Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Some of the best Carrara Plug-ins are free :)
http://www.sparrowhawke3d.com/
And, when compared to other 3D software,. the plug-ins available for Carrara are "REALLY" low priced.
Also,... you should use Carrara "as it comes" and explore what it can do,.. until you reach some limitation, and then look at expanding the functions using plug-ins.
Unless there's something which you want to do, that requires a plug-in it do it. right now.
Most Carrara "Products" in the Daz Store, don't sell in the same Volume as Daz Studio products, or Poser products do,. so, it's harder for Daz3D to offer them as part of the PC club, and still make any money.
But,.. there is a discount right now on the main Carrara software,. which is a big saving on the full price, and is probably worth the cost of a One month, PC membership.
Occasionally, you'll see a "Sale" on a particular vendor's products,. (I think Howie had a sale recently) , or , when a new version of Carrara is released, there's often an accompanying sale of Carrara products.
The biggest issue (IMO) is that Carrara users can make much of their own "Scene" items, since Carrara has built in modellers, Generators, and functions which Poser or DS don't have, like an animated Ocean, Terrains, or the Plant editor, Volumetric clouds,. Particle systems, replicators and surface replicators. etc....
:)
exactly how did you manage to export M4 animated obj seq from DAZ to After FX?
Jack
Doesn't anybody use Premiere anymore? I hear about Sony Vegas.I hear about Final Cut Pro. I hear about Hitfilm. I almost never hear about Premiere Pro. Has this app got any less power or flexibility than the others? I had to go through a learning curve for Premiere. Was all that in vain?
Except for Final Cut Pro, I think the others are cheaper. At least that's my assumption.
Except for Final Cut Pro, I think the others are cheaper. At least that's my assumption.
I agree. Also, Adobe has gone to a subscription based model, which has turn some people off.
For my post production needs, I primarily use Adobe Premiere and After Effects CS5. But I started looking at Sony Vegas / Hitfilm for future use because I'm not sure about whether I should justify paying for an Adobe subscription in-order to get the updated versions of their software.
Hi there
Any body knows how i can insert a video back ground in cacarra 8.5 pro?
muki
It's pretty easy. First off, you'll want to make sure that the aspect ratio of the video is the same as the final render. Meaning, if it's a widescreen video want for a backdrop, then the rendered output will need to be widescreen.
Here's how I like to do it:
1) Go to the View Menu and enable Show Production Frame.
2) Go to the Interactive Renderer (it's the little up-arrow within a circle icon at the top right of the Assembly Room window) and enable the Show Backdrop Option.
3) Select the Scene at the top of the Instances palette at the right side of the screen.
4) With the Scene selected, at the top of the screen, choose the Effects tab and then choose the pulldown menu for the Backdrop. Choose Map from the list.
5) Click the Load folder icon next to the area where the thumbnail will be displayed.
When you have the video loaded it should now be in you production frame.
My next post will show you how to get a shadow catcher.
I like to use an object with a shadow catcher to help with shadows and masking.
A shadow catcher is a lighting model in the Texture room and can be applied to any object in your scene just like a shader. When a shadow catcher is applied to an object it becomes invisible except for any shadows that fall on it. It also acts as a mask, in that if there is another object behind the shadow catcher object is hidden. If there is an object embedded in a shadow catcher object, the part of the object within the shadow catcher object is invisible.
In my examples, I placed a plane primitive into the scene to represent ground. I applied a shadow catcher shader to the plane. I placed a sphere into the scene with the default shader to cast shadows and demonstrate how a shadow catcher can act as a mask. As you can see from the screen shots, the shader really only needs the Shadow Catcher lighting model. All the other functions can be turned off as it doesn't catche reflections, etc.
I did move the default distant light to approximate the angle of light in the scene and I added soft shadows to the light. I also added a second light to the scene set at 50% and restricted it to the shadow catcher plane so the shadows weren't as deep.
EP,
Did you already check “Catch Global Illumination” and “Catch Caustics” ?
Which are the examples of use ?
I did not check either of those. There are two lights in the scene. The primary distant light uses soft shadows and the second distant light was restricted to the shadow catcher and was set at around 30% or 50%. I can't remember which exactly.
The light that was restricted to the shadow catcher pointed straight down. I used it to lighten the shadows so that they matched the back drop a bit better. Since this was a quick example, I didn't do that great a job. This one is better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8puXTRXt7Y
I had seen another with you and a dinosaur...:-)
That one I didn't use the shadowcatcher!
I either didn't know about the shadow catcher or it wasn't in C5, which is what I used to make the dinosaur eating me. I'm going to assume I didn't know about it, as I was very new to Carrara when I made that. I faked a shadow by creating a shadowy blob in Photoshop and then using that as a layer in my video editor and distorting, translating and having it follow the motion of the dinosaur by manually keyframing all that stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taejI7yb2R0