3D modelling, rendering and animation programs can be dauntingly complex to learn and use. Some people love the challenges. Unfortunately, many people do not have the luxury of time to slowly pick up a 3D program to competence.

Here is where Carrara fits in nicely. Carrara allows the user to create compelling 3D scenes without the high learning curve. It is one of the easiest professional-grade 3D program to use. Comparing feature-to-feature, it is also one of the cheapest. Carrara comes in both Mac and PC versions.

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Carrara’s rendering engine is Global Illumination enabled. Photo-mapping, HDRI, indirect lightling and caustics are all possible with Carrara. Depth-of-field and motion blur are also possible. It is quite a fast renderer.The material editor has an easy to use library. The material editor is highly powerful and can create many types of materials. Advanced material attributes such as subsurface-scattering, in-scattering, fresnel effects, blurred reflection, anistropic are all achievable within Carrara.

With Carrara, you can pose and render realistic humans and other 3D characters without having to model the figures from scratch. If you are into 3D long enough, you will know just how challenging it is to create a 3D digital human being from scratch. If you want to populate your 3D environment with 3D characters fast, Carrara can prove to be effective.

Carrara is tightly integrated with DAZ Studio which is free. DAZ studio is a free figure posing software. This allows DAZ Human and 3D characters to be directly dragged, posed and manipulated within Carrara’s environment !!!

Below shows Michael 4, which is a free DAZ Studio 3D human model, as he is being rendered using Carrara.

If you have not already done so >>> Click here to get the FREE DAZ Studio

Below is a screen shot of Victoria, another free DAZ human model being imported seamlessly into Carrara’s working space.

Want to create entire landscape, seascape scenes complete with awe-inspiring clouds, terrain and vegetation? Carrara makes this relatively painless too. There are several in-built tools to ease the process of creating entire naturalistic worlds. Below is a screenshot of the Landscape Creation Wizard.

To build terrains with ease, use the intuitive Terrain Generator.  To  create your own trees and vegetations, use the Plant Generator. To plant large numbers of your trees fast and with control, use the Surface Replicator. Below is a screen shot of the Plant Generator.

Carrara is also capable of calculating fluid dynamics with allows liquid and water to be created, rendered and animated realistically.

Particle and hair generations are entirely possible too. Hair creation tool allows selection of regions to grow them. You can control the density, length, and segment count of the hairs.

There are a lot more features not covered in this article. But, I think I have talked enough… Click link below to assess Carrara Pro.