Rendering
All the modeling and texturing features in the world aren't worth a nickel without good rendering output. Not to worry. Carrara is packed full of high-level rendering features that can produce output that's truly photo realistic.
 Carrara is packed full of high-level rendering features that can produce output that's truly photo realistic.
There are a couple of different render engines that ship with Carrara; photo realistic and non-photo realistic. (There's also a draft engine for rapid renders when tweaking a scene.) The photo realistic renderer settings (figure 6) allow you to create stunning renders that will fool even the discerning eye. With features such as depth of field, motion blurring, indirect lighting for rendering with radiosity, and HDRI, you'll see quite an impressive result from Carrara. Add other features like caustics and you've got another feature-set that will go toe to toe with even the snobbiest of rendering apps.
Just how realistic can Carrara be? Artistry isn't one of my skill sets, but I was able to whip up something pretty quickly for the review. Figure 7 shows a scene created using the spring spline object from figure 3. If that's not enough to impress you, check out the Eovia Carrara in Action Web page. It will impress, no doubt.
Figure 7 - A Carrara Render
Poser Support
If you've read my recent reviews, you'll know I'm a big fan of e frontier's Poser. Carrara supports the import of Poser figures (bones and all) via the native importer built into the product. If you want to go a step further, the Transposer product (included in Carrara Pro and available from Eovia for other versions) allows you to import dynamic cloth and hair. During testing, my results with Poser figures in Carrara were quite good, and as you can see from figure 8, rendering is every bit as good as it is in Poser itself. The lights and the sphere are Carrara's. The figure, her clothing, her hair, and her glasses are straight from Poser.
Figure 8 - A Poser figure in Carrara: wireframe and rendered.
When using the native Poser importer, you have the ability to pose your figure directly in Carrara. As shown in figure 9, the bones from Poser are present (IK chains as well) and Carrara provides an interface for posing the figure. In figure 9, the head is selected, but all body parts are available.
Figure 9 - Posing a Figure in Carrara
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