WOW!! Well I thought I would have to cough up the money for lightwave, but I gave the internet one more sweep and finally found a comercial program willing to give me a free demo.
Even this demo has power that blows blender away (not trying to be mean to the creators of Blender, that programs not leaving my system for a while if I can help it.)
Anyway, here’s my story. I wanted to make a comic series. For those of you you who have never tried that, if you want to make large scenes, of things like cities, Blender doesn’t have enough power to run all the meshes. So I found Carrar and got the demo. I loaded up one of its base meshes, a spring. Then I imported this thing http://gallery.mudpuddle.co.nz/view_photo.php?full=1&set_albumName=phantom&id=homij_pic_3
(homij mesh) and this thing
http://gallery.mudpuddle.co.nz/view_photo.php?set_albumName=phantom&id=knife_3_d
and a land scape, all that I had made in Blender. Then I imported a Raptor and a boy mesh from Poser. The system didn’t slow down at all! (Blender would have crashed about four models ago.) Then something caught my eye. My homij mesh’s main color in blender was currently green, and his claws were gray. Low and behold, green skin, gray claws, nothing had changed! My landscape was green (it had a texture, but I doubt that will be the same, and I don’t know how to find out yet… but it does transfer textures…)… green again! Freaking cool! If only it were free. Oh well. The format looks extremely easy to learn, though this is just my first day. Price? Amazon has it at around 250. Lightwaves price? Over 570 at the lowest I’ve ever seen.
But I’m just curious of any buyer beware stuff you guys may have. Anyone else try this program? http://www.eovia.com/products/carrara_pro/carrara_pro.asp