Forum: Carrara

Subject: Cheetah3D: All The Great Features You Always Wanted Carrara To Have...

dr_bernie opened this issue on May 05, 2017 ยท 5 posts

dr_bernie posted Fri, 05 May 2017 at 8:45 AM

The fact being established that Carrara development is dead, that Daz is not willing to invest even a penny in an otherwise great piece of software that Carrara is (or was), it's very legitimate for us, ex-Carrara users, to look at alternatives. Fortunately there are very excellent choices, one of them is Cheetah3D, or C3D for short.

FIRST OF ALL, AND I'M PUTTING THIS IN ALL CAPS TO MAKE IT CRYSTAL CLEAR, C3D IS A MAC ONLY 3D APP. SO IF YOU ARE A PC USER, YOU ARE OUT OF LUCK, END OF THE STORY.

For those of us who do have a Mac though, C3D is a must-have. For $99.- you get a rather advanced 3D app, loaded with Cinema4D-like features. Here is a summary of these features. I will try and expand on these features in future posts, if I have time.

  1. Modeler: C3D's modeler is actually quite powerful, very much on par with Hexagon, possibly even more powerful.

  2. A node-based texturing system, which is the standard by which all modern 3D apps go.

  3. In its upcoming version 7, currently in public beta, C3D has 2 built-in renderers. One ray-tracer, and one path-tracer which boasts advanced techniques like adaptive sampling, which stops rendering a pixel if its noise level falls below a given threshold. This feature greatly speeds-up the render in its final stages.

  4. A camera which is a true camera, i.e. it has aperture, shutter speed, iso sensitivity, point of focus, and a host of other parameters that let you create renders that look like a photo taken with a professional camera.

  5. A very well-thought configurable workspace, that you can adapt to your liking any way you want.

  6. A particularly fast and responsive OpenGL preview.

  7. A nearly flawless ability to import Daz/Poser contents through FBX or Collada export from Daz Studio. I have only tested static models though, not animated characters meshes. The image below is a render of the excellent model 'Baroque Grandeur' by Jack Tomalin, available at Daz3D. This is a raw render, i.e. I did not tweak any of the textures, except the diffuse intensity of the rug on the floor, because it was too bright.

There you have it. In my upcoming posts I will try and elaborate on all C3D's great features.

Baroque Grandeur Render.png