The only 3D software I’ve been using regularly before is Blender which is open-source. Here are some of my personal observations:

The Good

The user interface suits me much better than Blender. It’s more polished and I feel using it with a Wacom tablet works much better. Placing objects, rigging and animating them is very simple in Carrara. The material editor is awesome and fast to work with. Also having a material library is something I’ve really missed in Blender. The renderer is fast and supports GI, SSS and Caustics. Carrara also has tons of neat things like a terrain generator, plant generator, great hair/fur support, very good 3D paint, easy to use Bullet physics, volumetric fog/fire and much more.

The bad

Modelling works well but felt awkward in the beginning. Also the UV mapping took some getting used to. Particles are pretty easy to work with but more limited than Blenders. Carrara also doesn’t have a compositor, and is missing some of the more special stuff like Blenders fantastic fluid simulator.

The verdict

There’s no doubt that I’m going to be using Carrara 8 as my primary 3D software in the future. It just feels faster and more intuitive to me. I’m not going to stop using Blender though, since it still does a lot of great things that Carrara doesn’t.

If you’re a Blender user you have probably already seen it.

The teaser for Blender foundations open movie project Durian, called Sintel was released a few days ago. It looks amazing and I’m really looking forward to seeing the full movie.

Watch/download the teaser here.

Originally I created CineGobs keyer as an alternative to the keyer in Sony Vegas. Since I released CineGobs keyer in 2007, I’ve received lots of emails with feature requests. Most of these are about adding compositing and video-editor functions to the keyer. Suggestions include pretty much everything you can do in After Effects, Premiere, Vegas etc. So I think it’s time to clarify:

CineGobs keyer was never meant to be used for creating a movie from start to finish.

To create anything useful, you need to have some kind of video software besides Cinegobs keyer. CineGobs keyer will not get multi-tracks, animation, sound or compositing functions. It’s meant as a utility to create a good transparency matte.

I understand that there’s a great need for a freeware video editing/compositing application, and hopefully someone will create something in the future, but please don’t expect CineGobs keyer to grow into a complete video editing suite. There’s no way for me to put that kind of work into it. Also health problems severely limit my time available for programming.

The future

All this doesn’t mean I’ve given up on CineGobs keyer. I’m still looking for ways to improve the keyer algorithms etc., and I’ll of-course try to fix any bugs found.

Please let me know if something doesn’t work.