Penguin Chat interview with Eovia

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Below is an interview with Eovia, the creators of Carrara Studio

What did you do? Created an easy-to-use character chat, where users can waddle around and meet new friends.

How did you do it? I created a character chat using Flash, Carrara Studio and VectorStyle.

The penguin was created in Carrara using the Spline Modeler. Once the penguin was completed, I started working on all the animations. Some of the animations include: Standing around, waddling (moving), throwing snowballs, and dancing. Each of the animations was rendered with VectoryStyle in 5 directions. (All the horizontal directions were flipped to create a total of 8 directions of animation. This reduces the size of the final file.)

The penguin was then included in the flash chat and duplicated for every user.

The chat is basically a continuous turn-based game. Each player submits their move to the server and receives updates about other players.

Who was it for? The chat was created for RocketSnail Games.

What was the goal of this project? The Penguin Chat is actually my second attempt at a character chat. My first attempt was called Experiment Penguins, created with Flash 4 and Ray Dream.

I originally created the chat to see if it was possible to create a multi-user application in Flash. Two years later, I started developing the second version of the chat. This allowed me to expand on the original idea, optimize the code and add additional animation.

Why did you used Carrara Studio for this project? Almost eight years ago I started looking for a 3D solution to enhance my illustration work. A friend recommended that I try a program called Ray Dream the predecessor of Carrara Studio.  I found the program to be easy to learn and became one of my standard tools for illustration.

When I started RocketSnail Games, it became clear that I needed a more powerful 3D animation solution. Sadly the company that created Ray Dream was no longer available, so I began exploring other 3D programs. I found that most of the “big ticket” software packages were complicated, and lacked the simple “click and build” features of Ray Dream and Carrara Studio.

Then one day my dream came true. Eovia announced they were going to acquire the long lost Carrara Studio.  I quickly downloaded a demo of the software and created a waddling penguin in a couple of hours. I actually found Carrara Studio easier to use and faster to create than other programs. With the release of VectorStyle I can now quickly create Flash characters for my games. I look forward to the future of VectorStyle and Carrara Studio.

Why do I use Carrara Studio? Simple. It meets my needs and saves time.