HDRI, Radiosity, Non-Photoreal renderings, Subdivision/Vertex modeller, Spline modeller, basic particles, fire, fog, volumetrics, atmosphere editor, physics, can import/export much more, nice renders, quite fast, STABLE, advanced shaders, etc, it’s quite FUN to use actually. For animations, admittedly it is not as advanced as AM, but that is not my primary concern.
Also, you cannot find the 4-5 first of those features in any other app at that price.
I still have AM 8.5 in a shelf and sometimes I’m tempted to run it, but the urge to use it soon disappears after some crashes…
Cheers,
Rune
next time you’re tempted, give in. I’m still a big fan of 8.5. Use this forum to post any problems, RuneJW cos you’ll get replies from other 8.5 users here.
If you couldn’t get to the list try killernuts as you can check on the list soon after its up. That way you can quickly trawl for 8.5 specific info.
I personally was not a fan of C4d 5SE - after all the hype (and I remember its original price) it turned out to be C4D Go…
Admittedly blinding renderer et al but…?
Runejw: I agree with hoochoochoochoo, I only got AM at the beginning of this year, and I was sent a CD with version 9.51. When I first tried it, it was crash prone, but the update to version 10.0 soon fixed that.
Any bugs that I have reported to Hash have been dealt with very swiftly, and the mailing list has been a great source of info.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not blind to the products faults, but with a little planning and frequent saving, I suffer no real ill effects.
I also find A:M far more intuitive than Carrera (I’ve only looked at v2), but then that is a matter of personal taste.
If you’re gonna be animating, rather than just stills, I would definately consider dusting off AM and giving it another try. You might even be able to get an update (not an upgrade) at the hash ftp site, I noticed they seem to keep the latest version for each year.
anyway, that’s just my 2 pennies worth
pengwin: 8.5 unfortunately has some bugs that were not fixed until 2001 and I didn’t buy that upgrade, so those who bought AM in 2000 were actually left with some serious volumetric bugs and render artifact bugs. The last version actually re-introduced a previous bug, while fixing another, so it was kind of - WHAT? did they break it on purpose to get people to upgrade??
hoochoochoochoo: From what I read the current 10.5 version is really quite a lot better with faster rendering, more stable etc, so I guess it really is better now.
Otherwise the people using AM are generally very nice
It’s just that I sort of got fed up with the Hash company attitude.
With Carrara I sent a mail to Antoine and got a quick reply on some questions I had before deciding to buy it. Not many company CEO’s are this much in tune with the community - so that was a deciding factor for me.
pengwin:Frequent saving - isn’t there an autosave function in AM yet? There is one in C3 (default 20 min) but I haven’t worried about it, because stability so far is very much like C4D.
pengwin:AM is definitely intuitive - I had the Pterodactyl flapping it’s wings around a motion path the first or second day after I got AM2K (8.5) So, I don’t know why Hash says they can’t make a demo-version because it’s too complex for people to grasp… I think it is more a marketing-ploy… mystique… whatever…
pengwin: Yes, I tried C2 demo and didn’t quite like it at first, but then tried LW7 demo and then back to C2 it sort of gained. Also use right-click to dolly/scale/rotate/move etc - much quicker than the “Bryce controls” on the side. Further adjust Scene effects (on Edit menu) for general lighting (this has gotten more accessible in the scene-hierarchy in C3).
But again for animation AM definitely is much more advanced. Only Messiah Studio is probably better overall there, but then again we’re talking the $995-category.
Even Truespace would probably be better for animation than C3 (?), but I don’t quite like the interface or the slow render speed for some things there… lots of free/cheap plugins for TS however. But TS doesn’t have caustics, and is TS’s Image Base Lighting (IBL) really equal to HDRI ?
Anyway happy rendering ! :wavey:
Cheers,
Rune
your points are accepted - however
With Carrara I sent a mail to Antoine and got a quick reply on some questions I had before deciding to buy it. Not many company CEO’s are this much in tune with the community
for a similar reason I stayed with Pixels 3D a long time ago and longer than I should have probably!
I wouldn’t put too much into what a CEO is about into a buying decision. I mean, have a read of Martins Minutes sometime…
Originally posted by runejw
pengwin: 8.5 unfortunately has some bugs that were not fixed until 2001 and I didn’t buy that upgrade, so those who bought AM in 2000 were actually left with some serious volumetric bugs and render artifact bugs. The last version actually re-introduced a previous bug, while fixing another, so it was kind of - WHAT? did they break it on purpose to get people to upgrade??
I swear I think this is part of their “master plan.”
“Oh that bug is fixed in version 11 - just upgrade! Sheesh! It’s only $99!!!”
If I had a nickle for every time somone said Hash told them to upgrade to fix a known bug - I’d be using XSI right now…
Gotta admit it’s slick though - it ensures that revenue stream keeps flowing. Personally, even though Hash was gracious enough to give me a free upgrade to 10 at the time the fires were burning, they seem to have gone right back to their “old” selves and I have not touched it in many months as my sort of personal protest.
hoochoochoochoo: True, but you never got Martin’s reply on anything did you? Of course since Carrara isn’t main-stream, I’m sort of gambling on it’s evolution…
Pixels 3D - I don’t have a Mac, but isn’t that an interesting product for those who have? Seems to have some interesting features…
Cheers,
Rune
NonProductive
I swear I think this is part of their “master plan.”
I doubt it’s that slick, I mean it’d have to be a bug free master plan wouldn’t it…?
Personally, even though Hash was gracious enough to give me a free upgrade to 10 at the time the fires were burning, they seem to have gone right back to their “old” selves and I have not touched it in many months as my sort of personal protest.
I think lots of people still upgrade unnecessarily. If your version works right on your machine for the time you need it - then stick with it.
For me, 8.5 did just that. I’d prefer v9 or 10 to have built on the best of version 8. I’m happy with 8.5 even for it’s known problems but I tried the upgrade and it wasn’t for me.
RuneJW
Pixels 3D - I don’t have a Mac, but isn’t that an interesting product for those who have? Seems to have some interesting features…
don’t even think of it! Just get into a cold shower until the feeling goes away.
At the time it was marketed as " the poor mans’ Softimage" but did the fundamentally important things wrongly.
A poor mans ferrrari made out of a Pinto, sellotape and red paint is still a Pinto. (apologies to Pinto Drivers - the nearest European equivalent was the Skoda - but they’re cool now.)
hoochoochoochoo wrote:
At the time it was marketed as " the poor mans’ Softimage" but did the fundamentally important things wrongly.
OK, you convinced me, and Carrara aren’t making any claims to being that - just affordable and customer oriented. And basically that’s my experience so far.
Softimage by the way would be my first choice (preferrably with a more user-friendly material/texture system) for animating - if it wasn’t so “need-a-lottery-win-first” expensive.
Pinto? Hey, isnt’t that italian? Isn’t Ferrari italian?? What? - you want more than just italian? …hmm, just joking 
… but more seriously also how competitors use “features” - yes, they have the same “features” on paper but there are varying amounts of quality in the “features”.
Cheers,
Rune
Originally posted by runejw
Pixels 3D - I don’t have a Mac, but isn’t that an interesting product for those who have? Seems to have some interesting features…
Snicker… Chortle… Guffaw…HAHAHAHAHAHAA
whew that was funny, I just can’t help but fall out laughing every-time I hear Pixels mentioned.
There are other people who don’t find it as amusing as I do, who paid for software they never got, who saw the components they did get released for “free”
I’m amazed Pixels still exists honestly. they are purported to have a nice rendering system (Render man compliant and all that jazz) but you’d have to get through everything else to use it…
Personally I downloaded the free version once and was hounded by sales calls for years afterwards. You’d think that they would get the hint that I wasn’t interested in purchasing the software.
-David
d’you know-
Personally I downloaded the free version once and was hounded by sales calls for years afterwards."
I foolishly bought it Pixels3D and I never got hounded…
EDIT:- I’d be interested in any feedback Macusers have about getting this baby to run. I keep getting a CarbonLib error.
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