For a limited time, DAZ is offering Bryce at a discounted price. If you are keen on checking out Bryce, click the box image below:

See the demonstration below.

Get the 3D sculpting software here:  http://drpetter.se/project_sculpt.html

As I have not been using Truespace for quite a while, I will not comment on it.

Another happy news is that Truespace now has Yafaray support.  It sort of replaces the discontinued Vray support for Truespace. As a Vray user, I really appreciate Vray’s relative ease-of-use and ability to produce beautiful and realistic images fast. In my opinion, Yafaray is the closest free equivalent to the formidable V-ray. So, Yafaray’s support for TrueSpace is a good thing.

Just in case you do not know what Yafaray is, well, it is a free high quality rendering engine that supports true global illumination. Yafaray gives you the choice to use path tracing, bi-directional path tracing, photon mapping and ambient occlusion for rendering. Beside TrueSpace, Yafaray also is supported by Blender 3D.

To download the Yafaray plugin for Truespace, go to http://www.yafaray4ts.org/download.html

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.

Click Box below to go to Carrara Website

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.

Recently, I stumbled upon one that is quite useful – Pinnacle VideoSpin.

This program is easy to use and understand. You can import movies and videos, images, music and sound files and compile them into compelling animated video works. The program comes with a pretty nice list of transitions. It even has a text-editor. As for music manipulation, you can control the volume along the timeline.

Output-wise, the video quality is quite good. In fact, I find it nicer and less pixelated or blurry than most other free offerings. Click here to see a test demo that I have created using this editor.

In terms of features and power, this free program cannot match professional video editors such as Adobe Premier. For example, it only has a single track for video input, unlike the multi-tracked feature of most paid editors. However, it does allow the user to insert multiple video clips, albeit in a linear manner.

Despites its obvious shortcomings, it should be useful enough for creating videos that doesn’t require high-end tools.

Click here to get this free movie and video editor from Pinnacle