Carrara 8.5 Pro? What is the difference with Poser Pro 2014?
Fetito
Posts: 481
Hello! I have one question on "Carrara 8.5 Pro".
What is the difference between "Carrara" and "Daz Studio 4.6" / "Poser Pro 2014"?
1) Can I add particle FX?
2) Can I add atmoshphere, sun, rain, fog or even fire effects?
Thank you!
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Comments
IMNSHO, the biggest difference is the modeling tools and a more general purpose.
Daz Studio and Poser started out pretty much dedicated to human figures: posing them, doing a little bit of sculpting and shaping, and rendering them, either in place or animation.
Carrara started out as a modeling and editing suite. It had its own content, sure, but central to it was the notion of the various editors with which you could sculpt new shapes. Carrara also contains the tools like bones and mesh manipulation to constrain, distort, pose, and animate those figures.
Yes, there is a general particle system. There are also separate systems for fog ("volumetric clouds") and fire, and a "realistic sky" system that gives you control over cloud cover and sun and moon positioning. I admit, though, that I myself am not quite sure how to manage rain. Someone will be along soon to explain how to do that, I'm sure.
Carrara is a general purpose 3D package which has many facilities built into it, whereas Daz Studio and Poser are very much targeted at rendering figures. Just a few of the advantages of Carrara:
- built-in modelling, either for quick adjustments or building whole new content;
- Realistic Sky, with sun, clouds etc. and the sky colours adjust for the time of day and angle of the sun;
- Volumetric clouds;
- effects such as fog and fire (although don't expect absolute realism from these!);
- Built-in particle effects;
- Built-in plant modeller, allowing to create and modify trees and other plants;
- Replicators and surface replicators, allowing you to use thousands of instances of people, trees, grass, cars or anything you want. To me, this is one of the most powerful and yet underused parts of the whole package!
- Realistic and fast renderer with great sky lighting, indirect lighting and gamma correction for creating realistic renders;
- Built-in dynamic strand based hair;
- Native integration of Poser and DS content, so you can load, pose and clothe figures without having to use other programs and export/import them.
I could go on, there are so many features. And instead of having to buy additional plugins for each feature, it is all there included in the one package.
I love Carrara! There's so much more that hasn't even been listed.
The animation tools are great. I've been playing around with creating my own NLA (Non-Linear Animation) clips lately. I would also be remiss if I didn't mention the powerful shading system.
There are some caveats though. Soft Body physics is in it's infancy right now. If you rely on dynamic clothes, you won't have much luck yet, at least animating it. There are methods of baking the simulations into morphs and such in other programs such D/S, although those are outside my field of expertise.
To get an idea of some of the things Carrara can do, there's a contest going on right now, although it's closed to entries right now. Take a look at what's in there. There's a wide range of subjects and rendering styles. Each entry has a link back to it's WIP, so you can get an idea of the process in creating it. If you see anything that you really like, you're also free to vote:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/28208/
Huzzah! Thank you!