|
Carrara's interface has essentially remained unchanged
since version 1, but many new components have been added.
We've also seen significant performance improvements over the
years. Real-time rendering is accomplished using OpenGL
(assuming your video card supports it) and is very fast even
with textured objects. Vista users will be glad to hear that
Carrara 6 works great in Vista, but your display will switch
to the Vista Basic scheme to run Carrara.
Carrara's Interface - Click for a larger
image.
Like previous versions, Carrara's interface is designed as
a series of "rooms" so that you can easily focus on one task
at a time. For example, the cornet shown in the interface
screen above can be modeled by selecting it and then switching
to the Model room by clicking the small wrench icon in the
upper-right of the screen.
This method of 3D design is efficient and it makes it easy
to be creative. It also provides a much less cluttered
interface. For example, if you want to edit the material used
for an object, select the object and then switch to the
Texture room. The Texture room is filled with powerful texture
editing features, but it's uncluttered because the entire
interface is devoted to texture editing.
Carrara's Texture Room - Click for a larger
image.
All of this is not new to version 6, but for users of
previous Carrara versions, you won't have to work with version
6 for long before you discover a slew of new and impressive
features. In fact, there are far too many new features for us
to list them all here, but you can see a complete list on
DAZ 3D's website.
One of the really great new features is the ability to use
any DAZ 3D content inside of Carrara. That means that you can
import the excellent Poser figures (and other 3D content) you
get from DAZ 3D (and importing is another much-improved area
in Carrara 6) and manipulate them directly inside of Carrara,
including manipulation of morph targets. Like Poser, Carrara 6
adds the ability to create multiple runtimes in the Content
Browser, making is incredibly easy to organize and locate
content for your Carrara projects.
Carrara 6 also includes great new features designed around
making more realistic landscapes. A new feature called Scene
Scaling solves the problem of making large landscapes actually
appear grand in scale. A new Ocean primitive object also
allows for the creation of realistic oceans, both still and
animated.
Carrara Landscape Render
Carrara 6 also introduces new modeling tools, including a
new displacement modeler that makes creating complex
geometries much like painting features on an object. You can
also enjoy precise control over edge extrusions and use the
new Bridge Tool to control the creation of a connecting
surface between two mesh objects.
1, 2,
3 --
Previous |
Next
|