Carrara's long-term outlook?
Kodiak3d
Posts: 223
I'm curious to see what DAZ's long-term outlook is for Cararra. Studio is quickly catching up to it in capability and there's little discussion about its future beyond 8.5. Also, DAZ just doesn't seem to devote the resources to it that they do to Studio (I know, they bought Cararra, but that was years go and not a valid excuse anyway).
Cararra could be one of the greatest things out there is done properly. If you add even the full capabilities of Blender to Cararra, you would have a seriously awesome suite of 3D tools combined with the easy use of Pose/DAZ content. How great old TNT program be?
I just want to know if DAZ is going to devote some serious money and resources to make Cararra 9 (and later) something really special and bring it up to date or is Cararra going to fade away and be replaced by Studio.
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Comments
Is that a wall of napalm approaching? :-D
FWIW, I wonder much the same. I love Carrara but I do fear for its future.
I can't see how Studio could replace Cararra. There is just so much more that Cararra can do, but I hear ya, Studio gets more attention.
If they put Hexagon's modeling tools in Carrara as a plugin or a new room and get dynamic cloth working and refine all the other tools then I will stick with Carrara. I haven't used DS in a long time now. I use Hexagon most but it's pretty unstable right now, and who knows what it's future will be. (sad smiley) So hopefully Carrara will be spared and get some tlc; if not then I'll have to find something else. If I had money to burn I'd already have Modo. (goofy smiley).
PS the smileys creep me out so use your imagination.
With each new build carrara gets more like studio and less like carrara, the latest; C8.5, has had a lot of the menus changed to be more like studio. Changed to the point of hiding options that I use all the time and used to be right there easy to use. Hidden much like they are in studio. The morphs menu has been changed drastically to be almost identical to studios.
If I wanted to be using studio I would be, I want to be using the carrara I know, not a studioized version we have in beta. But hey, us old carrara users don't count, the people that count are the studio users DAZ is trying to sell carrara to. Doesn't mater if it decreases functionality, or adds four or five more steps to something that used to be easy. Got to make it more like studio to keep the studio users happy. :long:
I love the smell of napalm in the morning..
It smells of .. Victory :)
Ok,.. back to reality..
It's worth remembering that since Carrara 6 was released, the Carrara 7 development began,. and it hasn't stopped since then.
When Carrara 8 was released, the developers were still working on refining it and improving things for the next point release. and it's been an Open beta to all Carrara customers who want to play/test and give feedback about C8.5's development.
We could simply be waiting to get the next product,. when it's done,. and not knowing what's going on.
at least, with the Open Beta,. we can see what's happening.
As for Carrara loosing menu options (I'd like to know what menu options are gone now).
it's gained functions in the animation menu for memorising, restoring, and zeroing the figure/pose/shape. etc.. See pic
In the Parameters tab we now have options to adjust the strengths of morphs above or below 1.
(something which could be a real pain in previous versions).
In the shader rooms there are a number of improvements including the new "Multilayer" shader and multilayer elements.
Fast Mip-map shaders which should solve some Sparkling issues in animations.
As far as DS Support, ..
Hopefully in C8,5 we'll have the ability to load in DUF materials / Poses / Scenes / Character presets / and Animations. frozen in the DS time-line.
That makes transferring files and shaders from DS to Carrara, much easier,. (this is also something a lot of DS / Carrara users asked about here)
As for Genesis support,
Auto fit,.. which makes most of your existing daz content work on genesis, and that saves you time and money.
:)
There are no guarantees in any business and with 3d its even more tricky. Will there be a Carrara beyond 8.5 ? Anyone's guess.......I am betting there will be but the real issue is one more of attention and focus on carrara. Each version since DAZ has had it have less advancements then the version before it. There is usually one or two things that might want you upgrade but never a dozen. DAZ is unfortunately a content provider firstly which does put everything else on the next shelf of importance. And their resources are limited.
To develop a really cool 3d application takes passion......it is hard , frustrating and complex crap to get done and without a passion for this .....it just never is going to happen. Does DAZ have a passion for Carrara? ..................................................( The shame is I think the customer base does.)
all it needs is an iClone pipeline plugin made for it by Reallusion like the one for 3dsMAX and I think you will find a whole new market!!
I never cease to be amazed just how much I can infact bring over to iClone
and for that matter recently Houdini
not morphs but all the rigging and animation inc NLA clip animation as seen with Andy's Kreacher.
I think the gaming market is also a potential area that Daz should be looking at developing Carrara for as they could develop sell the plugins to suit various game engines while users model and rig their own mesh or use licensed Published Artists stuff geared towards that market instead of highpoly Daz artistic render models.
(while still getting their percentage of the profits for selling it)
Would love to see Carrara be seriously developed rather than become just a conduit for DS content, but doubt seriously
it will ever evolve much, especially since they let Reality4Carrara wither on the vine.
I'm still using Carrara 7 Pro. Honestly Studio could advance ten more series and Carrara 7 would still be superior.
There's no reason that they'd ever ditch Carrara. That'd be like Coke ditching Sprite (or something). Carrara is for animation, Studio is for play and posing. Studio is like the gateway drug, but Carrara and content are the real drugs -- the one's you're willing to pay for.
Right now Carrara is all they have to compete with C4D and Poser. Studio is its own thing and, to me, completely unusable once you get past 2 + 2.
Hasn't Daz 'come out' and announced it is mainly a 'content supplier'?
That fits in with giving away Daz Studio. It's like Inkjet printer manufacturers giving away their printers so they can sell you their consumables. In this case the consumables is the 'content'.
The fact that Daz gives away Bryce and Hexagon tells me that they aren't making any money by selling those programs.
The fact that they still charge for Carrara says, for me at least, there is a little light in the tunnel - dunno which end the light is at though.
You know what they say, when you go for a video throat scan and a video bum scan, make sure they do the throat scan first...
Well and honestly I could see Carrara picking up steam since DAZ went free. So many people come to DAZ as aspiring animators, and once you start trying to play with DAZ's interface for animation, things to downhill chaotically fast. At that point all those people go looking for the place where they can animate all their awesome content. I think once Genesis comes over to Carrara it'll be a game changer. Even Poser would be in some danger at that point (personally I think Poser spits out crappy renders compared to Carrara anyway, though supposedly the actual animating in Poser is more seamless and simple).
I've yet to see anything C4D can put out that Carrara can't render-wise. I think it's only going to get better. Right now I like that Carrara is viewed as sort of a fringe, underground product in the animation world. Most Maya snobs look at you like you're homeless if you use Carrara for animation -- which to me just makes me want to work that much harder to make something awesome with it.
Wish I had your faith in DAZ, BC. With the additions of Infinito and the dynamic hair plugin coming down the pipe for Studio, it will have two of the big things it lacked over Carrara (and the dynamic hair looks better than Carrara's, IMO). I agree about the animation tools, but honestly I see DAZ coming out with a robust set of animation tools for Studio before they put a lot more time and money into Carrara.
3dage, I didn't say removed I said hidden, and you picked just what I was referring to. O pose and O morph used to be right there, 1 click. Now they are a sub menu in the animation menu. So it's much like studio where, if you didn't know where it was you would never find it, as in hidden.
"Hopefully in C8,5 we’ll have the ability to load in DUF materials / Poses / Scenes / Character presets / and Animations. frozen in the DS time-line."
That is something I have been hearing about for a year and still doesn't work.
Personally I haven't seen a big advancement in carrara features since the last of the original carrara developers left; that would be the dynamic hair. Yes there is the new physics, but DAZ didn't develop that DAZ just put it in, it was developed by another company. And don't point at geneses, carrara has had weight mapping for several builds now; like before DAZ bought it. So weight mapped figures are nothing new to carrara; just DAZ's premade content version.
As I have said repeatedly, this peaked for me back when studio and carrara actually worked together, back when collada actually worked. DAZ borked it and they haven't worked together to that degree since. Maybe if this gets to the point where I can do a dynamic clothing animation in studio then move it to carrara to finish staging as easily as I could before, I might get back in to it. But as it stands now this is all more frustrating then fun.
And as long as C8.5 has been in development I don't see it happening. DAZ will go right to C9 so DAZ can charge the full upgrade price for it; as the nominal fee for C8.5 wont cover development.
and lol! I still can get a dynamic clothing sim collada exported from DS3A into Carrara!
(because I never installed the special borked version of DS3 you got!!!)
dunno if I can share that last build I got for your NEXT computer, it is only 32bit and you add your own serial,
(might work if you reinstall Windows) yes it works on my newer desktop too because I never put the bad one made to screw up Manstan that I did not download, there either.
I have about 10+ installer builds of DS3, 4 is catching up.
If Carrara had the ability to import video and do motion tracking like Blender, I'd probably give up Poser. I know there is a plug in to do that now, but it kinda sucks.
I'm interested in Carrara solely because it's a decent software package that allows the excellent DAZ content to be used easily. If it weren't for the content, I wouldn't be anywhere near Carrara. Properly loved and supported, it would probably be a really nice entry level software package, but as it is it really feels kind of old and discarded. An afterthought because DAZ figured they would need to provide animation tools for their content.
I've been watching this develop for a while now:
http://www.blender3dclub.com/posertools
It appears to be moving along successfully, and hopefully will allow an easier way to move DAZ/Poser content into Blender, which, although its free, seems to be loved and supported in a way Carrara simply isn't.
Which version DS3A, please, Wendy? I have a few on my old drives.
3.1.2.32 & ofcourse 32bit
Cool! I have that. Always pays to be a pack rat! ;) Thanks!!
ok, don't try it with the 8.5 beta!!!
just did a dynamic sim to see if it was still working and C8.5 has freezed up, I opened 8.1.1.12 32bit and it imported fine.
edit to add WIP render with hair
I wish I could embed videos or decent clickable images!!!
you can see the beta still frozen in the background!
I've been keeping my eye on those tools as well...
Thanks for this! I use the beta, thought I'd read the release notes, and I didn't know either one of these. Now I have to go play in the shader room....
When I first picked Carrara up the basic reason for doing so was because of the ability to import content and the lack of anything meaningful in that regard for blender (which is the first 3D app I used).
Although the Carrara 8.5 beta has significant issues with genesis at the moment that is being worked on and I gotta say, genesis is where I want to be character model-wise. At this point blender would need to grow genesis support, not poser import.
Now, if blender was able to meaningfully import genesis content (including auto fit and geografting) then I'd be looking at refamiliarizing myself with Blender's interface...
I am still using C7Pro. I own C8Pro, but am waiting to install it.
I think Daz should keep working on Carrara development, but I would rather they take their time. a LOT of time and develop Carrara 8.5 or 9 right.
I think most users have barely tapped the power in Carrara 6Pro, Much less 7Pro or 8 Pro! There are SO many things I don't know about Carrara. If I were Daz, while I worked quietly on Carrara development, I would not only keep selling content, I would focus on education. I'd publish a book (even an eBook in pdf format) of secrets of Carrara. Something that would help users tap the FULL power of Carrara.
The tutorials people post are fine and some are helpful, but I would rather have one authoritative source.
This way, when Daz finally does release a COMPLETED Carrara 8.5 (or 9) then people would have a better grasp of Carrara as a whole.
:coolsmile:
I would be interested about how many people use Daz Studio and how many people use Carrara. That would give a clue about the long term viability of Carrara. Daz seems to make most of its money by selling DS items and there aren't so many items for Carrara only. So it would seem to make sense to concentrate on Daz Studio. I bought Carrara 6 at one of the frequent sales but never warmed to it. Somethings it does better like hair and shaders and modelling admittedly but then there is an extra tool to learn. Ironically if it looked more like Daz Studio it might get a wider audience and survive better although I suppose that would offend Carrara users of many years standing.
You are assuming that the interface of Daz Studio is what results in it having more users, not the price point. I can't stomach the pitiful excuse for an interface that is Daz Studio enough to use it even in a supporting role to do things like drape dynamic clothing.
Yes, to an extent a response to interface is personal, not objective. But attributing user base to something other than price is foolish.
It is worth noting (as someone already has) that Carrara is not on the list of free software (for a limited time, since... what February or January?). Apparently Carrara is more valuable as direct revenue generation than to attract new content purchasers. Because there are those of us who *do* purchase content (I have purchased quite a bit of it) I think Daz sees value in further integration with content and thus genesis. This has been borne out by the C8.5 beta (which not all Carrara users think is a good thing). A couple of years ago I made a comment in the forums about using Carrara rather than Blender due to content integration -- which got attention from Daz marketing.
The topic title is "Carrara's long-term outlook?" and based on what Daz has done in the past and is doing now, I'd say that Carrara's outlook is this:
- viewed as revenue stream (rather than a value add)
- increased integration with content
- slow addition of new features (right now this is bullet physics)
Now, hold on...
This just struck me...
Am I reading all of this right?
So, as of right now, I can import Genesis characters into iClone...
But not into Carrara?
Is this right?
depends which Carrara build
C8.5 beta will also open the FBX export from Daz studio
and it loads and autofits clothes to Genesis (not the FBX, Genesis loaded from the browser)
does poses and animation
just some things like textures and preset morphs for the Supersuit for example do not work though I believe .duf format from DS4.5 might
certainly more works inc morphs than in iClone.
C8.1.1.12 the last production build is another story.
Right now, the only commercially available 3D application which opens and uses the Genesis figure in the way that it was designed to be used is Daz Studio 4.
That is, ..You can Load, Pose, Shape, Texture, add clothes which auto fit to the morphed character, Change the UV's to use different texture sets from different figures, LIp-sync with audio, Animate, and Render.