Carrara 4

Previous versions have been lacking in the animation department, but with Carrara 4 Eovia introduces professional-level animation tools that are nothing short of remarkable. The package features improved morph targets for facial animation, revamped inverse kinematics (IK),complete with a Create IK Chain toolf or quickly building IK relationships and enhanced motion paths. Even the timeline has been redesigned and is easier to use.

But the real show-stealer is the animation toolset, which boasts full support for BVH and FBX files, so that you can create complex character animation. As if that wasn’t good enough, consider the slew of enhancements to its award-winning render engines. Carrara 4 Pro introduces the Eovia Chain Network Rendering feature, which greatly reduces rendering time by redistributing the task among up to five computers. To heighten realism, Carrara also features blurry reflections, 3Dmotion blur and the less realistic, but faster rendering, vector motion blur. Modelling has never been one of Carrara’s strong points, but version 4 sees some improvements.

The Vertex Modeller’s Booleans now actually work, while a new Untriangulate function will appease the quad-fixated. In early versions of Carrara, the Vertex Modeller was strictly a polygonal modeller. In its current iteration, however, it sports such modelling tools as Subdivision Surfaces, Tessellation and Dynamic Extrusion. To compensate for the lack of more advanced features, Carrara 4 Pro is bundled with Amapi7 Designer, the prized NURBS and polygonal modeller.

With Carrara, there’s never been a need for plug-ins for environmental modelling, because it’s always come with a robust terrain modeller and sky generator. However, version 4 provides a much-improved Terrain Editor, with a more intuitive interface and real-time feedback. While still retaining the old SkyEditor, there’s also a new Realistic Sky Editor that creates stunning –and fully animatable – clouds and skies. With the improved Terrain Editor, new Realistic Sky generator and plant modeller, there’s no need to buy separate programs such as, Bryce or Vue d’Esprit for your environments. Carrara can do it all.

Other innovations include 3dsmax-like scene manipulators, and, in the Pro version, support for LWO and COB files. You can also add sounds to an animated scene(there’s a soundtrack in the timeline)and output to movie formats such as QuickTime and AVI. Welcomed improvements to the shader tree include the new terrain channel, for easy texturing of terrain meshes, and the long-awaited alpha channel for realistic masks and fades.