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On the day they make the first product that is Daz Connect only, we will know if Carrara users have been told to foxtrot oscar, since either they will have updated Carrara to support it, or they won't. There's pretty much no chance Smith Micro will add Connect support, so at that point the worst case scenario is that the Daz Store sells products ONLY for Studio 4.9.
Which must mean they're convinced enough customers will follow them to 4.9 that they won't be committing commercial suicide.
Starboardtack - well almost all my own products are for Carrara (except Bright Eyes for Daz Studio, which has a Carrara counterpart, and Eye Surface for Genesis, which can be used with any Genesis supporting program), and there are a number of others who support Carrara, either exclusively or with Carrara versions of products. But sadly, most do not (although until Genesis 3 came along, most content could be made to work in Carrara anyway).
On your other comment, I would be extremely surprised to see Hexagon or Bryce updated, I think it more likely that Carrara gets updated, but developments such as Daz Connect seem to be deepening the divide between Daz Studio and Carrara.
many use Carrara to model but not many of those sell at DAZ
Mr Sparky is one example at http://www.poserdirect.com/
there are many others even on CGsociety who have never loaded a DAZ miodel
Here's my problem, or delima, or whatever you want to call it. I'm not new to 3D, I've dabbled with Studio over the years but never seriously. Over the last few months I've taken that in a different direction.
I'm getting older, have hurt myself at work and have constant lower back pain. I still work (I'm a nurse) and will continue to do so until that pain gets intollerable. I enjoy the heck out of 3D art and want to head in the direction of content creation - I have Silo2 and Blender for modeling. I love japanese animation and really want to make clothing in that style - really detailed fantasy/sci-fi stuff and have something to fall back on should that day come where I can't work. (a fall back plan if you will)
I had purchased Carrara but returned it because I wasn't certain of the future of the product. Now I was considering purchasing again for the animation capabilities and Daz Connect was announced and I'm not sure how to proceed. I worry about learning a program that will fall to the wayside and then will need to relearn something else - does that make sense?
I can animate in Studio and found a really amazing short that was postworked in blender that blew me away - so good animation can be done in Studio, just seems to require more work.
Now I need to decide what direction to take - get Carrara and use it to animate - or use Studio to animate? Or use something else entirely.
WOW... Dark Anvil's Bath Crescent is an amazing find at an amazing price for another project I'm doing. Thank you very much for this link... you made my day. Al Reed gives great service, too, and freebies with your purchase.
I would stick with Blender if you like it - does more and is free ( and they update it ) .
Or just use DS .
You know them already .
Lotharen, I can see your dilemma, and I come from a different place having used Carrara for stills and animation for many years, and as I am so comfortable with it, will probably continue to do so for years, whether or not it gets updated. Only you can make the choice, but I believe that animating in Carrara is easier than in Daz Studio (from others, as I have not really tried it seriously in DS).
Even if Daz doesn't update Carrara for Connect, you'll still be able to buy and use assets from other stores - Rendo, HiveWire, RDNA, etc, not to mention the tons of stuff on ShareCG and other places. The Daz store will increasingly concentrate on Genesis 3, I suspect - something that Carrara can't easily use - and since we're not really invested in that, we won't miss not having it (IYSWIM).
And props, environments etc from the Daz store will still be usable in Carrara - you'll just need to export them from Studio first. (some things you may need to export anyway, since they're often saved as monolithic meshes, and you might need to separate out the component parts for animating. Sci Fi Funk just posted a video on You Tube covering that very thing:
I've decided to have a look inside the Carrara SDK to see how difficult it would be to add something like DAZ connect.
Surprisingly, it seems not that hard. Carrara has 2 layers of abstraction between physical part of the content (the file on the disk) and program logic. It's what's allow it to load indiferently compressed or uncompressed car file or load data through network (for node renderer). So, implementing another layer, through not trivial, doesn't imply a structural change in the architecture, specifically if this layer is already written for another program (ie studio).
The same goes for the content tab. A good proof is the smart content tab that interface with the content database.
Or more simply, every could be done through the smart content tab (ie the database tool) in a way that would have nothing changed in Carrara. The encryptin part is trivial (all in all, zipping is a form a encryption and is well handled by Carrara).
So, I'm pretty sure the decision to make Carrara compatible with DAZ Connect is more of a strategic decision, not a technical one and therefore one can have hope it will be done, once the concept fully implemented in studio and some developer available (I repeat, if the strategic decision is to pursue Carrara development).
What bother me more is that I often use Carrara on travel and that Daz Connect obviously requires a working internet connection (which I don't always have). I would have to invest in a more beefy 3G/4G connection.
Phil,
I have so much to learn in Carrara as it is, and it does everything I want of it, and it will continue to do so for some time to come. Having used Infini D for many years, long after it was abandoned, therefore, I don't know why I should be so concerned..except I am putting a lot of effort into learning and using Carrara and this time around I would like it to be different. I have just upgraded my laptop to OS 10.11 (El Capitan) and it seems to work fine..so if worse comes to worse I can use Carrara for a long, long time as I do not do OS upgrades very often. More concerned about a stabil and consistant work environment than marginal OS improvements.
So I have decided to follow the advice fom that old movie from the 1960's.."How to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" . Carrara is already giving me some good footage, and that can only improve as I improve. When, if or ever DAZ updates Carrara is for me, at this time, or should be of an academic interest. The world is fine..daisies come up in the spring, bees make honey.
Starboardtack
This is a tough one. I respect how many have perfected their use of Carrara and made it a viable working tool. It is discouraging to think you have to re-invent the wheel and pass through the pearly gates of having to learn another complex application or do something else (you don't want to do).
I have only been using the daz3d studio and Carrara on a modest level for the past year. I export content into IClone for producing video.
Iclone is becoming an awesome tool, but it is no Carrara. Will it ever be? I doubt it.
I would be intrested read from others what they see as an viable option to replace Carrara, if it goes to the boneyard *a term used by farmers to describe a remote place on the farm where they drag dead liveestock so they don't stink up the place.
Daz should bring a talented someone on at a reduced salary with big incentives related to performance to get Carrara moving and updated. Then it could be sold as a viable, current software to someone.
Everyone would win.
Thank you all for your encouraging words and advice.
Blender is nice - but at the same time confusing lol. From what I can tell, you would need to create your own models to animate, that Studio characters wouldn't work? I'm not sure on that one.
I'm going to think on it a bit longer - I liked what I've seen with Sci Fi Funk's videos and what you can do with Carrara. I don't want to make a hasty decision and regret it later.
I agree. As an example, I run an old WinXP laptop just to run Adobe Pagemaker (discontinued, and won't install on newer Windows). Also, my answer to the question of which program comes closest to Carrara, especially for short animations with Poser format content, is Poser itself. I ran it for years and switched to Carrara years ago when I realized Carrara could handle poser format content seamlessly, and had better features for large scenes. I recently upgraded to Poser Pro 2014 when Smith Micro offered a good price, and also bought a Poser tutorial package by Mark Bremmer, the *Carrara* moderator at Renerosity. The tutorials are similar to PhilW's nice Carrara turotials, i.e. not just rewrites of the "manual". Mark is positive on the newer versions of Poser, calling it a "tidy" program with an accelerated render engine and some other nice features. Based on the tutorials I've gone through so far, it looks good - not as good as Carrara, but an option to consider.
I don't build or sculpt models. There are too many excellent alternatives...and with all the morph tools available I can modify charcters unique enough for my purposes.
I may phase out purchaing charcters soon enough, because some software like Iclone now have a Character Creator with morph ability built in.
The Carrara terrain builder is exxcellent tool allowing the use of height maps and terrains will work in other applications.
So, if you need custom terrains the price for Carrara can still be justified.
I do not produce any content items for resale to others, so I may not be typical user.
You know Carrara 8.5 pro is offten on sale for about $40 to $80
So its not the cost - its what you want to use .
What works now and down the road .
As for making money - not going to be easy ( lots of free models and such out there )
Look at this - $27 bucks right now - this is what you have to do to make money at modeling .
http://www.daz3d.com/salem-city
Yes, the Salem City set looks nice, but as you say, you need to put a lot of work in to sell products. The gold standard is usually quoted as Stonemason so it is worth studying his sets and how he puts them together, not to mention the quality of the maps he uses.
OK, I can see that the more one advances in this topic, the more one can see the end of Carrara…
Personally, I believe that our preferred program still has beautiful years in front of it, even if it doesn't have a new version.
It seems that Windows 10 will be the last version and that it's continuation will be made up only of updates, and Carrara works in W10...
Fortunately, we have some specialists who allow us to communicate with programs which carry out things that made Carrara also, but painfully (I think in particular of Marvelous Designer and Realflow).
Philemo and a few others are also capable to introduce them into the SDK of Carrara, why all these programmers should they not do the work that DAZ doesn't want to make?
It would be the advantage of DAZ to delegate this work to them by benefitting from the continuity of Carrara always compatible with their products and the programmers could benefit of the sale of their plugins.
C4D is nothing without all the plugins available on the market!
If DAZ doesn't have money for the future of Carrara, then, they must leaves the possibility to others make this work and they will be winners in this deal!
Isn t the character creator amazing. Makes me want to switch to iClone altogether. But not yet. Carrara has still many advantages, like a modeling room, replicators, etc... And the Reallusion sets are terrible, I have to say. I m only waiting for the day the balace shifts. Won t be too long, considering Daz attitude towards Carrara for the last few years.
Maybe the future is bleak but the present is rosy :)
The only thing that Carrara needs at the moment is a cloth sim. (and for fenric to do more plugins)
You can read about a new (stand alone) one being developed over at Renderosity Posr Forum- in the stickies.
Looks good, - time will tell how it fts in with Carrara - the developer is considering the workflow
The new version of El Captain (10.11.1) didn't fix the menu issue. I opened a file with the "file not found" menu dialog in Carrara 7.2 and it shows the correct information at the top. It must be a Carrara issue and not OSX. Maybe finding missing files with 7.2 is a work around for El Captain.
It fixes the Favourites box missing from the left hand panel. I resolved my file Not Found woes the old fashioned way -- opened up the .cbr file in TextEdit and saw what files it was referencing and where.
If the new DazStudio DRM is based on the same DRM of the Carrara Programmers then they will be on a winner against the pirates..
Well, it's been nearly 2 1/2 years and we still haven't been able to crack a Carrara programmer.. they are a tough nut to crack and/or find
I have lived with DRM for a long time using iClone
6 years of 3D in fact
while it never stopped me using the program and buying some content if cheap enough it did encourage me to spend 50x if not 1000x as much at DAZ 3D.
the VERY DEFINITE SOUNDING CARRARA NOT SUPPORTED comments by the DAZ people in those threads on it are what worry me so very much, they seem to think obj and FBX sufficient but have they tried those exporters to Carrara? It is a messy road with textures inC8.5, C8.1 you can use the collect maps for Bryce option, and FBX comes in a mess and no longer DAZ native.
they got G2F & M finally working so well too so it is disappointing and heartbreaking.
Carrara just runs rings around studio in what it can do and then some yet it is unloved.
I fight with studio to do stuff that is so easy in Carrara and invarably give up and use something else
like iClone if not Carrara.
You obviously missed at least one of Spooky's posts
Could you point out which one or what it said?
Edit: Ah, you mean this?
DAZ Spooky replied: I recommend against such assumptions.
That's the one
I have to say (a little reluctantly) that if people are making such assumptions, then Daz only has itself to blame. However, Spooky's comment at least offers some hope.
I spoke to customer services yesterday having recently upgraded to 8.5 and they assured me carrara dev was ongoing, i also told them that most here think its dead, in the end the upgrade was cheap enough formme to get my moneies worth, but i would be dissapointed if there was no v9
well please Spooky or someone throw us a bone, at least some small hint of hope