Have you switched render software?

[micaelito]

I'll keep my C5.
It has all i need for my illustrations.
Simple to use and has a quick and good render.
Voila les gars

[jbshorty]

sketchy, that is an interesting article. But i think they forgot to mention DAZ Studio ... I always forget that Rhino has a plug-in for Renderman. Maybe i'm programmed to forget things which are out of my budget...

[Grendel]

Sketchy - that is a great thread, very informative.

[medeamajic]

Originally Posted by Pete Exxtreme

First i have to say that i"ve switched because i do NOT trust DAZ3D for the future becuase the way they act. If Eovia had carry on, i would not have switched as i'm (i was !) a long time user of their products.


For me it's a reasonnable choice regrading my expectations

I do not like what I see at Daz but I will stick with Carrara for now (I use Carrara and Hexagon). If I do not see Carrara 6 by March of next year then I will probably opt for something else.

Perhaps Carrara 6 will make you switch back.

[Davidoff]

I'll continue to use Carrara,
I'm using it since the begining and i have no time and no money to change my softwares every year
I like the rendering of Maxwell but it is very expensive
(900 euros)

[sailor-ed]

I studied TrueSpace 7 but I could not adapt to the interface. It had many features I liked but I had to give up in the end. I will say that their customer support and suppot policies were top notch and deserve mention somewhere. They went out of their way to help me. It was refreshing!

So for now I am sticking with C5Pro.

[Nichod]

I'm probally ADDING Messiah to my toolset. But will also retain a copy of Carrara.

[Grendel]

Let me know how you like Messiah, I was very close to picking it up before I went with XSI.

[Piem]

I'm thinking about Shade also ^^
I've seen impressives shots
But I have to open, at least my 7.1 version..I'm really short in time by these days

[Locki]

I just bought standard Shade 8 in french, figuring I'll understand a bit easier how I can use it and forgetting it is now included within Amapi distributions ... and ... well ... ahem ... gloups ... it's not something you shall master in few hours.

[Sketchy]

Originally Posted by jbshorty

sketchy, that is an interesting article. But i think they forgot to mention DAZ Studio ... I always forget that Rhino has a plug-in for Renderman. Maybe i'm programmed to forget things which are out of my budget...

Originally Posted by Grendel

Sketchy - that is a great thread, very informative.

I'm glad you found it useful. Seems that if you're not satisfied with your renderer, Mental Ray is the way to go if you want something deeper. Seems it's the cheapest route by way of the Softimage purchase. The other highend ones are too expensive to even consider even as standalones. XSI definitely is a good buy if you have the money, not to mention the time and mental capacity to break the complex UI. The other one is TrueSpace 7 to get VRAY at a discounted price. The UI is just as complex. But then it's really all a matter of personal preference.

Who knows, Carrara 6 may well be the next leader. I can wait.

[graphinc]

I'm switching to Blender for some illustrations and for animations and I'll use also Shade and maxwell for objects and architecture renderings and some illustrations. So I guess I'll have completly leaved Carrara in some time (except if I'm surprised by the Daz released but it must be a BIG suprise)

[sailor-ed]

Addendum

Thought I would add one other reason why I am sticking with C5.... the wide variety of high quality inexpensive plugins available. To me these developers are the lifeblood of Carrara.

[Pete Exxtreme]

agreed : Without DCG plugs it would have been a real pain to do my former Carrara scenes

[-ash-]

Originally Posted by sailor-ed

Addendum

Thought I would add one other reason why I am sticking with C5.... the wide variety of high quality inexpensive plugins available. To me these developers are the lifeblood of Carrara.

Yes, this is another reason I'm sticking to Carrara. Keep up the good work guys.

[sadot]

I use carrara for personal/freelance use, at work i use lightwave
I use blender too

[shannonhoppe]

Not "switching" exactly. I already had purchased Lightwave back when they offerd the combo deal with Vue 5 Infinite. However, I had/have a hard time wrapping my head around Lightwave. When Daz offered the deal on Carrara and Transposer for Poser owners, I jumped on it. I'll definitly continue to use Carrara/Hex and plan on upgrading to C5Pro as soon as the funds allow. Newtek's free upgrades thru the v9 cycle for those who purchsed in v8.5 or higher will keep me lookin' at LW for some time to come too. Due to circumstances I guess I'm waiting just like a lot of folks to see what C6 brings as well as the continued development on LW9.

[Nichod]

Let me know how you like Messiah, I was very close to picking it up before I went with XSI.

So far I'm very impressed with messiah. I'm impressed with its rendering quality:





Its rendering engine is a variant of the Arnold Global Illumination Rendering engine. Which was one of the first quasi Monte-Carlo rendering engines. Messiah's rendering engine is FAST compared to the modern Monte-Carlo renderers that are available. And the renders are soft and high quality.

The shader node structure is flexible and able to achieve a variety of results with ease. I found it much more pleasant to work with than XSI's shader nodes.



And I can't tell you how amazing its rigging system is. You can easily create a complex character rig setup in a few hours. Something that could take a day or two in XSI, MAYA, etc. And is nearly impossible to do in Carrara.

Check out this rigging video: http://www.projectmessiah.com/~taron...p_for_head.mov

Some negatives:

A lot of things feel incomplete. The shading system feels like it could use a few more node presets. The particles that have just been rewritten need a narrowed down and focused interface, as well as a more improved realtime display. There are still a few glitches and such with the interface. Especially if you have an ATI video card. I have to force 16 bit buffer in my video card settings to run Messiah. Though I have a better workaround in mind that might fix things better.

Some positives:

A friendly community that really wants to see Messiah grow and definetly pushes messiah to the limits. Active development cycles. About every 6 months or so you'll see a free patch or update. The latest update was a complete rewrite of particles that added a FAST rendering advanced volumetric particle system. By advanced I mean you can control the particles with expressions or expression based vortexes (forces). There were a few other things as well. My main gripe is the ATI issue.

Interesting info (negative to some):

Because messiah isn't developed by a big company its a mom and pop type setup. The developers will suddenly disappear for a time and not communicate within the community forums. Usually this means they are hard at work programming an update or a patch. Then they'll pop back in for a month or so and show off the new stuff. The developers work other jobs as well, so its like you are using their in-house software. And as such, its almost like you are employees. If you have a problem, just email them, and if they have too they'll stay up all night programming a fix or a new feature to get the job done. Then everyone will get the feature in the next update.

I'll do up a detailed review soon. Pnoland of subdivisionmodeling.com is also working on a review. All in all I'd say if you don't want the complexity of XSI, but want much of the power, then go with Messiah to animate.

[medeamajic]

The images look impressive. I am guessing you did not model or render them because of the 2003 and 2004 copyright.

[Sketchy]

Originally Posted by Nichod

So far I'm very impressed with messiah. I'm impressed with its rendering quality....Its rendering engine is a variant of the Arnold Global Illumination Rendering engine. Which was one of the first quasi Monte-Carlo rendering engines. Messiah's rendering engine is FAST compared to the modern Monte-Carlo renderers that are available. And the renders are soft and high quality.

Nice, brief, but informative review, Nichod. That's the kind of description I'd like to have in a rendering engine: speed, soft and high quality. Speed is of particular importance to me. I can't possibly work with one that keeps you waiting for hours just for test renders. IMHO, they're supposed to be fast especially when doing still images.
As to the animation part, it seems capable of doing fairly complex jobs comparable to highend ones. It certainly is a good choice if you already have enough modeling tools in your arsenal. It keeps the UI from unnecessary clutter and complexity.