Topics of Interest
I've always been a bit curious about what are actually the topics of most interest in this forum, so I spent some time and did a little analysis. I thought it was kind of interesting...others may not....
What I did was look at those posts with activity in the last 6 months (maybe a little less...I got bored with it around January...), and made a little spreadsheet of topics that had more than about 1,000 posts. I then tried to classify them as to the main subject.
What I found was not real surprising, and it came out like this in terms of topics of most interest:
1. Renders: by far the most active threads were those where users post and look at each others renders. Total = 72,459
2. Carrara .172 beta: as expected, and since it's been around for a long time, discussion of the latest beta had Total = 60,288
3. Software: discussions of external software and plugins was the third most popular topic with a Total = 39,063
4. Carrara's future: also as expected, Carrara's future was the fourth most popular topic with a Total = 28,207
Other than those 4 topics, I couldn't see any other single, general subjects that were even close to being as active. However, the thread "Tips and tricks for space scenes" was probably the single most popular topic outside of those four subjects, with a post count of 8,493. And just below that in activity were the threads associated with the (now defunct?) Carrara Community Movie Project, with a total count of around 7,810.
Anyway, for what it's worth.........
Comments
Those are some interesting statistics. Thanks for sharing that. I'm actually kind of surprised that the future of Carrara type threads weren't first.
You forgot The Millennium Cow!
It has to be the single most important topic to practically everybody on the forum, whether they use Carrara, DAZ Studio, Poser, or even Bryce.
Nothing is more critical to the future.
These are the longest-lived threads with the most activity, but not necessarily what everyone is talking about...
I did my own survey a few months back and the vast majority of new threads were seeking help on a function or how to - I broke them into two categories : getting "stuck on a specific function" was #1, asking about a process or a general "How do I...?" was #2.
These help-me threads were something like 70% of all new topics.
Amazing the data one can mine simply browsing a forum. :)
Well, I hope that the future of Carrara looks bright because I took the plunge today. It won over Lightwave and Blender for my personal level of comfort. I will use it for renders, I am not much of a modeler.
Amazing the data one can mine simply browsing a forum. :)
Well, I hope that the future of Carrara looks bright because I took the plunge today. It won over Lightwave and Blender for my personal level of comfort. I will use it for renders, I am not much of a modeler.
Welcome aboard! If you have questions or need advice, please ask!
You can also find many helpful articles and tutorials at:
http://carraracafe.com/
Carrara is a powerful program. There can be a bit of a learing curve, but personally, I love it.
Carrara is actively being developed, so I tend to fall into the optimist camp. My advice is to not fall for the doom and gloom. My first computer was an Apple MacIntosh Performa bought at the height of it's financial crisis. I didn't buy into the media hysteria about the demise of Apple. Love it or hate it, look at Apple now. I feel the same way about Carrara. There's been some missteps along the way, but the biggest thing that slowed development to a crawl- and the thing everyone seems to forget when spouting FUD is that when the economy tanked, it effected nearly everything. If you have limited resources, you tend to circle the wagons and put a hold on expenditures.
I'm not a huge modeler either, but you may be amazed at what you can do in the Spline, Metaball and Vertex modeler.
If you want a sample outdoors scene to experiment with that uses some of Carrara's features such as plants, replicators, volumetric clouds, rigging, etc. then check out this scene I'm giving away. You can use the Dropbox link or get it from my ShareCG account.
Happy rendering!
Dropbox:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7370483/Fantasy-terrain1.7.zip
ShareCG:
http://www.ShareCG.com/v/69697/view/5/3D-Model/Fantasy-Village-terrain