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Anyway, to give my $.02 to the OP regarding what's the story with Carrara...
I don't think anyone would say that all indications are for a very bright future for Carrara. If you look at the past 5 years, there has been very little development on Carrara. There was talk from DAZ a few years ago about an imminent Carrara 9, but changes in management seem to have made those statements invalid. Most have the sense, based on DAZ's actions, that DAZ has changed direction away from a software development company to a content sales company, with DAZ Studio the primary focus as a vehicle for content purchasers.
Personally, I would recommend that if you have, or expect to have, needs that Carrara isn't filling, that you start to look elsewhere for the more functional software options out there. Many consider and assume image generation to be basically a multi-software function, where you use different software tools based upon their strengths, and integrate them together at the end for a final product.
The reason for that is this:
If you consider how may fields are brought together for visual effects and 3D stuff, it's VAST. Lighting, rendering, textures, materials, animation, physics, compositing, etc. You can never expect one app to do it all well. This stuff is extremely complicated and technical and difficult to develop software-wise, and each takes years of focused development.
My suggestion is to make an objective evaluation of what your present and future needs might be, then look for the best tools for those needs, then consider some way to integrate/composite those results together. It's a good solution for professionals, and might also be a good solution for hobbyists who enjoy many aspects of VFX.
Personally, FWIW, I would consider the following toolbox for a serious hobbyist. This is only my personal opinion, others will disagree, and it is not intended to criticize Carrara or anyone else:
1. Carrara for characters
2. Blender (free) for stuff like fluids, smoke, fire, dynamics, integrated compositing, video editing, etc.
3. Fusion (free) for compositing
4. Other, depending upon your needs
I know many consider Blender's interface to be confusing, but I think with some preparation there's a lot of customization you can do to make much of it seem very "Carrara-like". And personally I find recent versions to relatively easy to use.
Hmmm... how old is blender ? ...years of focused development ?
Do you imagine that Carrara is the only software that the majority of users frequenting these forums use or are aware of ?
There are many free applications available, ... there's a Thread here for free software that other users may find useful.
20 years. Two decades.
Geez, Andy, if I didn't know better I might think you're just trying to give me a hard time... :)
HI rdonato
Nobody can tell you anything about the future of Carrara.
the only people who know anything are Daz
What is a fact is that the Carrara Public beta, and resulting Program update was only recently released. along with a sale to encourage new users.
That doesn't sound like abandoned to me.
Because the latest Daz3D figure doesn't currently work in Carrara,. doesn't mean that Carrara will stop working for you.
Iclone 6 was released in December 2014. A male and female character included. These are Characters set in stone...no ability to do anything with them except change their hair and clothes. This brought me to DaZ3D. I needed different characters for my projects. The Reallusion 3dxchange is an excellent import/export application and facilitates Daz3 imports to IClone.
I had to buy decimator, because the average poly count had to be around 50K, not 500K. That is because Iclone is video application.
To make it simple... don't be distressed by V7. Try exporting V7 in several formats, then try import to Carrara. Wendy mentioned she had some luck with a procedure like that.
I expect Daz will make V7 compatible soon enough. Content sales are too important to them. Any money is good money, especially when you have waiting buyers. ;)
I buy content items to save time. I like the quality of Daz content. I will not be buying G3 until they are fluid exports into Carrara and 3dxchange. I just don't have time for workarounds and things that have to be tweaked. Daz has spent the entire week promoting the G3, to which I pay zero attention.
I can't be neg'd out now, since I learned how flexible the Carrara UI is. I will change that UI to suit my moods. :)
But like 3DAge says, nobody (including him) can tell you anything about the future of Carrara. Only DAZ knows. :) :)
I have no idea what that coffee comment is about - Sounds like cheap coffee to me!
I agree that if say Blender implements full integration of DAZ/Poser characters, or if DAZ Studio implements the major things that it is missing compared to Carrara, then that will be the time to look at these alternatives. I'm not holding my breath, and in the meantime, Carrara fits the bill for the majority of my work. I already do some of my modelling in Zbrush, clothes in Marvelous Designer and use Octane Render for Carrara for most of my rendering. So if I want things that I can't do directly in Carrara, or can do better and faster elsewhere, there are other programs to use, but Carrara remains central to what I do, at least for the foreseeable future.
Joe, in the spirit of brotherly love I have to point out that you've unintentionally (and unfairly) attributed a negative intention towards Andy's comment, and then distanced yourself from voicing that thought by using the phrase 'if I didn't know better'. Logically, if you *did* know better, then there's no reason to voice the thought at all, wouldn't you agree?
In other words, if you know very well that he isn't trying to give you a hard time, why give voice to such a negative thought, which unfairly casts him in such an unflattering light? I'm certain you didn't meant to portray such a negative image, and I know Andy is too much a gentleman to take offense, but it might be a good opportunity to start getting in the practice of apologizing to those you unwittingly may have offended.
Don't worry Joe, we all make mistakes, and like I said before in the spirit of brotherly love, helping others, and making this community an even more positive and welcoming place for all, I'm going to try to do better at helping you spot and correct these little slip ups.
Forums are informal conversations... Writers don't always take the time to think about how what they are writing will connect or not-connect with other readers. So, we should make it a point to stay friends. Over time that should help to level out verbal mistakes, misunderstandings and arrogance we may not realize we communicated in a posting.
Jonstark, I really do appreciate the sincerity, and the "practice what you preach" attitude. It's wonderful when folks aren't trying to discredit and/or hurt me.
Thanks, Jon.
Jonstark, I really do appreciate the sincerity, and the "practice what you preach" attitude. It's wonderful when folks aren't trying to discredit and/or hurt me.
Thanks, Jon.
You're most welcome Joe, it's my sincere pleasure. I agree; it is wonderful, and makes for a happier, healthier forum, and a more positive experience for everyone.
Life is too brief an experience to waste any of it making life more difficult for yourself or others.
It's more enjoyable when you're learning new things,. being helpful, creative, and constructive.
Agreed! Cheers for that. New or under-skilled people want to feel comfortable asking for help or when reading answers to questions they might have wanted to ask. But when the comfort level is compromised, there's the Ignore feature in our profiles.
:shut: SileneUK
Joe,
I really like this post and agree with your assessment of the current Carrara status.
Great suggestions!!
Regards
Take a look at DAZ 3D new sister website.
https://www.morph3d.com/
A new division targeting UNITY game development. The sister site will sell 3D content and development tools for Unity.
Looks like very exciting times for DAZ 3D and Morph 3D.
Regards
I should be interested in Blender, but on the condition of being able to import certain simulations in Carrara.
On their site, I don't see any export in Obj. seq for example.
Thanks for the memories, I hadn't seen that interface in years. I always felt Carrara borrowed a lot from Infini-D. At the time, they promoted Carrara as a merging of RayDream and Infini-D. I didn't use Infini-D much in those days. My go-to program was Extreme3D then.
As you say, good software will keep working for as long as you use it, but at what cost? Maintaining an older machine and transferring files between computers. It's certainly possible but not always convenient, especially on the go. But we're far from this situation with Carrara and have many years of use ahead of us.
Out of curiosity, what do you like so much about Infini-D over Carrara?
I agree maintaining old machines has some unappealing side effects. However the old G5's still have plenty of speed. What is so good about infini-D is that I can build say a ship hull quickly, then the rigging and sails quite easily, However this would not be much good if I could not also apply the texture map where I want it on the hull. I am building a hull and rigging in Carrara at present, but it is not as easy, and there is no way to manipulate the texture map so that it is exactly placed on the hull that I have found so far. Also the ray tracer in Infini gives some excellent color and sharpness right out the box and a crisp alpha mats.
Of course I am committed to Carrara now and will have to adapt to new ways of modeling and texturing - which I am doing..however, I do wish they had carried over to Carrara Infini's ability to simply locate an manipulate a texture map and improved upon it. There is so much more to learn in Carrara and it is so much more sophisticated and has so many options - not to mention figures... However I do miss the simplicity of Infini.
Starboardtack
It would seriously surprise me if DAZ wasn't working on the updates required to take advantage of Genesis 3 before G3F was ever released. Of course, I could be very, very wrong in my thinking on that - who really knows?
For Carrara, however, here's something that I've been seeing.
Yes, I really, Really like the new Genesis figures and their new implementation in Carrara. But...
With all of those drastic shape changes comes a price. The huge price of texture optimization was cleverly twarted by DAZ in their utilization of SubD caging along with the ability (Bravo DAZ!) to switch over to a different, custom set of UV mapping to the new shape. That's huge!
The price of content creation headaches has also been very well smoothed out through the Content Creation Tools within the new DAZ Studio. It makes it easy to create content using one shape, and let DS auto-convert it to the rest, or you may create your own versions for whatever shapes you wish, which is all very cool. But here's the part that still has me loving the previous "Generation 4" figures in Carrara:
Content for V4 is made to fit V4 and may (or may not) include morphs which accompany some of the popular shape changes she's capable of. The same applies for M4, A4, G4, F4, H4, and so on. This makes it such a breeze to create our own casual custom morphs for our own endeavors - even if those custom casual morphs include fitting the content to the shapes we like best, but also for custom movements, styles, or other enhancements. For Genesis (1 and 2 and perhaps 3) we always have to revert to the original shape in order to casually create a simple new morph which, for me, becomes problematic in the grand scheme of things.
Yes, I love all of the new Genesis figures and shapes and, Yes, I will be using them and stocking my shelves with gear for them. Yes!
But when it comes to video production, I really love the Poser 7 and earlier content when it comes to the human figures using conforming clothing. Luckily for me, these figures are great to work with. There may be issues with the folding of this joint in that position or whatever. But most of that seems to me to be most noticeable if they're not wearing clothes. well, if they're not wearing clothes, then the above issues with conforming clothing really doesn't matter anymore, now does it? LOL
Seriously though. Seeing Vicky 7 and her new Genesis 3 figure base is feeding my eyes a whole new level of human figure realism. I mean... wow! Question is, when will the rest of the package catch up? we'll need to start seeing much more realistic clothing and hair to make such a steep upgrade worthwhile. So for more serious projects, I think we may have some time to play with as we wait for true Carrara/Genesis 3 compatibility.
DAZ does work on Carrara. But it's not their DAZ Studio, so it does take a hind seat to that, which to me is very understandable. Do I get impatient? Yeah... I really do. But by the time I hit the "Submit" button on my forum posts, I backspace all of my rants about wanting them to hurry up already!!! Kidding! It's nice to NOT have to shell out for constant upgrades, if you ask me ;)
But in truth, I didn't buy Carrara simply because of the affordability. LightWave held that trophy for me and it is what I was all geared up to buy. I needed a modeler/renderer. But then I've found Carrara, and what sold me was how it could work with Poser figures like V3, as well as being a fairly proficient modeling tool. I had already read complaints that the modeler (vertex) wasn't up-to-par with what they'd wanted. I saw the Lynda(dot)com video tutorial "Essential Carrara 5 Training" where Jack Whitney demonstrated that it was certainly robust enough for my needs.
All of the other great tools in Carrara were noted in the back of my mind, but didn't matter toward my making my decision. Physics and particles scared me and I felt that I would rather buy in my environments rather than make my own.
Man, I started making shape morphs onto my V4 and M4 clothing items, modeling little essentials that I needed and whatnot... I could not understand why folks didn't like the modeler - I still don't. Getting to grips with the animation sequencer, texture room and render engine and I just knew, finally... that I am home!
Starboard and Eric,
I completely agree about this great software being fine for me for many years to come.
I build my own computers for this stuff and Carrara is running beautifully on my monster and renders like crazy! :)
To the first point, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they WERNT working on it, seems all they have eyes for is DS
As to the second, Carrara is a paid program, DS is free - so as paying members both for the app itself and for the content used in it, are we not entitled to a bit of support from Daz, which as of late seems to be lacking?
Carrara's entire particle system was lifted directly out of Infini-D.
I used to feel the same way as you do about Carrara, in regards to the "does everything and more 1 stop solution app."
With the fact that I paid (wait- not just I, WE ALL DID!) good money for Carrara 8.5 Pro and every version since 6.x when Daz bought it and upgraded it for "near but not quite perfect" Poser content support. I've been happy wiht that i'm having to learn Carrara's material room and fell in love with the awesomely near infinite shader system. Carrara has truhfully serverd me well for my entertainment and hobby (and spending hobby) needs. There hasn't been any regrets, and consistently championing Carrara's merits and strengths...
Yet. its becoming to feel a bit like a sore thorn in my side, with the Genesis2 support ever slowly coming along, a seemingly lack of Genesis 3 support. Yet the totally free Daz Studio app gets the center stage.
Carrara needs some major and critical updates. Where am I going with this?
- Loading, clothing and Posing Genesis2 content natively in Carrara is trivial, usually crashes after confornimg a few pieces of clothing.
- Posing and saving a Genesis2 character clothed in Daz Studio into .duf format, loading into Carrara also proves trivial, sometimes the Skeleton won't adhere to the mesh (can move the skeleton bones while mesh stays static like an imported .obj). Its sporadic hit and miss, ultimately annoying when it does happen.
- Can't edit / fix / tweak clothing for Genesis 1&2, or make custom morphs like we can for legacy Generations 1 - 4 (was a MAJOR breakthrough for Carrara; sole exception is if the clothing doesn't have morph channels then you are still out of luck).
- We need an SSS toggle in the render settings for starters.
- Needs updates and improvements for handling HDRI - more flexibility for rotation and light source (be able to rotate the HDRI map for different lighting direction) instead of grouping the entire scene and camera to rotate, which sometimes crashes carrara upon rendering.
- Carrara Sky editor could use some updating, probably would coincide with udating and integrating better HDRI support.
- Its native Render engine puts out great visual quality but the internal coding would seriously benefit from updated instruction sets like SSE, SSE2, the newer AVX set. How it handles processing and calculaing Full Global Illumination, especially with transparencies & Indirect Lighting (most notably Trees, plants, leaves, etc be it both native dynamic plant system and poser content style plant/trees). Having a small forest in the distant background for an outdoors scene using full GI still brings a 40core dual cpu render beast down to a severe hours upon hours crawl. On my former Q6600 render rig, I've spent 48 hours waiting for a similar renders.
-- also applies to interior renders that have / use large glass/plastic skylights for daylight coming in
- Fake GI with Light rigs is an alternative to Full Global Illumination, feels more like a band-aide than a solution to the problem.
- Exporting objects like flat planes with a Carrara Procedural Shader (basically to export and generate the procedural texture as a bitmap / tilablebitmap texture), would be nice if the export settings were updated to converting Procedural to Bitmap, be larger than 2048x2048
There are some alternate render engines already, Octane and LuxCore, but that also comes with having to re-learn the shader system again, to adapt to gettiing the optimal render results from those engines. Your still limited in many ways in other areas. The render engines don't support all of Carrara's native features either or the native shader tree and the dynamic / procedural shader functions, (in example terrain is supported but not the procedural shaders required that goes with the terrain) The render engines are also limited by your graphics card memory, ironically now that finally Carrara 8.5 Pro is 64bits to go beyond the 3.2gb memory brick wall in the first place.
- Would love to see a render option in addition to Realistic - Photometric , which would enable real-world unbiased lighting behavoir, just as the plugin GPU based LuxCore and Octance offer right now, but with full native Carrara features and funcrtionality.
- Daz studio already got a major boost with the now included natively supported nvidia iRay renderer... Nothing for Carrara for those who have nvidia cards... (Yes, theres Octane, but is available for both Studio and Carrara, doesn't count in this case).
Daz is pouring a ton of support, money and effort into a program that they're giving away for free. That's a loss leader IMHO. Yet the monetary loss is easily being recouped by the ensured steady sales of the Genesis 2 and 3 content. Carrara could and should be given the same model, people would flock to it like they do Daz Studio, and Carrara does a whole lot more out of the box. Carrara likely would overshadow Daz Studio, but at the same time become a very serious contender to the alternative options that are out there especially if it had the native support for Genesis 2 & 3 content that Daz Studio has...
Sorry for the rant, but I'm starting to lose the love I once had for Carrara...
If Daz would only fix, i,prove and update Carrara, even provide a working Beta 9 showing this, then yeah, i'd be all for it. I'd happily shell out upfront another $400.00~ or whatever it would cost to upgrade. I'd even just buy the non upgrade for $400.00+ to show my enthusiasm and support for Carrara.
I just want to see Carrara back in the limelite and prosper like it once did back when it debouted at its Daz 3D 6.x release.
In addition to being able to load and use Genesis 3 series figures, your post got me thinking. I wonder how difficult it would be to implement iRay into Carrara, I am guessing no more difficult than DAZ Studio, and if the two had access to the same renderer, then materials could well be compatible between the two as well, at least when using iRay. That would give Carrara a good boost.
Can we say: "Carrara 9"? ;)
I think that would be an utterly awesome move for DAZ 3D!
With the previous post regarding Genesis/Carrara issues, I can truly feel your pain.
I love that Genesis features (DUF) have been implemented, but it's still not to a point that we can take full advantage of the technology as if it was a Poser CR2 figure.
In the end, it doesn't really bother me too much if I end up having to use Genesis figures mainly for simple projects and then continue to rely on pre-Genesis (Poser CR2-based) figures for my main animation productions, but it's a frustrating journey coming to realize such things - especially, I'd imagine, if you're a new Carrara user whom jumped on board with the intention of using Genesis in Carrara, without first having a successful relationship with previous technology to go back to.
I consider myself incredibly lucky in having years of success with the M4 V4 (and friends) line of figures as well as with Predatron's LoRez people. Predatron's LoRez folks are really beneficial if you're looking at making animations (or even stills) which involve having a lot of figures in the scene at the same time. The same applies to the Low Resolution Generation 3 figures, which I think may still be available. But with the Predatron figures you get clothing options and various skin/character options built right in, making them incredibly simple (and fun) to get set up and saved to the browser for future use.
So anyways, if you really love using Carrara and Genesis is giving you the blues, you may enjoy going back towards the pre-Genesis figures. They are still quite formidable in quality and have loads of support both here and over at many other marketplaces.
I feel very similarly with the exception that, it's not Carrara that I'm losing the love for, but the whole new Genesis line. This, of course, being because I have really grown to Love Carrara to a point where I think I'd rather drop Genesis than to drop Carrara.
I haven't yet given up on Genesis though. The more I get used to it, the more I like it. Here's my Genesis 2/V6/Gia6/Girl6/Josie6/Steph6 version of Rosie
Great images, Dart! No pain here, if DAZ doesn't want me to use the newer figures, then I shrug my shoulders and just won't buy them. There are plenty of other figures and clothing available, some of which I haven't even got around to using. And I find new ways to use Carrara all the time. So while there may be frustrations at times, I for one will just carry on and enjoy what I am doing.
I think that is the shortest post I have ever seen from you! :lol:
I think that is the shortest post I have ever seen from you! :lol:
Lol, I'll second that ;)
Dartanbeck:
Like everyone else, I just get frustrated at times.
I did buy some V4 joint fix morphs, I just have to track down from where, and install them (being tired from work sometimes means i'll buy stuff here and various other stores then download and organize my product folders later...). At least it does have the seperate eye reflection surface that Genesis 1 lacks (yeah I did buy the Genesis Eye Reflection package from here), and I can easily load 6 Gen4 figures using Carrara's Elite/Optimized shader skin packs and still be able to continue adding more stuff to a scene.
Loving your Genesis2 version of Rosie btw, and glad that Carrara didn't cake out on ya like it does on me occasionally when using that many G2 shape morphs (the Skeleton seperating from the mesh, Skeleton movable, mesh remains static). Thats the point when it becomes heartbreaking for me - Spend an evening in Carrara designing a character (body and face shapes), save, then run into the roadblock where Carrara crashes after conforming 3 items to the figure. Groan in frustration, fire up Daz Studio, re-make the character morph by morph, load the clothing, save as .duf , load the .duf into carrara. Only to get the skeleton seperation from mesh issue. Talk about wanting to put your fist through the monitor at that point...
Once, and for once only, there was one beta version of Carrara from not too long ago that actually did seem to work good with Genesis2 natively, for conforming clothing and all... But thanks to the DIM , I ended up overwriting that particular beta version when I downloaded more products and updates. There went possibly the only version that worked good for me because now i'm back to fighting with Carrara and Genesis2...
Before the DIM came out, when we had to download each new release of Carrara, I kept and saved each installer, incase I had to roll back a step or two.
PhilW:
Iray - yeah i'd love to see it brought into Carrara natively. Even though I own a pair of AMD R9 290X's . I wonder and would hope too that the iRay D|S material presets would carry over well enough to be used as-is in a Carrara implimentation...