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And the "infuriating" feeling is mutual. :)
I am NOT attacking you or what you said. I am responding to the general sentiment I read here all the time. If what you said doesn't apply, then it doesn't apply, and there's no need for you to get infuriated.
I am, as usual, merely stating the facts. Yes, it would be nice if they could improve their game with Carrara, maybe not all the way to compete with the professionals, but to take a bite out of the market. I get it. And I agree, it would be nice.
But my point is that you can't develop "partial" fluids in 3 months. It takes a very long time to make something that the company can stand behind and sell with a straight face, and that customers would be willing to pay for. It would be great if they could get someone to come in, understand the dynamic hair code, and fix it and make it at least semi-awesome. But they probably can't. And THAT is what brings in new customers, and causes people to switch software. Making people switch is extremely difficult, people get very attached to their software, and there has to be some buzz-worthy reason to change, especially if it costs money.
I'm guessing they're losing money on Carrara, and making features, even half baked ones, or improving existing ones, takes a lot of time and money that they don't have. There is a reason why Carrara is so far behind the industry in so many areas...DAZ has no financial incentive to spend money to change that, because Carrara is, most likely, a losing proposition. And to change that would require a huge and very risky investment that they are not willing to make. If they were, they would have done it long ago. I'm sure you already understand all of this, and that's fine. Others don't.
Would having the "...slick modelling interface of Hex (along with the few cool features absent in Carr), the neat figure posing tools of Studio, and a modern GUI?" really sell more copies of Carrara, to the extent they'd need to recoup their investment? Maybe, but I really, really doubt it. When you can get a free Blender and DAZ Studio and Hexagon and Bryce, it's real tough for a semi-interested hobbyist to part with $400 (or whatever) on something just because it has a nicer interface or a modern GUI. Would you pay $400 for a copy of Carrara solely because it had the same features as a free copy of Bryce? People want the latest and fanciest features that are awesome, even if they don't really need them. They want awesome renderers, and smoke and flames and crashing stuff. And it has to be awesome.
Like I said, Bullet cloth has been in development for over a year, and it is still basically unusable. Presumably that's because they are going to get a much higher return by focusing development on other stuff, because cloth in Carrara probably isn't going to bring in many new customers, unless it's totally awesome and they can generate industry buzz with it. And the way it stands now, it will be years until it could ever be awesome. How much better does Bullet cloth have to be to get people to be impressed enough to move over from Blender (where a nice one exists now) and buy a copy of Carrara? Answer: about 2-3 years of development better. And you'd need to have someone dedicated to it, assuming there's someone out there willing to delve into and understand Carrara. Same goes for any other feature you can name. Multiply the Bullet problem by 5, and that'll give you an idea of the challenge they face. And that's with a Bullet code that is already developed.
Bottom line, your point is perfectly valid, but personally I don't see that there is a "partial solution" like you suggest.
Joe: I'm just a little puzzled as to why I was quoted at all ;) But putting that aside and moving onto there hear and now.
Personally, I found Carrara's ancient GUI hard to come to grips with when I first started, and I know it is something that puts a lot of people off. Having a modern interface is actually a very good place to start with improving an already good program. Tools to make what is already there easier and quicker is quite an important part of a software development. A polished program that does well what it is designed to do is bound to do a lot better in the long run then a program with lots of half-finished features. Building a customer base with a solid, reliable and cheap product should not be beyond DAZ (at least I don't think it is). If Carrara is going to do terrain why shouldn't it be able to do it at least as well as Bryce? Better would obviously be better, but at least as good would simplify workflow.
Yes there is Blender, which is a fantastic free program, but it is not accessible to the majority of students, hobbyists, and upstarts. To say that Carrara can't compete with a free product is quite a strange position, and I don't see why Carrara development would have to be a money loosing exercise. You may be right in so far as there is a great deal of risk involved in going all-out with development, but I think it would be a great shame for DAZ to take the view that it is not a risk worth taking (though I would agree that an all-out development war would probably not be a good idea, and outside DAZ's resources). At the least I think it would be worth putting any new features on hold and consolidating and improving upon what it already does (make them shine if possible) - other than Genesis support because that is a clear financial drawcard (and personal bias).
I also think that the Carr content maket could also be made more appealing to developers. I know this is somewhat a touchy subject, but with the smaller user base (compared to Studio) it is not as financially viable for professional content/plugin developers to produce the goods. I think having a more active third-party development community could be part of a re-vitalising strategy.
Okay, let's say I'm a new 3D hobbyist, and I want some software. I want it to be awesome, and to do all the cool stuff that everyone is talking about. That includes fluids, and flames, and physics, and smoke, and have the latest physically based, unbiased renderer that makes those cool, realistic looking images. What are my choices?
Well, Blender is free, and it does all of that, and it does it quite well. Yeah, it's not the easiest to use, but as CG software goes it's not bad at all, at least since 2.5 came out. It has tons of training, user groups, and an insane amount of buzz.
Carrara costs, what, $400 (heck I have no clue, but something big), and it does none of that. No fluids, no flames (what it has looks downright silly), no smoke (ditto), rigid but no cloth physics, and no unbiased renderer. No user groups, no buzz, and not nearly the training.
Hmm....what are you gonna do?
Yeah, you can argue that Carrara has other stuff. But that doesn't matter. Hobbyists don't care about that, they want what I listed. And that's where the money is. It's a huge market.
And keep in mind...working with 3D software is very difficult for most people who have never worked with it before. It takes a lot of time, as we all know. And that means that many hobbyists are going to go for the free stuff, try it out, decide it's not nearly as fun as the latest video game, and give it up. Why spend $400 on something you're gonna drop in a few weeks cuz it's no fun and takes too much work?
But what if they want to do content? There's DAZ Studio, again totally free.
Why would anyone but a very small group of people choose Carrara? They wouldn't. And DAZ knows that. And DAZ also knows that to change that, they'd have to pretty much redesign Carrara from the bottom up.
It's simple math. If DAZ gets, say, a total of $50,000 of income each year from sales of Carrara (pick a number, I have no clue), they can't spend more than that on development. It doesn't make sense. If the income they get would pay 1/2 a developer for a year, then why would they put 5 developers on it, knowing that it will take 5 years to be only half of what Blender is today? Would you do that? Would your investors let you do that, or would they have you committed to a psych ward?
I know life shouldn't be like that, and DAZ should do a lot of stuff, and Carrara should be awesome, and DAZ should focus resources on Carrara because we want them to, and they should add lots of features. But should and could are two different things. In the end, you probably don't really want DAZ to do what doesn't make financial sense, because if they did it would probably sink the company, and there would be no more Carrara.
I wouldn't say DAZ should focus resources on Carrara because I want them to, and nobody would. I think Carrara is sitting in a viable market niche. It is probably quite silly of me, as someone that is not in the software design business, to come along and make the assumptions I have, but my nose tells me that budget modelling/animation packages is a real and viable market that need not go extinct in the face of some free products. It has been demonstrated time and again that purchased software will usually do stuff better than freeware products. It would be a great shame if DAZ couldn't better Blender. I hope you are wrong about what the average hobbyist wants out of their software, but maybe you are right on the money, it’s all about the special effects gizmos.
DAZ had a chance to have a fine unbiased render engine working for Carrara - Luxrender via Reality for Carrara, and from all accounts they passed it up because they don't appreciate the simple economic problem of having a 50/50 DAZ/developer split in, what is currently, a very small market - might be fine for Studio/Poser products which have a much bigger user base.
I agree. And more importantly, DAZ is sitting in a very viable market niche that the professional apps don't have. DAZ pretty much owns (okay, shares...) the low priced content market, which is a brilliant position to be in. They sell (or at least they used to sell...) software, and also sell content. That's a very nice revenue stream that the big boys could only dream of.
And like you say, Carrara is one of the very few apps out there that exist for people who want to render humans and characters. Try doing renders of humans and characters in any of the big boy apps. You either make and rig your own models, or spend a ton of money to buy a very limited selection. Yeah, you can monkey around with finding some very unsatisfying and expensive ways to import content and characters, but doing it natively and easily is very limited.
Between D|S, Carrara, and Poser, I think they have the content market, as well as the "rendering humans and other characters" market, pretty much locked up. Though I could be out of date on that....
But when they lose that edge, and people come up with ways to deal with content natively in Blender, why would anyone use anything else? Yeah, there might be some GUI benefits (until the Blender guys improve that, which they will), and some other benefits, but those are relatively minor to most people. And Blender development makes anything DAZ can do look like it's not moving at all.
Face it, Carrara's market is, for the most part, hobbyists who like playing with software, and who use content and like it enough over DAZ Studio and Poser to pay for it. But given the alternatives, that's a pretty tenuous market, which Blender can grab in a heartbeat. And it will....
It's really hard to "guess" the "profitability" or potential of Carrara when we really have no idea what the real numbers are. In fact, it really does not matter what has happened in the past as in my opinion Daz has never tried to make money from Carrara. There efforts although thankfully made never really had commitment understood by their customers and has been always with content in mind.
But lets look at the market. It competes with Blender, Poser , Poser Pro , i clone , animation master and some packages of Vue (d'espirit, complete) in its price range. Is it doable to grab a lot of that market with a little more development and focus and commitement-----you bet! If you do it right.
Do not under estimate the Hobbyists market. There is an interesting thread on the Modo forums about "Who is a hobbyist?" You would expect not many folks would be throwing down a $1000 for a 3d program with a $495 upgrade price each version --well seems a whole bunch have for Modo. Did not count them all but i guess like 40 folks posted they were so far--saying they were Hobbyists.
And you know a lot of folks do not post things--so lets not discount the entire hobbyist market.. It does have a lot of folks who will not pay much. Or just steal the stuff.....but there are a lot of enthusiastic hobbyists who if you give them something cool-----something that is easier, faster and something you show a passion for developing -----they will spend their money on it.
T
many prob NEVER post in the forum.
I myself only really actually started a few months after using C5pro to any extent, handful of posts before, and then only occasionally, more often after joining the platinum club 2 years later,
then last year went very quickly from about 800 posts to a few thousand after I got my Android, same now on this new forum, mostly out of boredom and not so much when actually on the computer.
posting in forums became a pastime in itself.
some actually just use the software!!
And that's the issue. Many people here believe that it's "doable to grab a lot of that market with a little more development and focus and commitment".
My whole point is that a "little more development and focus and commitment" ain't gonna get you anything. To compete with anyone, Carrara needs to make huge advancements. HUGE. Not just a tweak here and a tweak there. People seem to think that the head of DAZ merely has to decide on Monday morning to call a meeting with everyone and say "Okay, let's develop some awesome new features to compete with other software out there, and make Carrara awesome. You guys do that development stuff that you do, and have something on my desk by Friday. But make sure it's awesome. Any questions?"
OF COURSE there are hobbyists who will pay big bucks for software, for whatever reason. Some do it because they heard about Modo from their friends and decided to buy it. Some evaluated features and decided it was the best for what they wanted. There's many reasons. But it's DAZ's job to figure out which of those reasons they want to own, and who they want to attract. Do they want the average hobbyist who flinches at having to pay $50 for anything, or the much smaller market of guys who will pay thousands for their hobby, and want to own the name brand stuff?
The point is, once again, they have to come up with something to make Carrara desirable to a wide market. Which generally means features like I described. They sure aren't going to make it based on an industry-recognized name like Maya.
So you tell me...what specifically do they need to do in terms of "a little more development" that will make anyone want to buy it?
I am that "semi-interested hobbyist." I examined a few 3D packages when I decided that I wanted to move up from the free POV-Ray so that it would be easier/faster for me to build up scenes. What attracted me to Carrara Pro was that is did have most of the bells and whistles that I wanted in one package. I had set a personal limit of $1000 (thank-you decent Microsoft paycheques) and when I saw that I could buy Carrara plus PhilW's training software and still be under-budget....I went for it.
Knowing what I know now (which still isn't much!) I would probably have an easier time understanding Blender. But I still see that package as far too overwhelming for someone who just enjoys playing around with scenes. Given the wealth and quality of content that I can bring into a scene with Carrara for free to very reasonable prices; I remain very happy with my decision.
Yep. Human nature at its best. I still haven't touched Dynamic Hair in Carrara (from what I hear, I'm the lucky one) yet. There's tons of whizz-bang stuff we'd like to see. In the words of the philosopher Jagger, "You can't always get what you want."
At the risk of giving an apples-to-oranges comparison here; I would have to point at my personal experience again. SQL Server Express is free but SQL Server Enterprise will cost you (quite a lot...but still far cheaper than Oracle). What do you need to accomplish? Use the tool that fits your needs.
An all-out dev war would surely kill Daz. I don't want to see that happen; but I do want to see a better Carrara. Where is that fine line that needs to be walked? I suspect that we users cannot answer that question (though we all have our own ideas for an answer). It would be nice if Daz would/could talk about it with us.
You just rendered my portrait there... :)
Indeed ---we have only our own ideas based on little information and hypotheticals , so we can have fun being back seat drivers --but only DAZ can make improvements to Carrara for us right now.
We still can wish though.........and really -----its a great little program as it is ---but some improvements would be so welcomed and the trick Daz--if you need any help figuring this out ---is making those small improvements that your customers care to pay for.
Rich
Well, they did... was it two years ago or last year... they were feeling the pressure from the investors they have to get the new products out and they were asking us about C9. C8.5 was being worked on to get Genesis in. They then found from a flurry of posts on this forum that users wanted C8.5 to have fixes and something besides Genesis. So development on C9 was slowed and they had polls boiling down what the top most possible things they could implement for the short term were. Users voted and DAZ has been working on some of those things since, fixes and soft body physics mainly. C8.5 has been delayed because of the ever changing features of trying to get Genesis to work in Studio, Poser and Carrara in that order. They are focusing almost all of their efforts on fixing the store and forum, Genesis, DAZ Studio fixes and documentation, and work on C8.5. I haven't heard any more peeps about C9.
There are DAZ staffers who have said they thought Genesis and DS 4 were rushed out too early. Thank goodness they haven't rushed Carrara. When they rush it, stuff is broken or not quite fixed.
There are users here who love the Carrara interface. There are users who don't like it. They have implemented some minor things in C8.5. But when you look at all 3d programs, they are all obtuse and quirky. I was toying with messiah:studio, which many hardcore 3d animation folks love, but it has an interface that's tough to figure out at first, but when you do, you see its power - same with Carrara. But stuff still isn't perfect there in messiah... still some dependence on Lightwave or other programs for modeling. There's also the documentation area where even though folks complain, there's much more information around in the old Carrara manual and on the Internet in general and Mark Bremmer's and Phil Wilkes' video lessons for Carrara than messiah, though messiah users do have some very good video tutes they can buy on the Setuptab user forum (now that Wegg is back and the store is working again).
I was digging around the Internet and found out eovia was invested in around 2001 by the makers of Amapi. Which would explain maybe why some Amapi like features were in Carrara's modeler. The person being quoted at eovia made it clear that Amapi was their separate modeling program and Carrara was meant to be a low end general purpose 3d program. http://www.macuarium.com/macuarium/actual/especiales/2002_01_16_eoviagb.shtml
That thinking is probably why eovia kept Hexagon separate from Carrara as separate modeling programs were becoming quite the rage at the time. There are probably some design issues to getting Hexagon into Carrara and it would involve someone who knows what they are doing to get into the Carrara code and figure out how to make it happen. I didn't know this but apparently from this article, the folks who started eovia bought 25 plugins to beef up Carrara. I remembered that Anything Glows used to be a plugin that was added later but I wasn't sure about others. Maybe DAZ could buy and add more plugins. I think Holly suggested a couple.
If memory serves, Paolo resisted doing Reality for Carrara because of some issue with how Carrara worked, and maybe more importantly, there wasn't a huge amount of demand for the plugin here (the usual negativity popped up). He had a similar issue with Poser but SM made changes that made it easier for him to protect his code and Poser demand has been big. There was an issue of money between him and DAZ, probably as Reality sales started dropping here. He is trying to make a living off it. The guys working on the DS plugin for Octane Render have said they will be working on a plugin for Carrara after they get the Studio version out (once again a decision based on the size of the user base... and maybe the willingness of the related users to spend money).
I agree with Joe that DAZ would need a real reason to spend a ton of money on Carrara development. They did promote it pretty heavily when Howie Farkes came out with his first landscapes. Perhaps they saw some good content sales from those and that spurred on that focus as the big full page magazine ads for Carrara did feature one of HowieFarkes' scenes with V4. Content sales drive DAZ. The good omen for Carrara is the fact it still needs to be purchased and is not free. I can see the purpose of giving away a free older version on magazine covers to tempt users to go for the full updated newer program. But they need a lot more goodies to get many users to bite as the shiny factor is at work here. There's also the problem that many Carrara users seem to hate buying stuff. There are flurries over time of different PA developers who produce Carrara content, but then stop and it must be partially from lack of sales... mmoir made some nice stuff but nothing new in a few years, Howie Farkes left us for Vue and I think he's left there now, Naomi used to make hair as did 3d Celebrity, but nothing new in a long time. If DAZ isn't seeing sales they probably aren't convinced that spending tons of more money will help Carrara.
I've harped on this time and time again but negativity in this forum (especially from some folks who no longer post here) hurt sales of Carrara. Interestingly, over at Renderosity they had some surveys to participate in a couple days ago and later that day it was posted in the Poser forum a new policy that folks should play nice or see their posts deleted. I bet Rendo has seen sales drop and the negativity and user bashing going on was part of it (it was funny/sad seeing most of the usual suspects who bully people posting in the thread about it... they don't get it). Folks have complained about the negativity there and how they don't like going back. I say the same thing happens here when people who think they are speaking their mind are in fact turning people off and away. It's all about how you do it. Saying it nicely helps. Thankfully it has quieted down here. But DAZ really has to make sure 8.5 works so we don't see a ton of negative posts. I'm sure we'll see some because there always those people who think their computers are perfect but in fact are messed up in some way that causes crashes. One of the things the higher priced software companies have going for them is that their users have better computers that are setup properly so they don't get so many system related crashes or an IT guy sitting over their shoulder pointing out what idiots they are.
The "spin off Carrara to a company that can focus on development" is an interesting idea. But when you think about it, they would face the same challenge that DAZ does. It's not like giving a kid up for adoption, all it needs is a family who will really care about it. Even if they find someone who loves Carrara deeply, at some point they have to decide what to do with it.
It's not a hypothetical, idle speculation based on lack of knowledge to say that it would cost whoever owns it a lot of money to make any significant improvements to Carrara. Nor is it speculation to say that money has to come from somewhere. Nor is it speculation to say they have to, at some point, get that back from sales at some point, and even make a profit. That's their job.
Caring about Carrara and wanting to focus on it are only a tiny part of what's needed. It has to pay off in the long run. Even if they find a company that has money to burn, that company has to have developers who can work on Carrara, and know how to develop 3D features. Getting someone from off the street, or someone who knows how to develop database applications or financial applications isn't going to be real helpful. Even a video game programmer is going to have to start from scratch to understand Carrara, figure out how to program fluids (or whatever feature you want), and figure out how to make it all work. That takes many, many months.
And a dedicated software company doesn't have revenue from content to fall back on, and pay for software development. A dedicated software company is going to want (actually, demand) that the software to pay for itself AND make a profit above that.
So we're back to the same issue. Do they throw millions into long term development to bring it up to where the industry is, and 5 years later find out it's still 5 years behind the industry because of all the time it has taken to get there? And then just hope that they'll grab some of the market?
None of this is speculation, it's pretty much fact. It's a huge challenge, and not something that can be fixed by a little development here, and a little development there, and suddenly you own a big part of the market. Not for DAZ, not for any other company, even if they care for Carrara with all of their heart and soul. Caring doesn't pay the bills.
Probably the best way to get new features into Carrara is plugins. Maybe the plugin folks could dream up some new ones that tackle the weak parts.
Or DAZ could maybe buy and offer a deal on Video Copilot DVDs that would allow real fire, smoke, dust, cracked glass, and water and fake blood splashes to be part of the arsenal. There's a lot you can do with animated textures in Carrara and stuff you could composite as well.
And since DAZ is big on content, maybe more models,animations, light rigs, video lessons and such could be included to sweeten the pot. Make it one kick a$$ bundle!
I recently read an article about how hard it was for Pixar to get cloth working correctly for "Brave" and it required more than a couple approaches which I'm sure took plenty of time and money, so sometimes not everything is easily fixable.
Now that you mention it, I think that's probably, realistically, the only reasonable way given the current state of affairs. Guys who like programming, want to make a few bucks (very few...), but don't have the constraints of having to get paid for working 12 hour days on a plugin, because they just like doing it. Kinda like what makes Blender tick, I suppose.
Though personally I'm not a big plugins kinda guy, because I've seen far too many plugin efforts wither away, lose support, and fade into oblivion because the guy doing it gets a job, or graduates, or loses interest, or whatever. A company is somewhat obligated to maintain a product, but individuals aren't. And anyone who is serious into it is going to want some sort of assurance that DAZ is going to be there to support them, keep the programming toolkit (SDK) updated and useful, and provide answers to their questions. I think that's a problem now that DAZ seems to be bailing from the software buziness. Kind of the situation Paolo was talking about. If you've got the world's most awesome fluids code, but can't figure out how to integrate it with Carrara because nobody will respond to your emails about how a certain toolkit feature works, it's all pretty much a waste.
I started thinking about plugins after reading the original Carrara team from Metacreations who started eovia bought 25 plugins for Carrara, which are some of its useful features today, to make Carrara more robust than what it was as a cobbled together Ray Dream and Infini-D. There are the existing plugin makers like Digital Carvers Guild and Architools, who are still active and around doing updates and offering support, and guys like Fenric and Sparrowhawke... I'd even include the guys making skies and lightsets like Tim Payne and Dimension Theory and Ringo, holyforest and the others making shaders. Throw in the folks who make hair and landscapes. And Tugpsx making the OctaneRender plugin. We could consider content like that as plugins since they save so much work and can be modified. There's a pretty good source pool right there.
Someone could come up with a set of sprites to be used in particles. I don't think anyone has done that yet. There is a program that makes better smoke (an AE plugin) because it uses animated clips. What's to stop someone like the folks above from doing the same to the current particle effects by allowing for animated clips (unless it already does... haven't tried that yet).
Yeah, but with all due respect to the existing pool of plugin and content makers, developing some serious features that people will get all giggly over Carrara is a whole different ballgame. Anyone can put together a lightset and shaders and skies in a few days, or maybe weeks, and you need basically zero expertise. And that kind of stuff is only good for those who already have the software, it's not gonna get a bunch of folks buying for the first time. You need guys who are real experts in writing code for the latest technology, they follow Siggraph papers and understand it all, and can figure out how to make that into code, and are going to stick with it for the years it requires.
Nobody is going to flock to Carrara because it has a drag 'n drop lightset that you can buy for $19.95. They'll flock to Carrara if they see a cool video of V5 wearing a sexy bikini, trudging thru knee deep, flowing water generated in Carrara, her clothes whipping realistically in the wind, Carrara smoke blowing in her face, awesome Carrara fire and explosions all around her, bodies blowing up and body parts flying all over with awesome puppet physics effects, as she fires her M16 that has realistic and awesome muzzle blasts.
That's a lot of plugins. But guaranteed you'd have a lot of guys wetting their pants over something like that.
you can use animated textures on particles, and animated Daz figures!
I have done both, and lights!
Cool, Wendy!
heh heh, what a sight!
Hmmm, okay... The existing plugins that should be included are:
ShaderOps
ShadersPlus
Baker (integrated with 3DPaint - touch up shadows with a brush!)
Jiggle (integrated with 3DPaint - yay!)
ERC (this needs a whole tool or inspector makeover. It's too abstract for me I don't get it)
Replica (instance modifier)
Fenric's pose and timeline utility plugins should be in the interface, not as plugins
Architools and a few game exporters = instant game level designer
**Architools with the Camera Shader from ShaderOps2, along with an improved AfterEffects exporter or camera tracker = Virtual Sets with physics
Move 3D paint to the Shader Room where it belongs so it uses the realtime preview...
Take a look at how everyone else has implemented NLA tracks and steal the best ideas, and figure out how to do that morph list filter on keyframes and NLA tracks. The animation grid needs to be a floating window that follows us to every room, and stays focused where we tell it to with those filters applied, so we can animate shaders better...
The idea of a plugin architecture should be familair with DAZ as well as Studio is chock full of them. Heck if you took all of Holly's list that's a pretty big lift to the program straight up. Not so much for those who already own all or some of them however ..but certainly new users would find a much more complete application.
I think no mater how one would have do to get the job done of taking Carrara further if not the next step has to keep these things in mind-
It has to be be "easier" to use then blender , quick to get results whether that be ease of the use of content or programatically and the pro version cannot get be priced to far from where it is now. (This is assuming you are still trying to keep it as a sub "big boy" product but one that still has some cool factor.)
Rich
Hmmm, okay... The existing plugins that should be included are:
ShaderOps
ShadersPlus
Baker (integrated with 3DPaint - touch up shadows with a brush!)
Jiggle (integrated with 3DPaint - yay!)
ERC (this needs a whole tool or inspector makeover. It's too abstract for me I don't get it)
Replica (instance modifier)
Fenric's pose and timeline utility plugins should be in the interface, not as plugins
Architools and a few game exporters = instant game level designer
**Architools with the Camera Shader from ShaderOps2, along with an improved AfterEffects exporter or camera tracker = Virtual Sets with physics
Move 3D paint to the Shader Room where it belongs so it uses the realtime preview...
Take a look at how everyone else has implemented NLA tracks and steal the best ideas, and figure out how to do that morph list filter on keyframes and NLA tracks. The animation grid needs to be a floating window that follows us to every room, and stays focused where we tell it to with those filters applied, so we can animate shaders better...
Those would all be great included in Carrara! The game possibilities could excite quite a few folks since you can create game characters in Carrara that are your own and not under the DAZ EULA.
I agree those additions built into Carrara would be amazing..
One thing to consider with regards to Carrara and content, is that I believe not many people realise that 90% of the Poser content out there will actually work in Carrara straight off the bat, bar the need to tweek textures of course.
The thing that keeps Poser at the top of the pile is that content makers specifically produce for Poser and market it as such..But if they were to add a line somwhere in their product info that says 'this product also works in Carrara, with certain caveats', you may see alot more interest in Carrara.
Daz could do it straight away with their store products with just a small line that says, 'WILL work in Carrara', and suddenly the program gets alot more exposure and is in peoples minds as opposed to just being forgotten.
SK.
Hmm... a few changes I can think of on the spot.
Give us proper splines in the Vertex Room instead of immediately of committing them into line segments. I'd like to be able to adjust curves after spline creation.
Non-destructive deformers in the Vertex Room.
Free positionable deformers in the Assembly room.
Expose more parameters to animation and make them easier to keyframe. I remember trying to animate various shaders and coming to a screeching halt because the particular parameters I was looking at were not exposed.
Give us proper adjustment and symmetry tools for UV mapping.
Okay, here's a quick shot at the kind of advertisement that I think Carrara might need to really get the hobbyists all excited about Carrara. At some point. Way in the future....
It's got much of the stuff that makes hobbyists all giggly...
Space stuff, hot girls, guns (with hand drawn muzzle blasts...), light beams (hand drawn), awesome fluids splashing all over, real fire, smoke (hand drawn), more guns, cloth blowing in the wind...
And most of all it's really cheesy....
What took me about 25 layers in PShop to gather and tweak a bunch of junk images needs to be all done in software in Carrara (extremely important), preferrably with a single press of a button.
Hmmm, okay... The existing plugins that should be included are:
ShaderOps
ShadersPlus
Baker (integrated with 3DPaint - touch up shadows with a brush!)
Jiggle (integrated with 3DPaint - yay!)
ERC (this needs a whole tool or inspector makeover. It's too abstract for me I don't get it)
Replica (instance modifier)
Fenric's pose and timeline utility plugins should be in the interface, not as plugins
Architools and a few game exporters = instant game level designer
**Architools with the Camera Shader from ShaderOps2, along with an improved AfterEffects exporter or camera tracker = Virtual Sets with physics
Move 3D paint to the Shader Room where it belongs so it uses the realtime preview...
Take a look at how everyone else has implemented NLA tracks and steal the best ideas, and figure out how to do that morph list filter on keyframes and NLA tracks. The animation grid needs to be a floating window that follows us to every room, and stays focused where we tell it to with those filters applied, so we can animate shaders better...
I'd like the aniBlock importer and Reality to be added to the mix
I want Daz to take their time and do it right!
Yeah, I'd like Reality and the AniBlock importer to be included, but if they could just make the software WORK correctly, that would be major!
And by the way, what is this nonsense with the latest beta where it suddenly has problems saving scenes? Huh? The scene with only the character (image above) I couldn't save cuz I got the error. Seems I'm getting it regularly with multiple scenes, even after I strip it just about everything from the scene.
This is just goofy.
Let's change that from Carrara 12 to Carrara 15......they've got a lot of work to do.