Considering buying if it's not been abandoned

Headwax

chickenman said:

Lotharen said:

I've just purchased Carrara as well. Like you I also went thru the 'is it supported/abandon ware' phase. I believe its being update just at an incredibly slow pace.

What kept drawing me towards the program was the ability to make my own landscapes - that and animations created by Carrara seem more fluid to me. Plus I just happened to like the rendered look I've seen from experienced hands.

Now to learn the program - I want to create stuff too but Ill be frank - I'm a little intimidated by the countless features.

Good luck to you!

In this case in order to learn a little what you can do is to try entering the Carrara challenges. for each challenge there is a set of guidelines that are defined and then if you have any issues the experienced people will also chime in in the WIP thread and provide some advice.

See the link to the challenge threads

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/45254/learning-tips-and-tricks-from-prior-carrara-challenge-wip-threads#latest

 

Best part is You can win DAZ items while your learning.

 

great idea Chickenman

 

3DAGE

Quantum :)

that's really messed up,. I've no idea how you managed to get to that point

If you've used DIM to install Carrara,. and it's content,. then that should be fine,.  (carrara only has the main program,.,and it's native content)

So,.. if carrara is working,. and you can open a preset scene,. then it's been instqalled correctly.

what's not working correctly is the list of available content and runtime folders,. that's all wrong.

 

If you used DIM to install all of your Daz3D content files,. then something is seriously wrong,.

Q: Did you use DIM to download and inatall Daz Studio ?,.. and then it's content ?,. Do you have Poser,. ?   and if so,.  which versions ?, also which versions of Daz Studio

your Daz Studio / Poser and it's content are a complete mess,. and that is not the normal install setup for those programs which should appear in Carrara,.

Did those folders show up when you first opened Carrara ?,... or did you use Carrara to search for content library folders ?

Have a look on your hard drive,.. (Users/ Public/ Public documents/my Daz3D library)  .. if that folder is there,. it should have all your content for Daz Studio and Poser installed there.

If it's there,,. Add that folder to Carrara's browser,. and you're almost good to go.

If that folder doens't exist,. ... Open DIM ,. select any installed product ,. Right click and choose "Show installed files"

let me know where those are being installed to.

 

 

 

 

You mentioned previously that you've also installed content and application on your other systems,.

Q: are those systems showing the same content install issues.

 

quantum-2653005

Yes, I had DIM install everything. I have Poser Pro 2014 Game Dev, DS 4.9, Carrara and Bryce. I used DIM for DS, C and Bryce. The \PoserRT_DAZ3D directory is where I put all the POSER Pro assets and \DAZ_Studio_Content for all the DS assets.  I have the DS directory manager set up as the attachment shows.

My Poser content directory used to be under the "Poser Formats" content set but I seemed to get a lot of duplication in the listings and icons that had the question mark on them. After going to 4.9 I also started to get errors of missing asset components (images/maps) and failures because it was looking at the now-implemented "Daz Connect Data" location on C:\

Some of the recent content I've installed with DIM has been installed in the root directory of DAZ_Studio_Content. I don't know if this is contributing to the odd entries under Carrara. I haven't manually installed anything other than Bryce, it didn't show up as an installable in DIM.

On both workstations they have the same layout and the same issues. It was only in the last few weeks that I installed on my second workstation, so it was a fresh install of everything; Poser, DS and now Carrara and Bryce. I've used the Content Database Maintenance util inside DS to reset the DB and reinstalled everything, still the same result.  Sometimes DS doesn't even install things properly after DIM says it has. I think this is also related to the broken and convoluted implementation of the C:\ "Daz Connect Data".  Sometimes while loading an asset it will ask if I want it from the C:\ location or the E:\ "DAZ_Studio_Content" location, so I know the "Daz Connect Data" has something wrong with it.

I deleted everything and started over and as you can see from the attachment I put the POSER file location under "Other Import Formats" to make sure there was nothing getting confused between the two. I can see the Poser assets/directories (as shown in the Content Library attachment) and whatever DS/DIM thinks is Poser content is installed under the "Poser Format" location (as shown in the DS poser formats attachment).

I don't use the Smart Content under Carrara because it appears messed up as well. I don't know if it's that I have too much content or that DIM installed it incorrectly or that the authors of the package didn't follow the standard layout so they install in the root or other location and not under the appropriate sub-directory structure.

It's all a furball.  I know under the "Other Import Formats" location is nothing but the Poser Pro 2014 assets, so that's ok. It seems that between DS 4.9 and it's new pita C:\ implementation and DIM getting confused, I have all kinds of assets with broken references (missing images/maps, etc). Part of this is because D3D put stuff on the store and didn't QA, I know that because similar issues have been raised in other threads about broken products being sold recently; particularly the newly aquired RDNA assets they were in a hurry to make available. But other stuff that has been in my wishlist for quite some time that I recently aquired also has the "Do you want the asset in C:\ or the one in E:\?" dialog. So who is the culprit behind breaking stuff?

I have 1200+ products from D3D alone, I wouldn't hazard to guess how many individual assets that is. I have over 8 Gig of Poser assets and Poser isn't broken.

So even after a completely fresh install on the second workstation, using DIM  alone, Carrara has a messed up Content tab.

Carrara had those entries on its Content tab, I didn't have it search for additional directories. I've also attached a DIM right-click on product "Installed Files" for Homestyle 2 Iray Shaders so you can see that it is placing the files in the correct location; at least until DAZ Connect Data breaks it.

Maybe DS 4.9/Daz Connect/DIM is just completely broken now. The whole "do you want the asset from your E:\ location or the broken C:\ connect location" got very old the first day it started happening.

Thanks

 

3DAGE:

I used a spherical camera with one of the default terrains and generated a nice, very large tiff and used that as an environment map in DS. I put a single ball and set its shader to a highly reflective metal and rendered in iray. It picked up the light and reflected the background just great. Thank you for that. One thing, the tiff file looks fine in an image viewer but it does render in iray as though the gamma (I think that's what it is) seems to be washed out, the whole image seems too white. I hope that makes sense. Anyone have a best-practices for doing this?

For just making backgrounds alone it was worth the price of admission, I'd be ashamed ot say how many backgrounds I bought from D3D when I could have saved that money, gotten Carrara and just made my own.  Live and learn.  I figure out how to fix the washed-out appearance and/or how to generate actual HDRI images and that's a huge benefit.

thanks all

3DAGE

Hi Quantum :)

I' not a big DS user,. so bear with me,.

As fas as I know,. you should have your Poser content "runtimes" set up in the "poser formats",. rather than "other import formats" ,. I'm not sure what "other import formats"  are for,.

but any folders you have with Poser content, should appear in DS when you select that category of "Poser formats"

and the same applies to Daz Studio formats,. any folders you have with daz Studio files , should be displayed when you select "Daz Studio formats"

I'm not sure what purpose the "maps" folder is intended for,.

I'm guessing that it's for textures , but your own images/textures are probably better placed elsewhere as they're not really "content"

 

I think you should ask about setting up DS in the Daz Studio discussion forum,.

at least those users may be more capable of answering your questions about DS content folders.

I've never used Daz "connect" ..so I can't say whether that's working or not.

 

on backgrounds and environments,. In carrara , if you go to the SCENE  Background,. you can add Colours, Gradients. Formula, HDRI, or Map (any image format)

if you then go to the Render Setting, and enable "Sky light" in the Global illumination section,. (Se pic) ..Carrara will use the "background" to light to the scene.

You can also add a Backdrop image or sequence to your scene (which will cover the "Background" in the final render) in situations where you want the light and reflection from a background HDRi ,. but want a different Backdrop for the final image.

 

quantum-2653005

The reason I used the content directory manager in DS screenshots was that Carrara (at least from what I read) uses the same PostGREsql database as DS, so if the content is mangled in one I would have thought it would be the same in both. Not having added anything (add directory reference) in Carrara I suspect it is using what DIM/DS put into the database, so any anomalies I'm seeing where caused directly by DS/DIM and not because Carrara can't read the db. The odd named content listings must have been caused by DS and it's "break everything DAZ connect" garbage, because DIM now 'supports' DAZ connect, meaning it's all hosed up.

When I installed Poser Pro 2014 I had it install its content in its own directory; "PoserRT_DAZ3D" because I didn't want DS/DIM destroying a perfectly working runtime by putting PoserPro content in with DAZ content. Since there was alread the "Other Import Formats" was an available selection in the content manager I put that runtime under it. DS seems to more and more break when trying to have Poser and DS content in a shared location. The hiddeous duplicate references and question mark icons when I have the PoserRT_DAZ3D directory in the "Poser Formats" of DS is why I keep it under "Other Import Formats".

I guess I'll have to go to my NAS drive and reinstall using DS 4.8, because that version did not exhibit this kind of self-annihilating behavior.

Worse case is I reinstall everything again (using DS 4.8) along with Carrara and Bryce and it looks the same. I have a suspicion now that it won't be as messed up. Since your Carrara content tab screenshot looked very straightforward I'm beginning to think the DAZ Connect garbage is intentional altering something. I'll have to see what my weekend looks like and do a flat-line and reinstall on my main workstation and see how that goes.

thanks for your help.

 

mikael-aronsson

The bugs are there and you can live with them, not much different from any other 3D software.

I gave up though, not sure how people use it, with a little complex scene with 2-3 genesis characters some trees and other stuff, nothing exteme, it took ages (5-10 minutes) to save and load (even without compression), I did spend more time saving and loading then doing anything useful with it, saving all in one car file is a bit of a disaster.

But if that is not a problem you get tons of cool features at a very good price.

 

AeonicB

quantum-2653005 said:

I used a spherical camera with one of the default terrains and generated a nice, very large tiff and used that as an environment map in DS. I put a single ball and set its shader to a highly reflective metal and rendered in iray. It picked up the light and reflected the background just great. Thank you for that. One thing, the tiff file looks fine in an image viewer but it does render in iray as though the gamma (I think that's what it is) seems to be washed out, the whole image seems too white. I hope that makes sense. Anyone have a best-practices for doing this?

Yes.  To fix the washed out look, turn down the ambient light located under the Scene -> Effects tab.  By default, it's set to white 20 percent.  Honestly, if you need Sky Light or GI, set a background using a constant color or HDR, and it'll look much better.

I tend to generate my HDRs in Bryce, even though it's a little slow.  It'll do 96 bit HDR export, though, and I find the skies to be both colorful and workable.

3DAGE

Hi Mikael :)

Although Daz Studio and Carrara do very simillar things, and work with the same models,. there are some huge differences in the way they work,. mainly because of what they can do,.

for example,. a Daz Studio user will load a figure,. apply a skin texture,. perhaps change that to a different skin,. then load clothing,. change that a few times, change the textures on the clothing,. add hair , change that hair model to get a look which the user is happy with.

When the user saves that file,. Daz Studio saves a little list of the items "currently" used in the scene,

When the same user does the same thing in Carrara,. ... Carrara will save a file with all the models and shaders you've added to that scene, even if you've changed skin textures or clothing textures those old textures are still in memory in carrara and will be saved with the scene,. the Models, such as genesis, will also be saved in the scene.

any models you've created or added to the scene will also be saved,. since carrara is a Modeller, it's built to save your modelling, and other creative work, in the scene.

So,. in Carrara,. before you save your scene file,. you should go to EDIT / Remove Unused / Shaders / Objects / Clips etc..

this will reduce what's saved in the file,.. Then save the scene file.

If you use Carrara to create your "actor" or (action ready figure with clothes, hair, props) by draging that figure group to the Browser,. It'll save and load faster.

it's also easy to drag that asset,. into any other scene,. and be ready to go.

Carrara is a different animal. with a different behaviour, and different abilities.

 

0oseven

Quantum - I can only say one thing - buy it. Personally I paid well over three hundred bucks plus a couple of upgrades and do not regret one cent. You get all that for abiout $150 I think.

The first thing you will discover is that Carrara can do many things more than get mentioned her - just too many for posters cover. After all the manual is 800 pages odd.

Another way of looking at it is not what Carrara can do but what YOU can do with  Carrara.  You will not learn about it in five minutes and most likely will still be honing skillls in five years.  

One thing it lacks is great water and ocean simulation though it does have an implementation od sorts and there is a plug in that allows you to float objects.But not in the same league as the big boys though I note even they sometimes resort to plugins like "Realflow". In my recent search for a better ocean effect and in the hope of importing to Carrara I dabbled with most of the major softwares and found them complex to use partly of course because they contain many more functions but as said in earlier post many of them not needed for the likes of you and me.

You haven't stated what exactly you want to achieve eg beautiful still renders or animating Daz characters or a comic book lookwith the free toon plugin..

Returning to Carrara is always a breath of fresh air for me when I return to it. 

Well I could go on but if you want to play with Daz content Carrara does a good job [ exclude G3 ] and along with its other capabilities [ did anyone mention the great shading room  ?  Oh and how about the storyboard ?]]  You see we could go on  and on so I really recommend you buy it. If you have concerns about the future development you should contact Daz and ask the i f there is any point in you investing your time { forget the money its so cheap ] if they have NO plans for it. I am,unfortunately, of the opinion thay have abandoned it. 

 

quantum-2653005

I did buy it I think a couple of days after people responded in this thread. Coming from MAX, using a 3D mouse setup, I found the initial shock was "WHERE IS MY CENTER OF ROTATION?!" :)

Yeah, whatever you have currently selected apparently becomes the camera's COR. The Huge/Med/Small movement settings can be a bit wonky, the "this bed's too soft...this bed's too hard" problem where the movement scaling using just those settings initially seemed to be warp-speed (way too fast) or dead-monkey (if I scroll my mouse to Alaska my camera might get where I want).

I have been playing with it, not as much as I'd like to. Work programming project takes my time currently.  From what I have played with it seems pretty good. The default render engine makes some nice pics from the default scenes that came with it. I played around with some of the knobs (now what nerd would refrain from a good knob-turning session?) and basically came to the conclusion there's a lot under the hood that I'll have get some time into it.

I appreciate everyone's input.

Thanks