Others say...

"Much needed book!"
Besides being the only Carrara book available besides the manual, this is still a great book. The author also wrote a Carrara 3 book, which has alot of the same wording, but the tutorials are different, so I recommend having both of them. The manual that comes with Carrara tells you what the program can do and the basic steps to do it, but this book tells you step by step how to do things. And sometimes you absolutely need to have two different views on things. Carrara is a low end 3D modeler, but it's still very hard to learn, not withstanding that even after two major patches, Carrara 5 is still a very buggy program!

"Good Beginners Tutorial Book"
This is a beginning/intermediate level book in tutorial format giving an introduction to 3D modelling using the Carrara 5 Pro software. 3D modelling is not simple, regardless of the software selected. And Carrara is no exception. This book though uses a step by step approach that introduces new terms like texturing, caustics and rendering with a combination of text and illustration that is as clear as any explanation that I've ever seen.

Throughout the book all kinds of images are used as illustrations. This includes fairly complex structures such as airplanes, cartoon characters, and human beings that get pretty close to photographic quality.

The book is supplied with a CD-ROM that includes a demonstration version of Carrara 5 Pro for Windows and Macintosh OS X. It also includes the modeler package Hexagon (Version 1.2). If you are thinking of a 3D package, this book with the demo software would clearly give you enough information to decide if Carrara is the package you want to use.

This book is the first one to come out that covers Carrera 5. Being the first, it isn't as complete as some of the other books will be. But once again, this is a book for beginners.

"A solid book that is packed with useful tutorials"
This a great book that really fills a void in the Carrara community. While there are many online resources for helping users learn this app, this is the only comprehensive project-based book available (other than the "Carrara 3 Handbook" by the same author). It is aimed primarily at the intermediate user; however, it contains some 3D basics available in the first few chapters to help beginners get up to speed, and some advanced tutorials in the last few chapters that advanced users can benefit from as well.

I could go into detail about the content of each chapter, but one of the reviewers above already does a great job at covering them.

The only reason I didn't give this book a full 5 stars (would have just gone with 4 and 1/2, if Amazon let me..) is because there are some cool new features of Carrara 5 that didn't make the book in time for its release. I will say that the upside to this is that we still have a huge book that was released within *just over a month* of the software's release.

Learning any 3D app is not easy. This book significantly cuts down on the learning curve with its project-based, easy-to-understand content. If you're looking for a glorified manual, then look elsewhere. If you want an informative, hands-on content-rich book that makes learning Carrara really fun and practical, then pick up this book. At around $30, you're absolutely getting your money's worth.

"Very helpful."
As a beginner in all things 3D and a Carrara owner for all of 3 weeks now, I've found this book extremely informative, reducing my learning curve greatly.


"Fails to cover a bast number of Carrara 5 new features."
I am a long time user of Carrara and I am also very familiar with Carrara 5 Pro I was looking forward to indepth material of Carrara 5 new features in this book. Sadly it doesn't cover them. I have seen better free online tutorials that do cover C5Pro features than this book. I cannot recommend this book to Carrara 3 or Carrara 4 users. Maybe first time users may find it useful but people upgrading from previews versions sure won't.

The Carrara 5 Pro Handbook claims that if you are a new or seasoned user, you'll find everything you need to get started with Carrara 5 and that it provides a complete, detailed guide to Carrara 5 Pro, including in-depth coverage of the features and tools. Well, after reading the book from cover to cover, I would have to say that the book falls short of the promises in the above statements.

About 80% of the Carrara 5 Pro new features are not covered in the book.

Here is a list of things that are not covered:

New particle system, replicator, surface replicator, ambient occlusion, irrandiance map, anisotropic lighting model, fresnel, translucency channel, weight painting, new volumetric clouds, matchmoving, include/exclude lights, bounding box display, smoothing of multiple objects and not all the new tools in the vertex modeler.

If those were the things you wanted to learn, then this book is not for you.

It is more like a Carrara 4 with a bit of Carrara 5 in the mix. Clearly not what most current Carrara users wanted.