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because they already have our money that's why
that's why they are updating Carrar to Genesis compatability
for more of our money
--- don't tell anyone, it's a secret
We've had some very long, drawn out discussions of manuals here, and I think it's pretty clear that, when it comes to manuals, there is no "they".
There are many different opinions on what the manual 'should' be.
There are many people who actually think it should teach you not only what a user manual normally teaches (what all the buttons do) but also the basics of 3D. In effect, they want something that tells them everything they need to know, so they can sit down with the software, starting with virtually no knowledge, and do whatever they want. People have actually said that.
And many are also adamant about not wanting to rely on external training to learn the basics of 3D graphics. They will use external videos to learn about Carrara, but really want all that to come from DAZ. And when you suggest they pick up a book on general 3D graphics, people get real upset. Unless it's Jeremy Birn's book on lighting. Which isn't even a book on general 3D, but it's the most folks will discuss.
And clearly, based upon questions that get asked here on a regular basis, many people don't read the manual. Many. And in fact, when anyone suggests that someone read the manual, they get trounced on for being cruel and unusual.
Yeah, DAZ should update the manual. No question. And, BTW, as I recall, someone from DAZ poked his head in here and said they feel it needs a complete re-write, which would take a very long time. So at least from their perspective it's not just a matter of a clarifying addendum.
But I strongly suspect that if most people learned the basics of 3D first, and actually read the existing manual, the cries for an updated manual would die down to a mere murmur. Or a quiet whisper. Or maybe just lips moving.
I agree with most of what you're saying,.. but this part is wrong..
The basic functions and features of Carrara have not changed since version 5,. so it doesn't need a complete re-write.
what it needs is the New features added,. and the problem with doing that is that some of the new features are not completed.
Daz_Kat asked for volunteers to help with updating and checking the manual ,.. there were a total of three volunteers,. including myself,. but unfortunately, real world events meant that I had to back out.
the bulk of the manual is there in text format and it should be possible to create an on-line manual from that which could be added to and updated as features change,.
But, some people want to have a Physical copy of the manual instead of on-line doc's or PDF,. and in that case that's their choice (and Cost).. to have it printed so they can sit and read it a they work,. but that's also where a manual needs to be "Complete" (before it's release) and not have a series of addendum's.
Daz Also asked for volunteers to help with the DS manuals and tut's, which has lead to a team of DS users making things like the "Learning strips" part of the DS interface. and having subtitled video tutorials.
but, DS has more users than Carrara, and obviously more are willing to help make things better for everyone else.
you not read it then Joe?
The slap heard around the world...I wonder what the noise that woke me up was... ;-P
The Carrara manual is in a piteous state.
Cute.
In any case, regarding renderers, I'm guessing that nowdays what most consider "good" renderers are the ones with the cool and fancy features that update their renders while you watch and make changes, and you can get those realistic renders real easily, and do it 'a lot faster' than those other renderers.
I doubt that a careful consideration of the quality and abilities of the renderers on the market, including comparisons with the non-fancy ones, is really the issue.
So yeah, Carrara's renderer is ancient and not nearly as good. But DAZ Studio is good because of that cool render plugin.
Actually, my original post was precisely considering the quality and abilities of Carrara's render engine against some of the other full-feature packages, and I think it is lagging pretty far behind in terms of quality. "Fancy" features are usually useful, so I welcome them too.
I love Carrara, I just think that the renderer is lacking in quality when it comes mainly to sub-pixel anti-aliasing as well as GI, motion blur and post filters. Go look at galleries from the competition - the render quality and realism speaks for itself and is why Carrara is not really used for broadcast or film production.
That's not why Carrara isn't used by the big boys. That has more to do with pipeline issues, and no pro level development and support team to help a big studio if they did use it. Carrara is perfectly fine for smaller shops and is used at TV stations and smaller production companies. The quality of the renders of any package depend a lot on the skill and talent of the person setting things up. There are more users of the other competing packages so there are many better renders for those packages because of that. There are good Carrara renders out there but a very small group of people doing them. You could probably count them on both hands. So it really boils down to the folks using the software and knowledge of how to make something look good in Carrara and their skill and talent. I've seen bad renders out of the big packages, too.
But for content users, you have a very limited number of packages to easily get things done - Carrara, DAZ Studio, Poser and Bryce, with the most pro features being in Carrara, and DAZ Studio if you get the plugins. But Carrara is the one to get if you want to expand and do a better job using content. DAZ doesn't charge enough for Carrara to get all the spiffy render features that the bigger packages have. There's a reason why you can't get LW for $800 anymore, just as an example. If you want DAZ to put in all those features, then you should expect to pay for the development costs. But they probably won't even contemplate that because the Carrara user list is so small, compared even to Studio and Poser, they still wouldn't make any money.
True, but regarding the 3Delight renderer, from what I've read it is extremely hobbled because they give D/S away. I don't know if D/S Pro has a more full featured version or not.
It has features that are more hidden and is usually one version behind in Studio compared to the industrial strength version that goes for the big bucks. But you can access many of the "hidden" features through the plugins, especially the ones by omnifreaker, which give you access to things like raytracing settings. To use 3Delight as it is in the studio world, you need to be a code warrior. What Studio's 3Delight does give you is ease of use and the ability to use multiple cores in one computer (I believe is at least 16 maybe more -- seems I recall someone uses it with a 32 core beast) which you have to pay through the nose to get in the pro version which is really designed for render farms.
I also seem to recall in the old forum that DNA had tweaked/improved the version now being used by DAZ so textures could be shared between DAZ Studio and the free renderer that DNA provides to all.
All good points. Let me dial my sentiments back down to; I wish Carrara had a better quality renderer so that I don't need to consider other packages.
I'm not so much a hobbyist as I use Carrara mostly for work, so I'm not saying it can't perform, I just wish it was better... my company has the money to pay - maybe they should up the ante and price of the "Pro" version - we would certainly pay more.
I just HAVE to respond to this ;-)
I dont think anyone "refused' to read the manuals that are available. They probably have read them.....
I'm just saying there are a few sections of the manual that are like:
"The WHIZ dial is used to control the quality of WHIZ in your renders. The Special option may me checked on or off to apply Special to the WHIZ..."
I'm not saying the manual is great, actually the opposite... There is SOME useful info in there (the explanation of the shader channels for instance tells you exactly what kind of info you can put in any channel, which channels are black/white which are color... etc) but a lot of it is also completely circular, like the author didn't really know what the WHIZ was for either, and wrote some circular logic to fill out a paragraph....
I personally believe if anyone has READ the manual they would not be asking for MORE manual.... They would be a bit more neutral about the manual, saying: "Yes there is some info there and you should take a look, but really it is not the same as learning how or when to use a feature. And it won't really teach you Carrara. It's really more of a reference guide..."
The manual was written over more than a decade by several authors... It takes about 2 minutes to read a part of the manual (like the plant room, if there *is* even a section on plants), but you'll still have to look up the word "Phillotaxy" to know what sort of thing you are controlling... When features are introduced we get great math/engineering words like "L-Systems" and "Eiger Angles".... Which may actually help you understand what Carrara is doing under the hood better than the manual, but the manual doesn't have that kind of info....
Anyway. I'll stop derailing this thread...:P
you mean it was ever on track?
Well, you can say it's wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's a fact. You can check the archives. I can't recall who it was, but I'm pretty sure someone from DAZ said it needs to be rewritten. I recall discussing with someone about the manual, and that other person thought it would be a few months to get it done, and I said they couldnt' even get an employee on board in a few months.
Now, if you're arguing that you personally don't think it needs a re-write, then okay.
The slap heard around the world...I wonder what the noise that woke me up was... ;-P
The Carrara manual is in a piteous state.
Not sure why you consider that a slap, and why apparently you got such joy out of it, but anyway...
The answer is no, I haven't read it from cover to cover. I check it when I need to, which is almost never. Because when I started with Carrara I had a very good understanding of 3D graphics, having been in the VFX industry for many years. I've taught some of this stuff, and worked with pretty much all of it, so with me it was just a matter of locating the buttons and switches for stuff that I already knew and understood.
When I have checked it, it usually answered my questions. I think.
And when 8.5 came out with Bullet, for example, and I wanted to try it out, I already understood the basics of cloth simulators, so it was just a matter of figuring out how DAZ had implemented and named the stuff that cloth simulators usually have. A manual would have been nice, but knowing the basics first made a manual less than necessary.
I'm not commenting on the state of the manual. I merely said that I recall that someone from DAZ said it needed to be rewritten. You're free to check the archives to see if I'm mistaken, which I might be, but I'm pretty sure my thinker ain't that broken. Although....
Personally, I couldn't care less if they work on the manual. In fact, I think it's pretty much the last thing they should work on. I'd rather have them spend time and money on features I need. The rest I can figure out on my own.
Exactly. Plus the fact that since it isn't used in the industry, it isn't used in the industry. If that makes sense.
Breaking into the industry and getting studios to change what they use, especially for the big studios, is freakin' impossible, based on logistics alone. Changing software is really, really difficult, when you consider all it entails.
Ain't gonna happen.
Ahh...okay...
In an effort to make sure I wasn't losing my mind, I checked back to see if what I said was true. And yes, Mr. DAZ_Spooky said in Feb. of this year:
"You are missing some key points about the Carrara Manual.
1. It needs a top to bottom rewrite because it was written by the developers and many parts of it are seriously out of date. "
That was in a thread discussing Reality for Carrara, and Paolo and I were discussing the current state of the manual. So according to DAZ, it needs a complete rewrite, and your guess is as good as mine about how many years that will/would take.
However, on a bright note (at least IMO), they seem to recognize that a manual written by developers ain' the best way to go, and it seems like their intent is to rectify that if they can....
Here's the link: http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=162386&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=560
Thanks for finding that link, Joe! I remembered bits and pieces from that thread about DAZ trying a few times to have people write new docs and they flaked out. Seems someone doubted that recently or took issue or didn't know/// ah it's late. But thanks for finding it and reinforcing my old memory cells!
And now that maybe a potential Carrara user has been scared away by a bitch-fest over a manual that's ninety percent correct (excluding bullet and a few other additions) I can go to bed happy. :-S
CARRARA! Come for the Features.... Stay for the Psychosies...
I know, right?
And coming from a DAZ rep, too. Wow. You'd think they'd have better sense than to say the manual needs a complete re-write, when in fact everyone thinks the manual is, like, pretty awesome and stuff.
But I agree, we should all be a lot more considerate when saying stuff about Carrara, and its manual and stuff. Try to keep things positive, in case potential customers are reading this. So if, for example, you think the manual sucks, don't actually say it sucks, say it's awesome or something. That way we'll get more customers buying Carrara, and that will be good for all of us.
And after they buy it, when they get pissed because of the lack of an updated manual, just put them on ignore or something.
When I finally ended up buying Carrara, I already knew that this was what I was looking for... "an affordable 3d animation studio that has vertex modeling capabilities that has the ability to work with Poser/Daz3d figures and props the way they were designed to work".
Personally, I'm far more impressed now that I've owned it for a while, that I was back when I used to drool over the awesome older info page they used to have here. Too bad the new advertising doesn't even give anyone a clue!
When I first started looking for such a program, a friend sent me a link to Carrara - but Eovia sold it then. Version 5 was being advertised heavily on the new Vertex Modeler and its Poser compatibility. They sure made it look easy compared to trying to work with Poser stuff in anything like Blender or Max. Carrara allowed conforming figures to work - just like they did in Poser.
Sure, when I finally did buy it, Carrara 8 was in beta and the timing was such that I got it for an extremely tiny price. But I was saving up the entire amount for Carrara 7 Pro and, when my savings exceeded that amount, I came to buy and found that I didn't need nearly the amount that I had to work with. So I ended up giving all of that money to Daz3d anyways. Nothing wrong with having a huge pile of cool new products to install along with the shiny new software, right?!!!
I knew that, especially after Daz got their hands on it, that my Gen 3 (and now Gen 4, since Daz gave me all of that with my Carrara purchase!) would load from the browser, but I was really surprised that everything, including loading, just seemed to work better than the version of Poser that I had. The browser was there immediately upon program load - unlike the hours it seemed to take Poser whenever I switched runtimes. Everything just seemed better and more powerful.
Right away, I decided to try my hand at performing some mesh changes on some clothes that I've always wanted to tweak. Carrara's vertex modeler was amazing! I could tweak anything - so I did... and often... still do, all the time.
What I got from Carrara that I did not expect:
- Content -
Beyond the enormous "Native Content" pack that comes with Carrara, Daz3d literally filled my account with downloads. Much of it came from the fact that I became a Platinum Club member in the same order, but they sure got generous with free gear for a sale of software that I feel was already worth far beyond its meager price. The Native content also includes a gigantic collection of assets that were made in Carrara for use in Carrara. You can tell that most of it was included specifically to allow new (and Vet) users to study and learn from. Together with the very informative and well organized (well written) manual, the user can learn some really powerful skills towards their own goals as they explore that particular task. Learning through dissection, so-to-speak.
- Assembly Room Bliss -
First impressions left me loving the control of the view. Standard controls on the interface, or just use 'Alt' with the mouse. Easy to take for granted, but I still love how Carrara's work space handles with my mouse
The standard 'scene building' window is the "Assembly Room". Carrara can remain quite responsive even with a whole pile of junk in memory. The ease of view control, ease of selection and organization, the flexibility of how one sets up the viewport, not to mention the incredible sequencer (timeline) keyframe editor - which very sensibly resides in the same screen space as the browser - giving the user plenty of work space real estate. Tools that are more similar to what one would expect from 3d modeling software are well placed along the interface - which is customizable. Never tried that though... they made it just the way I prefer to work, so...
- Texture Room -
Anyone using figures made for Poser will get to know this room right away - unless they like their people looking blue! :)
The power that the user has over how each material renders in shear perfection! With enough imagination and determination, nearly any CG suite should give good results. Carrara makes this really fun and even intuitive. On top of that, Carrara makes keyframe animation really easy for your shaders as well! Here's a great example of using Native Content for help on how certain channels work to create an enormously wide variety of effects.
- Render Room -
Carrara's render engine is a dream come true. Super easy batch rendering (allowing multiple render tasks to occur as you sleep/work, etc.,) and a mind-boggling array of settings that can turn out anything from super-fast tests to week-long single frame shots. In Poser, it seemed that the longer the render took, the better the render. In Carrara, you have to be careful not to use this foolish mentality. Sure, excellence will take time in any render engine. But Carrara has capabilities that many scenes really don't need in order to get superb results. But you can actually use Carrara features to actually handle the entire lighting operation of a scene using its powerful realistic sky editor and a 'sun' light, and then go into the render room and specify how much liberty you'd like to give the render engine for its calculations. But take away the need for the software to calculate everything for you, an artist can decide to get really clever with global ambiance and light placement - setting up each shader just right and turning out fantastic results with amazing speed - even with full raytracing! Carrara's render speeds simply blew me away when I first used it. I still strive diligently for scene efficiency in this respect - as I mainly only render animations, I need to have some speed considerations or I'd never get anything done. So I've found some settings with lighting scenes and in the render room that I'm happy with, and use those as good starting points.
- Working File Efficiency -
Some of my friends here, on the forums, and I have discussed to some length regarding the many ways that we can keep our scene files sizes tidy and efficient. Carrara's menu helps big time with a very simple set of features tied to "Edit > Remove Unused Masters" as follows:
Edit > Remove Unused Masters
> Remove Unused Objects
> Remove Unused Shaders
> Consolidate Like Shaders
These simple commands can bring file sizes way, way down from where they'd be otherwise.
SciFi Funk (Daz forum handle) has put together some great sets of tutorials on how he uses the vertex modeler to actually delete parts of Daz Products that will never be 'seen' by Carrara's cameras, bringing asset sizes far below their starting point. Although many artists would never need to go through such extremes, it's a handy gift to have that availability - especially in his case; building gigantic scenes with many highly detailed products sold here, along with models he's created himself within Carrara, to achieve very massive city scenes.
Keeping assets organized within each saved file is super fast and easy with Carrara's "grouping" feature without actually disrupting the way that the Poser runtime file handling works.
I've not yet explored physics and particle systems in Carrara yet - but that's going to happen fairly soon. I've seen many examples and read many tips, and I already know enough to know that with Carrara, I'll be able to perform 100% of the video footage for my episodic movies from within Carrara. I'm going for a certain "look", which just so happens to be given easily by Carrara.
If you take a small look for Carrara-compatible products at Daz3d, you may not find much in the new store. I'm fairly certain, by how well they've been getting this place to work, that this will be fixed sometime in the near future. In the meantime, perhaps one of us should see if we could get a good thread displaying Carrara products 'stickied' in the Carrara forum? Would be nice because I've started a habit of purchasing Carrara products - whether I really need them for my project or not - simply because they're a great way to see how other artists work with Carrara scenes/features, etc.,
I've been pleasantly satisfied with the results and commend each of them for the quality of their products. But even more, I thank them for the expertise that they've sent my way for such affordable prices. And then we get to the freebies section of the forum! I haven't looked lately, but the old forums had a true wealth of top-notch learning offered freely by Carrara enthusiasts that have really propelled my skills immensely! This forum can be the same way. Sure you'll find a healthy pile of smart-ankle posts and even some petty bickering, but if you wade through that, you can get some real help and advice in here.
Nowadays, I decide to ignore the advice given regarding the perpetual use of beta software and opt to stick with the Carrara 8.5 beta (currently as of this writing build 172), which I've grown very comfortable with. I did the same when I first bought Carrara 7 Pro - which then entitled me to use the Carrara 8 beta and a free copy of 8 upon release - which turned out for me to be a huge benefit. I'm sure that when the Carrara 9 beta becomes open for testing I'll move onto that as well - we'll see when the time comes.
All in all, though, If Carrara 7 Pro was all that I had available to use (or even 6 for that matter), I'd still be using it and loving every minute of it. They're all excellent suites and for me, yes... Carrara does nearly everything for my work. I only use DS and Hex as a combination suite (using the bridge that comes installed on each of them) to perform some minor file changes to figures that I want to give more morph flexibility to for my animations. But that's just me. All of my scene creation, actual figure morphs, animation, lighting, rendering, etc., takes place strictly within Carrara.
I also bought that learning series. it is great! It me me off and running quickly.
I know, right?
And coming from a DAZ rep, too. Wow. You'd think they'd have better sense than to say the manual needs a complete re-write, when in fact everyone thinks the manual is, like, pretty awesome and stuff.
But I agree, we should all be a lot more considerate when saying stuff about Carrara, and its manual and stuff. Try to keep things positive, in case potential customers are reading this. So if, for example, you think the manual sucks, don't actually say it sucks, say it's awesome or something. That way we'll get more customers buying Carrara, and that will be good for all of us.
And after they buy it, when they get pissed because of the lack of an updated manual, just put them on ignore or something.
I have the manual Joe, and refer to it frequently. For version 7, it seems fine and when I tried the 8.0 beta when bullet, the light profiles and sunbeams were added, those were the only topics I could find lacking in the manual (obviously). There may be more, but those are the only areas that I've had any issues with.
I have the manual Joe, and refer to it frequently. For version 7, it seems fine and when I tried the 8.0 beta when bullet, the light profiles and sunbeams were added, those were the only topics I could find lacking in the manual (obviously). There may be more, but those are the only areas that I've had any issues with.Yeah... Great Manual... I Love it!
Very well written for a software user's guide
I see Carrara 8 Pro is substantially discounted in the store at the moment. Would this mean that 8.5 is about to be released?
Would it be cheaper to buy the discounted 8 Pro and upgrade to 8.5, or buy a (probably initially discounted) 8.5?
After reading the thread I am wondering whether to switch from Studio 4.5, although I would miss some of the plugins (like LAMH, GenX, Reality) and shaders (pwsurface and pweffects) that I use a lot.
I don't know what the best financial deal would be. The only plugin you mentioned for D/S that I know is the Reality Plugin. It's not directly available for Carrara, but I don't know if there's a way to get a scene out to put into the renderer (Lux?) that Reality is based on. I haven't tried because I've been very happy with Carrara's built in renderer.
I'm not sure what pwsurface and pweffects does, but Carrara has a very powerful shading system and you can do stuff in it, that in D/S you'd have to buy a plugin to do (if there even was a plugin for D/S that could do it.)
There are many things that Carrara can do that D/S can't, but there are a few that D/S can do that Carrara can't, such as fully functional dynamic cloth. But then again, Carrara has dynamic hair. There's usually way to work around some of these limitations, but sometimes a D/S user can get a bit frustrated because of the learning curve. If you already have D/S, there's no reason to ditch it. Many people here use it in conjunction with Carrara.
The reason why the Reality plugin is interesting for me is that the renderer can use the GPU to accelerate rendering, that and the fact that the rendering can be interupted and resumed.
I can find that sometimes the (perceived or actual) limitations can act as a creative stimulus by forcing you to work with them or around them..
It is just that I have got into a 'comfortable' niche using Studio in a certain way.
Carrara's renderer is completely CPU based, but if you render through the batch queue, you can pause your render quite easily, even still images. Carrara Pro also comes with render nodes which you can install on other computers you have on-site, and set up a small render farm.
Evil, do you have any experience with the network render feature? I'm curious about attaching my other server and having 36 render threads chewing away...
One thing I have NEVER been able to pull off in Carrara is a satisfactory DOG FIGHT SKY scene. Where the plane(s) are twisting and turning and the ground look real and goes out and disappears off in the distance like the real one does!
Thats why I think BRYCE should be folded into carrara
I'll bite... How does a landscape generator help produce a dog fight scene? (Sure, I downloaded Bryce...but I've never used it) Is it strictly the ground effect? If so, then surely you can import Bryce landscapes into Carrara?