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F.A.Q.

Here are the questions that I get asked often about the images on this page:

Q. What software do you use?
A. Don't laugh - I use Carrara Studio v5 Pro, formerly known as Ray Dream Studio. Ray Dream Studio was an amazingly robust 3D software that was popular during the mid to late Nineties, made by a company called Metacreations. It had a staggering amount of professional-grade features that allowed it to compete reasonably with higher end software packages of the time, such as 3D Studio and Lightwave, etc. MetaCreations no longer makes RDS, having given up the attempt to compete with the higher end packages such as 3D Studio Max and Lightwave. I feel that the reason that this happened is because of software piracy. With thousands of people making illegal free copies of 3D software, who's going to make an illegal copy of a $100 program when they can just as easily make a copy of a very similar program that costs $5000? So this was the nail in the coffin for the continuation of Ray Dream's development, alas, until Eovia ressurected it as "Carrara" and then sold it to Daz3D.

Q. Where can I get a copy of Ray Dream Studio?
You can either get a used copy of Ray Dream Studio from places like eBay, or you can get its successor - Carrara - from the fine follks at Daz - the company that bought the rights to Ray Dream Studio. Carrara is well worth the money to buy as an upgrade if you have Ray Dream Studio, and in fact it's worth buying outright even if you've never used Ray Dream Studio before.

Q. Why don't you use 3D Studio Max yourself?
A. Because it costs too much, and it's not nearly as fun as using Carrara and Ray Dream Studio.

Q. Why do you do mostly non-original 3D projects?
A. To me, a lot of the fun of modeling and rendering in Carrara and Ray Dream Studio is figuring out HOW - using Carrara/Ray Dream Studio - to create something that somebody else has made. Most of the models I've created were originally designed to be constructed out of actual physical components (i.e. studio Special-FX models) or they were designed in much more expensive 3D software programs. Either way, it's highly enjoyable to me to figure out how to make something in Carrara/RDS that was originally built as an actual physical model or in a much more complex 3D program.

Q. What are the limitations of Ray Dream Studio?
A. Very few. Seriously, Carrara and Ray Dream Studio have DOZENS of astounding features that are usually only found in software programs that cost tens of times more than Carrara and Ray Dream Studio - inverse kinematics, particles, radiosity, etc. What Carrara and Ray Dream Studio lack, however, is good organic modeling. They have no NURBS modeller, unfortunately, which is why you'll hardly ever find any creatures on this site. Almost everything I've made has been made strictly via Spline modeling (i.e. lofting and extruding shapes) and Boolean constructs.

Q. Are you a professional 3D animator?
A. Good heavens no - that should be obvious by the pictures in this gallery! If I did make my living as a 3D artist, I'd be starving by now... I've seen the kind of lives that the real 3D animators live, such as the folks at ILM. 18-19 hour days in sweaty, stinky offices with poor lighting and constant pressure. I give those folks props though - I couldn't do it; I want to be able to have a life outside of my job. (But the short answer to this question is "No - I'm not nearly good enough to be a real 3D animator.")

Q. Can I have some of your models?
A. Even though I've made these models as a hobbyist in my spare time, and don't even own the copyrights to most of them, I can't give any of them away because I spent too many hours working on them just to give them away. And since I don't own the copyrights to most of them, that prohibits me from selling them either. Sorry.

Q. I see "ImageMage.com" on a lot of your gallery images. Did you steal your art from them?
A. No, I used to be ImageMage.com, back in the day. I got tired of that domain name, so I moved everything over to DynamicEye.net. And I'm not about to re-render all my stuff just to put "© DynamicEye.net" on all these images!