Hi Guys,
Just wondering if Carrara files import smoothly into Unity. How 'bout Carrara Express? Carrara was recommended to me (I’m not an artist) as being the 3D tool with the best interface and ease of use.
Thanks for the input.
Can’t say I’m a fan but you should make sure it exports FBX. And according to the website LE doesn’t allow skinned mesh weight editing.
Might work for a solid/ambient/enviro object modeler?
I’d agree that Carrara is a good entry tool for getting started in 3D, but it’s suitability for game asset creation is a bit limited. It lacks a few things you’ll really want if / when you start creating models and textures for games in earnest. Off the top of my head the things I found Carrara lacked were: decent UV editing tools, texture / lightmap baking, complete / bug free FBX import and export. Having said that, I started with Carrara (version 3 I think it was) after not working in 3D for a decade and found it real easy and intuitive.
One of the things Carrara does very nicely (and is included in the Express version) is their terrain generation tools. Although it’s not intended for game creation, I have managed to export terrain height and texture files from Carrara and import them into Unity.
Thanks for the feedback, guys. If you think of a better modeling tool that works will with Unity and is reasonably priced, I’d love to hear your thoughts. I downloaded Blender, but the interface seems incomprehensible to me. I’m sure it’s manageable, but I don’t want a huge learning curve. Unity is hard enough to learn by itself.
I also looked at Cheetah and TrueSpace 7, but they seem quite limited and won’t import mocap files like TrueBones (I don’t think). I’ve heard good things about Cinema4D, but the price is prohibitive.
I understand that any 3D tool will have a learning curve, just want to find the most intuitive interface.
Thanks again for the help.
If memory serves me, Mr. Truebones supplies mocap files as .bvh, correct? I haven’t used Truespace in a number of years, but the last I checked it imported .bvh.
Another to try, now that I know you need animation support, might be Modo. A number of folks here use it and if I wasn’t already happy with Blender I would probably give it a go.
To be honest, Cheetah, Truespace, Modo, Blender et. al. provide all the basic tools you’ll need to create decent game assets. One may have more features than the other, but unless you’re a power user you’re not likely to see much of a difference in the beginning.
The best thing to do is to try the demos of everything you can get your hands on and see which seems to fit best with your style of learning. That’s how I ended up with Carrara, I was able to produce a working animation in minutes after starting the program, rather than hours or days. I later migrated to Blender when I found I needed more capabilities.
Incidentally, every once and a while Daz gives away a version of Carrara in one of the 3D magazines. Might be worth checking also.
Thanks for the clarification and feedback. Yes, I’d like some animation capability, even if for doors opening closing etc. I’ll probably hire a 3D artist to do any character modeling or anything beyond the basics. I’m a screenwriter trying to wrap my head around Unity and Javascript at the moment. I can barely draw stick figures. But I’d like to be able to make basic buildings, objects ets.
Thanks again for the help. :lol:
If budget is a factor (isn’t it always) I’m going to have to vote for Blender here. “They” say that if you have little to no 3D experience it’s actually just as easy or easier to learn Blender.
I had some free time on my hands this week and decided to dust off my copy of Carrara and gave it another spin. I started off with Carrara a long while back before switching to Blender, so although I’m not a complete noob to Carrara I’m still pretty rusty with it. I’ve got to say that there are some things about Carrara I really like. The GUI is very esthetically pleasing and there are tons of prefabricated scenes, shaders, animations, and effects so that if you just wanted to create an animated title, for instance, it would probably take you less than 5 minutes to do.
Its “realistic sky” creator is also excellent. I created a Unity ready skybox in a couple of minutes (posted here: http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=210928#210928 ).
And its terrain tools are also excellent, but I’ve yet to come up with a good workflow for getting them into Unity.
But its modeling, UV mapping and baking tools are sub-par or non-existent. I think if my only goal was to use it with Unity, then I’d probably plan on adding a second app for modeling / UV / texture baking. Hexagon might be one consideration but I don’t have enough experience with Hex to say for sure. Blender would definitely work.
FWIW if you buy this book a full copy of Carrara 6 Pro and Hexagon 2.5 are included. Not a bad deal for $30:
http://www.daz3d.com/i/3d-models/-/figures-characters-and?spmeta=ov&item=9166_m=d
What was the process you used to bring your Carrara terrain into Unity? FBX?
I exported a height map from Carrara’s terrain editor, and then shot a high res render of the terrain from above using an ortho camera.
What is an ortho camera?
Sorry, wrong terminology, Carrara calls it an “isometric” camera.