In the past, Carrara seems to have been seen as an also-ran compared to the big-name professional packages like 3D Studio Max and Maya. While the name is popular enough that many people have heard of it, the package isn’t well known in Hollywood or on the architectural rendering and visualization circuit. This partly a heritage issue – Carrara has never been aggressively marketed to the high-end, with Eovia apparently preferring more interest from hobbyists and semi-professionals.

Carrara Pro 4 is the latest incarnation, and includes some significant updates on the older Carrara Studio 3. The package includes an upgraded version of the Carrara rendering and animation environment, a CD full of sample context, and also the Amapi 7 3D model. First impressions are of a stylish but not self-conscious look and feel – like a more grown up version of Bryce. In fact, Bryce users should feel right at home because the main Assembly page uses the same trackball and scroll arrows navigation and editing system. And some of the presets also specialize in Bryce-like skies and textures.

But this is a much bigger and deeper package, and it soon outstrips the Bryce basics. One obvious difference is that instead of one main window, there are five. The assembly window is where most of the action takes place, but there are also windows for modeling, texture and shader control, and rendering set-up – plus a storyboard window, which is just a mini-render animation preview tool. This collection of views is a slightly confusing part of the Carrara experience. Not only do they appear and disappear in a rather random and not very logical way, but instead of being project based, some of these windows are file based. So for example when you close a render window, only the output image file is closed. The original modeled assembly is still kept in memory. This can take some getting used to and should really be reworked, because it’s both non-standard and unnecessarily confusing.

He’s a model
The list of modeling tools is impressive. Aside from various geometric basics, such as spline and vertex modeling, there’s also a handy and fast equation modeler that converts 3D formulae into renderable shapes. Better yet is the powerful terrain generator, which can produce very impressive flythroughs and landscapes. You can populate this with trees produced in the tree and plant modeler, and light it using the output of the sky, fog and atmosphere editors. It’s also possible to use volumetric fog and lighting to produce the famous Hollywood exploding light effect.

Models can be twisted, blown up, fragmented and otherwise abused using a variety of animated and static modifiers. It’s very easy indeed to explode an object, or create an animated directional force to move it or deform it. Settings for modifiers can also be stored as presets, and Carrara comes with a good collection of these pre-installed and available in the browser window. You can apply these without worrying too much about how their parameters work, and then graduate to finer control when you’ve had a chance to play with them for a while. The relative accessibility of these features means that beginners are more likely to experiment with them than they would be in a more somber package. This is one area where Carrara really stands out – it doesn’t just provide all the features that are standard in 3D, it also makes it fun to experiment with them.

Input, output
Carrara’s output has been criticized in the past for being too shiny and clean, and some of the shaders and rendering options in Pro 4 have been modified to take this into account. It’s still true that the results have a recognizable look – but then so does the output from most packages. The difference here is that advanced features like caustics, global illumination and blurred raytracing have taken away some of the too-perfect edge and made it possible to produce very high quality photo-realistic results that aren’t quite so clean.

The range of built-in shaders also helps here, although the number of textures that are supplied as part of the package could perhaps be bigger. Carrara uses both bit-mapped and procedural shading, and can also produce layered effects for accurate skin tones and more exotic and creative applications. The lack of alien-world wackiness may disappoint die-hard Bryce users, but it’s a good incentive for users to put their own custom textures together and avoid over-used presets.

Render times are reassuringly fast. Scenes with complex multiple reflections render much more quickly than you might expect them to, without any noticeable loss of quality. You can also control options like antialiasing and ray tracing depth. The speed has obvious implications for anyone who produces animations professionally. A short test animation, which used multiple reflections inside a curved object to create complicated textures, took less than a minute per frame to render. The equivalent time in Bryce would be at least five to ten minutes, and perhaps very much longer. The basic version of Carrara Pro includes a single network rendering option, but extended network rendering on multiple machines is available as a plug-in for a very reasonable €199.

Animated characters
Animation is handled using the sequencer window. This works in the usual way, and almost every parameter is keyframable. One nice touch is the tweener, which controls the way that keyframes fade into each other. The default is a linear tween, but you can use toe-in and –out controls to change this to a step or a curve. While the sequencer is possibly slower to work with than the animation tools in high-end 3D packages, it’s also much easier to get to grips with initially. In fact Carrara generally seems to be very close to the sweet spot that lives between sophistication and user-friendliness. The featureset may be fairly standard, but the layout and presentation make the relationships between the different elements that define the 3D world clearer to get a handle on than most other packages. It’s worth noting that animation includes a good selection of physics and collision modeling options, and models can be animated using Inverse Kinematics. For the price, this is a very impressive collection of options, and certainly helps make Carrara an appealing choice for 3D animators.

There are imperfections and annoyances beyond those already mentioned. Carrara Pro’s slightly lateral relationship with Amapi 7 is repeated with the other plug-ins and features too, so in many places Carrara Pro seems more like a collection of tools from different sources, each designed by a different programmer with a different take on 3D rendering. So the biggest need is for better integration. This especially applies to the extra plug-in packs that offer support for more sophisticated Poser file import, building modeling for architectural applications, cloth and fur for animation, and distributed multi-machine rendering for high speed output. All of these are surprisingly affordable, but some could slot in a little more seamlessly.

But even with that criticism, this is still a very impressive package. While there are some rough edges, considered in context it costs less than half of the next big name and a fraction of some professional high-end packages. But it offers features that are mostly either equal to, or in some cases better, than the competition. It’s also relatively easy to use, and offers fast render times. Whether you’re looking for the next step up from an entry-level package like Bryce, or are trying to get off the expensive upgrade cycle treadmill maintained by the big names, it’s well worth the money. It will keep anyone with a professional or amateur interest in 3D productive, busy and satisfied. There really is a lot to like here, and at the price it’s a bargain.