Eovia Corp. today announced that it’s shipping Carrara Studio 2, a major new update to its 3D design application. The new build sports major enhancements, including Mac OS X support.
Carrara Studio 2 is billed as a comprehensive 3D solution that sports tools to bring 3D to the Web, print and video. It features five rendering engines, seven different modelers, multiple animation tools, an advanced shader editor, special effects, sky environments, and more than 1,000 3D models and textures.
The new version of Carrara Studio 2 sports Photon Mapping rendering, which combines strengths of ray tracing and radiosity in a single rendering engine, according to Eovia. It’s able to render the global illumination of an entire 3D scene while maintaining subtle interactions between lighting and objects.
It also features Bones and Skinning support for advanced character animation. Bones enable you to modify, deform and animate existing objects or object groups in real-time, to create realistic and animated organic shapes and characters.
Subdivision Modeling is described by Eovia as “a natural companion” to the bones and skinning technology. Subdivision Modeling automatically subdivides simple polygonal objects to add details, thus simplifying the process of modeling and animation.
Carrara Studio 2 is now completely Mac OS X native (it runs on Mac OS 8.1 and later too), and also supports multiple processors on Power Mac G4 systems running Mac OS X. Specific minimum system requirements call for a G3/266 or later running Mac OS 8.1 or later, 128MB RAM, 16-bit color display, 3D graphics acceleration, CD-ROM drive and 100MB hard disk space.
Carrara Studio 2 is available for a suggested retail price of US$399. Upgrades from Carrara Studio 1.1 and competitive upgrades from other manufacturer’s applications are also available.
The initial release is an English international version. Fully localized versions in French and German will follow shortly, according to Eovia.