May be a version of DAZ Studio as DAZ Studio Ultimate ?
Samuel S.
Posts: 322
Any thoughts of bringing features of Carrara into DAZ Studio? Like combining best of all DAZ’s tool sets into a single product. For example bringing best features of Carrara, Hexagon, Bryce and DAZ Pro into something that may be named DAZ Studio Ultimate etc.
I have updated the post with draft current and purposed architecture diagrams.
CurrentArchitecturefor DAZSuite.png
1017 x 777 - 45K
PurposedArchitecturefor DAZSuite.png
1017 x 777 - 38K
Post edited by Samuel S. on
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Comments
What is "DAZ Studio"? I don't know this program.
Here, we speak about serious programs only!
I would settle for using all new DAZ content in Carrara
I love Carrara but noticed that DAZ Studio is getting so many updates while Carrara has not received an update for a while.
yeah we definately want DAZ to throw us some updates, Bryce and Hexagon too, I am not biased, if I could actually use the latter two on my PC without freezing and crashing I would be chuffed
And of course Bryce is so different from Daz Studio in all ways, has 3 different render engines of it's own, and is the "Senior" program of those mentioned, with Carrara (or it's previous incarnations" following a close 2nd.
D|S is the new kid on the block.
I think DAZ can at least release 64 bit versions of Bryce and Hexagon.
Not sure how much source code change will that require?
Hi,
"Best" is relative. What one person needs is not what another person needs. That's why we have a bunch of programs around. In fact, I use Carrara because it does not have 1000 functions. It gets too fast too chaotic. Maya has 1000 functions, I need only a handful. Never used the muscle system, ocean and a lot of other functions. If you are working in a team, sometimes it's great to have all features in only one program; but most of the time, you use special software to accomplish the task (Substance painter, ZBrush, Realflow, etc.). So, when it comes to new features in Carrara, I'd say: give me an Alembic I/O, a dynamic cloth solver, a Python scripting system and I'd be really happy :)
Best wishes,
Thomas
Dynamic cloth, we have a plugin (VWD and a bridge with Marvelous Designer), Python scripting, Carrara can read and use this kind of file ( Pycarrara, Pyswarm...), but the Alembic export is a necessity as also a lighter particle system and a repair of few minor bugs of use. Other than that, Carrara is still complete enought for me.
I'm given regular updates of other "great" softwares and Carrara is still in the trail unlike DS wich is only a "Studio" to pose the DAZ3D items.
Carrara software development team has done great job and many thanks to all of them!!!!!!
I am sure that existing Carrara users will be happy to buy upgrade without second thought and Carrara seems to be the second most popular product on DAZ forums.
I have tried many other 3D software package and kind of wasted my money on them but Carrara is stil the best and complete product for me and it goes very well with other 3D software and game engines etc.
It is powerful and affordable at the same time and I will love to see it grow further.
I think it depends on the availability of funds, developer resources and demand of the product. Carrara was used to be on the front pages of DAZ site but it does not seem to be the case anymore and it needs marketing and evangelism to attract new users.
Hi,
Well, I mean something you can actually work with. VWD is far away from being usable. With Maya nCloth you get a working cloth within 5 minutes or so. The Houdini cloth solver will take 30 minutes or so. But VWD will take a whole day... at least for me. The MDD plugin gives me a lot of errors and problems. The Octane Render Alembic exporter works great, but we don't have an Alembic importer... That's the problem :(
Pycarrara isn't a real scripting system... It's ok but, well, no, it's not a real scripting tool :)
Best wishes,
Thomas
I think the existing cloth could be made to work if they were interested in developing it.
as was shown by many it will collide against attached cloth, as well as items in the scene including transformed and physics items, it just ignores vertex and bone animation.
Some sort of integrated proxy system that duplicated boned mesh at joints with the properties the cloth attachments have that it sees rather like iClone collision shapes could work I believe.
but as is one needs to manually redo such stuff scene by scene as it does not save when using named groups and softcloth attach.
Hi,
I'm not shure that the VWD is far away to being usable, I have seen a few excellent simulations on this forum!
But like Wendy said, I think also that it's not a great job for the developpers to boost this feature in Carrara.
In the beginning, I had problems with the .MDD plugin but now that I have understand that we must use the linear tweeners in Carrara and delete the first keyframe, that works like a charm, and it's very fast to jump from MD to Carrara!
About the python scripting, you are certainly right, I know only Pycarrara (the base of Pyswarm).
PS: There is also a script in Poser to import a cloth simulation into Carrara (Dyn2Morph).
Hi,
No doubt, as I said, it only takes the whole day instead of a few minutes in other programs. But it can be done :)
I understand that. Biggest problem has been exporting Genesis motions without errors and importing the MD file in a current scene. I always had to import it into a new scene and then import that scene into my main scene... Don't know why. Any ideas? Or is it just me?
Thanks for pointing me there. I used it some time ago. Perhaps I give it a try again...
Best wishes,
Thomas
It depends on the source code, but if the code is written before we went 64 bit mainstream it can be a lot of work, if you are unlucky you might look at a rewrite of everything, old C/C++ code often relies on the builtin datatypes and they change size when you switch from 32 to 64 bit compilation so everything has to be changed, so it all depends but yes I would think it takes a lot of work.
Problem two, dependencies, they may depend on other libraries and if this is some old stuff there may not be any 64 bit support available.
Totally agree.
Not you only, I forgot to say that, when it's to import in a scene, I must also import in an empty scene first, drag my animated clothe in my object library and load it after in my scene.
A MDD file like to be alone and one meshe at a time (no multi-meshes).
Oh, ok, thanks :)
When you say a whole day, what do you mean? I use VWD quite a lot and the calculation of cloth is pretty fast. It can take a few iterations to get exactly the effect you need - like any cloth sim - but I have never spent a day getting it to work, and sometimes I get what I need in a few minutes. So I am not quite sure what you mean?
Hi,
At first, I was really happy to have a cloth simulation tool in Carrara, but really fast, I couldn't do what I wanted without a real big time effort. The usability is IMHO disastrous. And when I simulated the cloth and wasn't happy with the result, I had to close the app, import it again, do all my settings again, and start a new calculation. That was really annoying and time consuming. Did I do something wrong? Is there a resimulate button?
Best wishes,
Thomas
I have added images of current and purposed high level architecture in main thread.
Added images of draft current and purposed architecture.
The reality is that it would be more work to move features from Carrara to DS compared to just starting from scratch and implement it in DS, the code base for Carrara is almost 30 years old and little have changed, almost nothing would be even close to compatible with the infrastructure of the DS geometry engine.
And that is a pity, the renderer in Carrara (based on the Infini-D renderer) is still today a cool piece of software that was ahead of it's time.
DS is the flagship and that is where the resources go, Carrara just get some nuggets here and there, the best thing for it would be if it would go open source and let some interested people take over it, but that never happen to this kind of software, it is always burried deep when that day come (don't generate any revenue), look at TrueSpace and others.
I agree but as you know amazon has made a deal with crytek to develop cryengine 3 (not 4 or 5) further and equipe itself with a well-tested game engine, investing lot of people and money upon it, so never say never. Carrara needs of skilled peolple and a breakthrough reel to spread the world
I admit that having to close, reopen and reimport is not the most elegant of solutions, but as it remembers most of the settings from the previous time, it is not too difficult to tweak the parameters that you need. Maybe the issue is with the items that you are simulating? I admit that most of mine are done with clothing that is intended to be draped, either bought commercially or made by me in Marvelous Designer. If you are using Conforming Clothing, the results may need more adjustment and the cloth density may be much higher, leading to longer calculation times. Just guessing really.
Dynamic Hair... a must must must have, cannot live without it for creating believable characters (human and beast) that need realistic head and body hair, fur and for clothing, even grasses in environments.
Silene
Hi,
In Germany, this is called a software in pre-alpha stage. I mean, come on, am I the only one who finds this strange? Hello? A software you have to restart everytime when you use it? Can't believe you don't find this awkward!? In Germany, we don't sell that kind of software. We sell software you even don't have to start (see our great VW cars
).
You create with MD and simulate with VWD (and not with MD)? Why would you do this? Sadomasochism?
Best wishes,
Thomas
It may be awkward, but VWD is much better than nothing at all. At this point there is no competition, no other options for cloth in Carrara that looks this believeable that arent crazy expensive like MD. Hopefully, with more and continued support form Carrara users the VWD application will graduate to the full elegance we'd expect.
I clearly don't find VWD as much of a trial as you do. Plus VWD will work on a mesh not made in MD, I know that the latest MD will do this as well but I only have MD2.
@ThomasSc
VWD works well for me.
Even in Germany no one without training ever got in a VW and was instantly a good driver.
Likewise for VWD like any other software you need to read the instructions and practice and also understand it's limitations.
each to his own of course
PS my wife has a VW but I prefer my Škoda (though it's from the same stable) - it's simply clever(er)