Manual for 8

larrygilman · April 2013

Forgive me please, if this has been discussed before. I downloaded the manual for Carrara 7, in the hopes that it would be similar enough to Carrara 8 that I might start learning. There does not seem to be a manual for Carrara 8, or at the least I can't find it.

As I am particularly interested in modeling, will I be able to use the Carrara 7 manual with Carrara 8, or are they different enough that using the 800+ page manual for Carrara 7 will just cause me confusion?? All these online tutorials that I see are great, but I don't learn very well that way. And, as most people are, I am on a tight budget.

Are there any tutorial books I can look for, or any other help in the learning direction will be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance
Larry

evilproducer · April 2013

I believe 90% of the Carrara 7 Manual is still valid for the C8 production build (C8.1.x). I think there are some interface changes in the C8.5 beta from what I've read.

The biggest areas not covered in the C7 manual will be bullet physics, IES lights, Sun beams, and a few other enhancements. I'm using C7.2 Pro, and only tried the C8 Pro trial, so my experience may be limited, but it seemed close enough for gov'mint work. ;-)

Jay_NOLA · April 2013

A C8 Basic Manual was done that was in the Beta stages.

C8 Basic Manual

ShareCG has several PDF tutorials covering model that you can download.

The Carrara 5 Pro Handbook, by Mike de la Flour, while written for an older version all the info in it is still applies to C8. The only thing is some things were moved for UV mapping. Took me about 4 minutes to find where the items were moved.

If you buy this book make sure you get one that has a disk with it.

It has several modeling projects in. You make a delta rocket, a female superhero, a aircraft,. Plus you model a car and cartoon head in Hexagon and texture them in Carrrara.

3DAGE · April 2013

Hi Sadsaytr
Welcome.

As far as Modelling tools and functions are concerned,..

Reading the C7 manual, will show you how the tools function and where they're located.
there are no additional modelling tools, or features in Carrara 8.

The biggest difference will depend on whether you have Carrara standard or Carrara pro,. since "Standard" has less modelling functionality.

The C7 manual should cover the bulk of "how to use carrara", and most off what you need to know to work with content in Carrara.

what it doesn't have yet, are the Bullet physics (still in development) and a section about using genesis and the new daz file formats.
both of those "Features" are still being actively developed.

here's some other docs which may help with getting started,. and other areas not covered, like bullet physics

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7907045/Carrara_first_steps.zip

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7907045/First_step_Physics_C8.pdf

hope it helps :)

wetcircuit · April 2013

Sadsaytr said:
As I am particularly interested in modeling, will I be able to use the Carrara 7 manual with Carrara 8, or are they different enough that using the 800+ page manual for Carrara 7 will just cause me confusion??

Hi Larry. Maybe just read the chapter devoted to the vertice modeller rather than pretending that you have to read 800+ pages?

Information is information, and no training source - paid or otherwise - is ever "complete". ;)