Product Reviews

The last release of Carrara Studio had support for high-end features such as Subdivision surface modelling, Bones and Skinning and Photon Mapping - a method of accurately reflecting diffuse light in a scene. 3D Basics doesn't support these, but, given its target audience - Web designers, hobbyists, home video enthusiasts and the like - that's not really surprising.

What you get is a well-rounded OS X-native application that ships on one CD. Documentation is found via the Application's Help menu in printable Acrobat PDF format.

The basis of Carrara is a series of 'Rooms' where different stages of the modelling process are carried out. The main 'room' is the Assemble Room, where objects are positioned and lit. The application comes with a collection of more than 900 ready-modelled and textured objects that designers can drag from the library and place in their scenes.

Positioning objects requires the Transform tools -Move, Scale and Rotate. One oddity of Carrara is that these tools also select objects, which can make dealing with complex scenes difficult. The easiest way to select objects is from the list in the Sequencer (Timeline), but then when you go to use a Transform tool, you've got a fair chance of selecting some other object and not getting the desired result. This can make things very difficult for newcomers - the target market for the product.

Scene stealer

Carrara relies on projections of an object onto a 'Working Box' for accurately moving, scaling and rotating. This means scenes with more complex objects can soon resemble a jumble of coathangers: it would be far easier if the application used the 'Transform Handle' convention used by most other 3D applications. Also, the workspace preview doesn't use OpenGL, so it will be dictated by the speed of your processor, not your graphics card.

For Modelling, Spline and MetaBall are provided. Spline permits the definition of an object's skin using Bezier curves. MetaBall modelling allows for

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the creation of organic shapes by the mutual attraction or repulsion of mesh 'blobs'. Vertex and subdivision surface modelling aren't supported, but, again, given its target market, this is understandable.

Animation is based on traditional timeline/keyframe concepts. Behaviour between keyframes can be set by the Tweening behaviour in the Properties panel, which gives useful visual feedback of the ease-in and ease-out curves.

One nice touch is the Storyboard view, which shows a user-definable number of frames spanning a user-definable stretch of animation. It can then be viewed through any camera, and the properties of any object tweaked at any point. The rest of the animation then updates, so you can view changes across the entire animation. It's a great idea and very well implemented.

On the character animation side, Inverse Kinematics is supported, meaning that it's possible to create jointed characters with some degree of 'intelligence' - the joints in an arm automatically follow the hand to which they are attached when it is moved, for example. The limitation is that it's for jointed characters only - for smoothly-deforming skins and bones you'll need Carrara Studio. Still, it's a useful introduction to this high-end animation concept.

Model looks

When it comes to texturing your model, Carrara 3D Basics shares with Studio a comprehensive Procedural Shader building tool. A Shader is a small program that defines the look of a surface mathematically. The beauty of Shaders is that they always tile smoothly across a surface - you don't get seams or stretching. The program contains a comprehensive Shader library that allows the user to drag-and-drop ready-made Shaders onto objects. These Shaders can also be examined and used as the starting points for custom Shaders.

Rendering is handled by three engines: Raytracing for true reflections and refractions, a Hybrid Raytracer optimised for Isometric and Conical cameras, and a draft Z-buffer renderer. Unfortunately, this is not available in OS X. Rendering output is also limited to 1280 x 1024 pixels.

Output formats supported are GIF, BMP and JPEG, and Basics also exports to a number of Web formats such as Viewpoint VET and Adobe Atmospheres (WebExport2), but no ShockWave or Flash.

Despite a few reservations about the Transform tools and weak modelling, given its low price and the number of bundled models and textures, Carrara 3D Basics is a good, solid package for those who want to dabble in 3D. You can competitively upgrade to the more powerful Carrara Studio later.