Carrara 9..?????
swordkensia
Posts: 348
SO...
As the summer draws to a close, there is still no sign of Carrara 9 which daz said would be released during 1st or 2nd quarter this year.
Does this mean that Carrara will not have any further updates. Has development stopped or just delayed.??
As a paying customer that has supported Carrara since V5, right up to Carrara 8.5, I don't think it unreasonable for Daz to answer whether or not Carrara will see any further development and provide a rough idea of when that may be.
Regards,
S.K.
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Comments
Maybe put this question to the support help desk? The developers don't seem to make it to the forums, so anything we users can say would be idle speculation.
I am also very curious to find out when version 9 will be available.
The developers...?
Carrara developers?
When did that become a thing?
The developers...?
Carrara developers?
When did that become a thing?
Flies.
Honey.
Try it sometime. It tends to be more effective than sarcasm.
My method hasn't been that effective, but I don't see much movement with your method either.
Opinion?
The developers................. working on their money makers: DAZ Studio & content.
Lowly Carrara just got upgraded (a year ago) to work better with content....some complained that other things needed upgraded & fixed. Others like me don't use content and the high priced upgrade gave me nothing but improved icons?
Developers don't want to hear us complain..........we are not their friends anymore, so we are on the "ignore list" until further notice.
Really.......I hope they start talking again soon.....I just can't stand the "silent treatment".;-P
People should know how many people are passionate about Carrara. Not only is it the only full featured 3d modeller that includes Terrain and Sky Creation abilities, shader and material creation, and is uncluttered enough for beginners to get into without feeling that need for extensive classes or a photographic memory, it is the only 3d modeller than works perfectly with no slowdown or errors on a Surface Pro 3, making it the only modeller to work fully featured on a Consumer-Grade tablet, using touch and pen only, no keyboard or touchpad/mouse. For this program to lose developer support would be a little-known shakespearian tragedy, or like a potential rock and roll legend who dissappeared into obscurity after there first album flopped. And users of C4D, Modo, Lightwave and anything from Autodesk, tend not to give this software respect I preceive it should have, though it may be because professionals don't regard Carrara's simplicity as a major factor for review. Maybe i don't understand something, but I think the panic over dropped developement for Carrara is justified by at least few who have bought the product and have really appreciated it, unless it is the Economy's fault then there is not much we can do.
Its just weird because these days developers keep a company facebook or twitter page to talk about what they are working on or at least mention that developement is alive even if a release is far into the future.
Max
Not to worry. Carrara is not left behind, I am sure there are developers working on it as we speak. This is just a honey pot thread, designed to keep the conversation about C9 upgrades in the for front.
Best of luck
Akulla
Hi all,
I'm not exactly sure what the term 'honey pot thread' actually means.???
But in anycase the reason for my post sprang from the fact that, I have just purchased the excellent 'Octane Plugin' by sighman.
This plugin has once again, FOR ME, ...BIG CAVEAT... made Carrara relevent in my production pipeline. (I had been using Carrara for 7 years, before turning to Daz studio 4, due to the Reality plugin for Luxrender, which I have been using for the last 2 half years).
So now I am back again WANTING to use Carrara. Indeed I have just invested £1000.00 in new GPU hardware in order to maximise the new workflow that the OR4C plugin allows me to exploit....
However there ARE somer issus with the software, particularly around Genesis 2 compatability with its new HD technology etc...
So before I invest any more in Carrara, its important for me to know whether the software IS still in active development or not..
I desparetely hope it is because Carrara has allways been my favourite 3D package to work within.
I also DO NOT think it is an unreasonable request, or expectation, for DAZ3D to make some small announcement regarding Carrara's Future..
Just a YES or NO will do..
There is no emotion here. I just need to know where best to focus my expediture in both a financial sense and a learning sense,.
Cheers,
S.K.
I do believe that development on Carrara has been delayed, but I could be very wrong on that.
DS has had some truly significant changes, as did Genesis and probably other stuff they're working on.
I am always the optimist, but I really do think that Carrara will get more love. I say this simply from knowing that a lot of the DAZ 3D staff truly love Carrara. The thing is that Carrara really does rock. It does need lovin', that's for sure. But it always has so much going for it that we can always find something to do while we wait.
Hmmm... is that the Carrara/Octane plugin you're talking about?
I don't do any social media...but earlier in the thread someone mentioned it and I just noticed that DAZ does NOT Tweet or are they on FB.
Smith-Micro does, ZBrush does.
Is it because DAZ doesn't want negative feedback/comments or is it just that they have nothing to say? Am not trying to be snarky... there are businesses that actually have nothing new to announce on a daily or weekly basis, and it just might be the dynamics of their business.
But DAZ has so many new *products* they tout all the time along with PA products--we get them in our emails with the offers (if you plough through them to find what the offer really is about!) But I am really surprised they don't do social media. It would put to rest some things if they did because they certainly are not making announcements or responding in the forums.
Hmmmmmmmmm.... maybe *they* are *working* on marrying up things and we will be seeing.... CarraraHex for Version 9 (but that sort of sounds like a curse!)
;) Silene
DAZ 3D is on FaceBook
Hi Chohole,
I looked from the top to the bottom of the main DAZ site's homepage and don't see the icon! Where is it?
And if you click on Carrara from their sitemap Product list, it says Carrara 8, not 8.5
http://www.daz3d.com/products/carrara/carrara-what-is-carrara
Although if you click to buy it, it takes you to the right product version.
Just kinda weird! Sort of like Celtic-Manor-Land is at the moment! (We have West Sussex coppers here in B'tol so they can be in Cardiff, go figure!)
xx :) Silene
Hi Chohole,
I looked from the top to the bottom of the main DAZ site's homepage and don't see the icon! Where is it?
And if you click on Carrara from their sitemap Product list, it says Carrara 8, not 8.5
http://www.daz3d.com/products/carrara/carrara-what-is-carrara
Although if you click to buy it, it takes you to the right product version.
Just kinda weird! Sort of like Celtic-Manor-Land is at the moment! (We have West Sussex coppers here in B'tol so they can be in Cardiff, go figure!)
xx :) Silene
What's even worse IMHO is that Carrara 8.5 32 bit is installed as Carrara 8.5 directory name. However, Carrara 8.5 in 64 bit is installed as Carrara 8 on the 64 bit folder.
Makes things confusing when installing into the proper directories. Adding a 32 or 64 at the end of the name with the auto installers shouldn't have been that big of a deal.
Daz staff must be working on something other than DS or Genesis - for the first time in years there's no new version or Beta of DS in the offing. Their next higher priority has always been Carrara, so here's hoping :)
Fingers crossed..
I would love to see 9 as well!
I would settle for at least a bug fix for 8.5... it has been over a year.
I think the release of the Octane for Carrara plugin has just about tripled our chances of getting a Carrara 9, but I also by no means believe it's a sure thing. I do think it's more likely than not though.
I couldn't agree more with this statement.
In fact, I was going back and forth in my head about which Plug-in for Octane I should purchase. Nothing against the DS plug in which admittedly looks very nice. I assumed there were probably more sales of the DS version than the Carrara version so I bought the Carrara version to throw my support behind Carrara. My hope is that OTOY and Daz3d see how many Carrara users are interested in this.
I will likely end up getting the DS plug in as well because I can use the bridge to send my scenes directly from Bryce into DS and then into Octane.
Generally I'd say this whole unbiased rendering ideal has changed 3d software development forever. For example, is there really an reason to upgrade the rendering engine any more? Even with "improvements" it won't be unbiased unless they deliberately set out to make it so which of cource they wouldn't because that would involve re-inventing the wheel. Better to create plug-ins to external applications like Octane. And with Octane Cloud rendering on the horizon, it makes any other approach seem downright wasteful.
I think we will see a Carrara 9 before we will see a Bryce 8, sadly for me in many ways, but I can accept it.
I suggest that anyone who can get their hands on a copy of Octane and run it by means of standalone or plug-in should do exactly that. You will suddenly have a tool that can equalize a novice with a professional with some practice. I am LOVING everything about Octane. Wish I'd jumped on this wagon years ago.
I understand why there was a DS plugin for Octane before there was one for Carrara (larger userbase) but while I know it might be counterintuitive, I actually think Carrara is much the better option for a 'base assembler' to use. Also from what I've read/heard, I understand the Carrara plugin is more capable and certainly seems very well supported (I'm really impressed with Sighman, how responsive he is in the forums here, how he seems very invested in fleshing/perfecting the Carrara plugin, already talking about getting it to work well with Octane 2.1 and tweaking even little things to make it better). I've been very very impressed with how well the Carrara plugin works just transferring the regular Carrara shaders into Octane shaders, for most things there's no reason to create a special Octane shader analog as the conversion works so well already.
But aside from the fleshed out usability of the plugin itself, and the fact that the developer is very responsive, and feels like he's invested in making this really work as seamlessly as possible within Carrara, I think in the broader term that Carrara is the better choice for a plugin like this (or Luxus, or if there was one ever developed for Thea or Arion or even Vray2) is that Carrara just does *so* much more stuff and is so much more broadly capable than, say, Poser or Studio. Hell, it does more stuff than even the really high cost apps that are out there.
Let's face it, Octane isn't cheap, by any measure. We're talking about a $500 outlay here. It's a fantastic renderer, and pretty fast too, but where's the common sense in spending the $$ to pair this professional unbiased renderer with a base app that is as extremely limited as Studio, or Poser for that matter. I realize people who have put thousands of hours into learning and feeling comfortable with the Studio interface (as an example) are naturally going to want to keep using an interface that they are comfortable with, so it makes sense that the DS/Octane plugin would move some units (btw this is why I have argued for some time that Carrara9 should include the option to choose between the regular Carrara interface, and interfaces that more closely resemble DS, Poser, Bryce, etc, to ease the transition to moving into Carrara), but if people were really to back up for a second, consider what they long-range want to be able to achieve, it would make much much more sense to pair Octane with Carrara, and now you're spending $$ on Octane, yes, but with a much more open-ended future experience, meaning Carrara can do things that Poser/Studio and even high dollar apps can only dream of doing. Modelers, landscape generators, tree generators, animation, etc, etc, etc, plus Carrara can handle hugely compex scenes with a smile that would make Poser/Studio crash and burn and choke to death on (I realize that Octane itself is limited right now by the scene size that will fit on the graphic cards, but long range graphic cards are only going to get exponentially better and larger anyway, not to mention that GPU + CPU is likely going to be on the horizon to keep Octane competitive in it's niche of super-duper-fast unbiased, and the fact that this Octane cloud rendering might in fact make your personal graphic card limitations completely moot.
That's part of why I think the Carrara/Octane plugin might be the most important thing to have happened to ensure Carrara's long term success and development in quite a while.
I would also pair that with PhilW's rendering realism course, which I think will be highly impacting to Carrara's future too, since now with the knowledge of some settings and approaches, regular users of Carrara can turn out native renders that are very close to unbiased-quality (though render time is longer than in Octane, realistic light effect can get pretty close), and as the galleries start to fill up with renders displaying this new level of quality, and it isn't just a handful of geniuses turning out astonishing work, more and more people considering which app to 'move on up' to, will more strongly consider Carrara.
I'm really enjoying Octane as well, I've just finally figured out that the only way to make sss work is with the path tracing kernel, for example. yeah, it's right there in the octane manual, but my eyes must have skipped over that part initially cause I missed it... :) But I'm having a blast figuring out the shader/texture system, and I really love the way Sighman has arranged the Octane material shaders in Carrara (brilliant that we don't lose the original Carrara shader set, it just adds to and superimposes the Octane materials)
JonStark,
Yeah, I'm definitely excited.
Path Tracing is the only Kernel that renders SSS? Oh my. I thought PMC (Populated Monte Carlo) was a form of Path Tracing. I do hope SSS works with that because if not then I will be very sad. In test after test PMC delivers much better results in much much less time than Path Tracing alone. Thanks for the head's up.
Whoops, I was wrong Rashad :) My mistake, I must have misread documentation, looks like SSS does seem to work with PMC kernel too, just tested it to see. I hadn't actually used PMC before, I thought it was same as path tracing plus caustics, so I assumed it would be a little longer render time (and I don't use caustics much).
Surprising to see that it actually does seem to be faster than path tracing kernel. My test scene which was taking 55 min to do 3000 passes, actually only took 45 min using PMC (can't tell much difference in the final render either) and does seem to have sss effect too.
I still have yet to test many things, SSS is very high up on my list.
PMC is kind of a miracle. It seems very smart if I understand it correctly.
Normal Path Tracing fires the same number of explorer rays from each pixel point in a completely uniform manner. Areas with low levels of variance tend to converge rather early on while areas with high levels of variance don't converge until much later leading to the well known bright pixels noise. This high contrast noise It is especially obvious in situations where your light emitter is physically small but very bright. It can take a long time for random path tracing to generate a path that leads back to such a small light source. Thus with Path Tracing you have these bright pixels that need a great deal of time and exploring rays fired to remove all hot pixels.
PMC on the other hand seems to be adaptive to the needs of the particular scenario. Since areas of low variance converge rather quickly, the classical assumption held by pure Path Tracing that every pixel should explore the surroundings to the same degree could be revised. Wouldn't it be nice if somehow the algorithm knew how to adapt the number of rays fired from each pixel based on the degree of variance in the given area. With PMC, with each new pass the distribution of the rays to be fired in the next pass is redetermined based upon which areas of the image need the most ray firings to reach convergence. This avoids wasting rays in shadowy regions that have already converged long ago while then focusing those rays on areas of higher contrast. This results not only in substantially less noise from the beginning of the calculation, and a huge increase in rendering speed increase, but in better caustics since more rays are now available for firing in the high variance conditions of a caustic. Basically, PMC finds the path that leads back to the tiny light source much sooner than pure Path Tracing would have. PMC also allows for the paths to share information they gather each pass, which further improves the accuracy without introducing any bias. They seem to call it resampling as opposed to blurring, as blurring would add systematic bias yet somehow resampling does not so I know on some level there is an important distinction. I'm no expert on the lingo.
For me it's PMC all the way. At this point I am beginning to struggle with why anyone would use pure Path Tracing anymore. I suspect that for outdoor scenes where the sun is the smallest light source that maybe its not so bad for for an interior with tiny candles and other items PMC is a must.
I have a question, if Octane is so expensive and if you don't own Carrara wouldn't the free DAZ Studio be the better option? It is free. I am assuming that sending the scene to Octane is what the plug-in does, just like Reality and Luxus, correct? Besides, DAZ Studio handles Genesis and Genensis 2 so much better than Carrara.
There are times when I wanted to pull my hair out trying to get rid of pokethrough in Carrara with Genesis and Genesis 2.
As someone who will never be able to afford Octane, but have a good Cuda-enabled GPU; I imagine most hobbyists fall into this category, I certainly hope Daz doesn't give up on improving the render engine and rely on users purchasing Octane and the plugin. That would be a real cop-out and deal-breaker for me!
I've started learning Blender's Cycles and getting some pretty good results. MCJ's free script to port from DS to Blender is being continually improved, so that is a good route to take to render G2 in an unbiased engine.
Just wondering whether anyone has made a comparison between Cycles and Octane? From the descriptions I've read here, it seems pretty much comparable :)
I suppose it depends on what the objective is, long term. If the guiding principle is to spend as little as possible to get a solution to an unbiased renderer, then Octane really shouldn't come into the discussion at all, the discussion/decision should more likely be between using Blender + Cycles (Cycles is free, right? hopefully I'm not mixed up on that...) or Studio + Reality/Luxus.
On the other hand, I'm betting that most people who are willing to shell out the $500 for Octane are less constrained by making sure the pricetag is as small as possible (not that thrift is a bad thing by any means! If I wasn't thrifty I wouldn't have done my homework back when trying to find the fullest/best featureset for the price and ended up discovering Carrara, and I'd be a sad bear trying to make Vue work for me instead...) I know that for me, with a pricetag that big, it makes me think not just 'how am I going to use this immediately after I buy it?' but 'how do I plan to use this purchase in the years to come, and what's the best way I can integrate it into my platform and workflow, planning ahead to newer/better hardware I will end up getting as the technology progresses?' (etc, etc)
I'm not saying anyone actually will take this logical approach, because for many of us who are just hobbyists, throwing down this amount of money isn't really logical any way you cut it, and it's much more of an emotional purchase ('I want it, I crave it, I must have it, maybe I'll even use it someday')
But if people actually *were* totally logical about a potential purchase like this, for nearly all purposes and intents then Carrara + Octane seems like a much better/broader fit then Studio + Octane or Poser + Octane. I'm not trying to make the comparison that it would be like putting a jet engine into a lawn mower to go with a much more restricted and less capable app, but it does seem a little counterintuitive to go that route as a long term solution/plan.
That said, you do have a point that one of Studio's very few points in its favor is that it works well with Genesis and Genesis2.
Carrara works pretty flawlessly with Genesis1 though, the only problem I can really find in my tests with Gen1 is that the genitals for V5/M5 don't work right. So hardcore close up sex scenes would be hampered, but otherwise, I don't see any problems with Genesis1 in Carrara, even if there was never a Carrara9 (assuming this problem is actually fixed in Carrara9 because... well... Daz... so who knows?)
Genesis2 has the following problems. You can't apply .duf pose files or mat files without it freezing up Gen2 to the point where you have to delete the Gen2 out of the scene and re-adding it. And it won't autofit anybody else's clothing but Genesis2 stuff, so you can't use your library of Gen1, M4, or V4 stuff to clothe Gen2. Oh and I'm just assuming the genital props for M6/V6 also don't work, though I haven't tested it and I haven't really heard anyone mention one way or the other. Still not insurmountable or unusable, but a good deal more problematic than using Genesis1, so fair point in swaying folks to use Studio +Octane instead, even if I've heard the DS Octane plugin is only geared for Octane 1.x (totally rumor though, I haven't gone and checked and could be completely wrong).
On the other hand, I still prefer V4/M4, and use them primarily, as I honestly think the Perfect V4 fixes make V4 as good as any of the more recent figures. (So aside from theoretical testing of Gen1 and Gen2, what do I really know? I could be missing all kinds of things).
Pokeaway and pokeaway2 are both superb for fixing this quickly, if you have a chance to get them during the last days of the PA sale. I picked them both up and they both work fine in Carrara IMO. In fact I would say that using Genesis2 in carrara without pokeaway would make me swiftly consider murder... :)
They certainly are! Cycles is kind of awesome. I found myself buying room sets over at Rendo by Truform, even though they were steeply priced, simply because the renders looked so damn good. Come to find out, mostly they were rendered in Cycles. :)
When/if the time comes that Blender can start using V4/M4/Genesis/Genesis2 natively, I think Blender will gain a big bunch of new users. Other than that, it's a pretty full featured program and already has it's own unbiased solution that looks pretty damn great.
You know what's interesting? I've never run into any other hobbyist in the DAZ/Poser crowd that uses Arion. It's weird because it prices in around the same level as Thea and Octane, and I've certainly seen many of us hobbyists that use Thea, Octane, Lux, or Cycles, but never seen anyone who uses Arion. I get why we don't have hobbyists who mention using Vray2 or Mentalray or Indigo, as those are all super sky high expensive unbiased solutions, but I would think we'd see at least a few who had at least played with Arion. With Octane, I now have 3 unbiased engines (and constantly questioning my sanity), so over a little time and experience I guess I'll be able to compare Octane, Lux, and Thea outputs to each other. I'm curious too about seeing folks talk more about Cycles, because I know it's in use and turning out some truly stellar renders.
I didn't know you've been playing with Cycles Roygee, what are your impressions of it's ease of use (I assume you must already be well versed in Blender, how much of a dealbreaker is it if I don't know anything much about using Blender, for example?). That's very cool though, I think Cycles is fantastic (judging solely on the renders I've seen)
Not very conversant with Blender yet, but starting to get comfortable :)
Just as a very quick example - these three images of G2F, set up in Studio and using MCJ's script to export to Blender and Carrara. They are all using default settings, no enhancements of any kind. Just had to set up the lights in Blender.
The first is a Studio render, couple of seconds, the second Carrara, couple of seconds and the third Blender Cycles, 27 seconds. You can see the Carrara one needs some serious work on the textures and doesn't read the alpha maps and the Blender one needs a bit of lighting adjustment. That was done using only 500 samples.
MCJ's script converts to Blender Cycles material and opens Blender for you. So you can have your render done within a minute or so of exporting. He's currently working on V3, which will sort out the lighting. Basically, this allows you to use Daz content natively in Blender.
If you wanted, you could add Blender armatures, which is very simple, and so pose or animate there.
What Carrara needs for the hobbyist on a budget who wants to use unbiased rendering is a plugin to use Cycles - MCJ has one, not as polished as the Studio script, but I don't think it supports Blender 2.71 and is not actively in development.
'On the other hand, I still prefer V4/M4, and use them primarily, as I honestly think the Perfect V4 fixes make V4 as good as any of the more recent figures. (So aside from theoretical testing of Gen1 and Gen2, what do I really know? I could be missing all kinds of things).'
Hi Jonstark,
I didn't think that the Perfect fixes for V4 worked in Carrara, otherwise I would use her in a heartbeat for my Carrara work.
At this stage I would be happy if Daz just Released a Point /Service update for Carrara...something...!!!
S.K.
There was a post a while back where Fenric figured out the problem with the Perfect fixes and how to make them work in Carrara, may take some time to dig it up, but thanks to Fenric's efforts we can definitely get a Perfect V4 in Carrara :)
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