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Another big overhaul to the website... and Carrara is again sidelined, as just one of thousands of assets for Daz, Maya, Max and Poser, all featured prominently on the top page. Daz is a content company.
I have a lot invested in Carrara and in models from Daz, and will continue to use Carrara for some time. But, I am also a realist and things in Dazland are not looking great. I have no use for the Genesis stuff personally, and I am tired of getting mail full of pictures of half-naked women. I will pick up a competing app later this year (once it goes on sale) and start learning. And my PC membership will not be updated next cycle; haven't bought much lately, anyways. If I need content in the future, fine.
Carrara 8.5 Pro has gone up and down in price by $100 in the last few days. Maybe they should just keep it down to less than $70?!
I feel pretty much the same way. I'm curious, what competing apps are you looking at? I really like Carrara's compatibility with Poser format content, but I'm not sure which other apps offer that. Other than Poser itself, which I own, but consider a step down from Carrara.
Exactly. I dropped my PC membership also. NOW the brain trust at Daz3d creates is ok with creating a freaking front page that mentions every other software but Carrara. Are you serious? Who is driving the bus at Daz? Seriously, why would you continue to disregard and disrespect customers? Unbelievable!!!
Consider what hjake said: " but still the fact remains a company is an entity formed to make profit first and everything else second."
If you were the CEO of a company, and you had to pay salaries to your employees so they could feed their families and buy their kids clothes and send their kids to school and pay their medical bills, and you had investors who took a big risk and gave you money so you could grow your business, and they were hoping and expecting that you would give them a good profit in return, and you had obligations to pay the lease on the office property every month, and so on....you might see things a bit differently.
It's not about disrespect, or not giving Carrara enough love, or anything like that. It's about doing what management thinks is best for the long term future of the company and employees and investors and everyone else relying on the company to do well. Including the customers like you who want the company to succeed and stay around for a long time.
The sad fact is that Carrara is not the best place to invest time and money and resources. In fact it is pretty much a waste of resources compared to the other alternatives. At least that's probably what management thinks after analyzing all of their options in detail.
If you own a 1963 Volkswagen that costs a ton of money every month for repairs and towing cuz it always breaks down, and you just can't afford to pay that anymore, and spare parts don't even exist for it, what do you do? It has nothing to do with how much you love that Volkswagen. It has to do with the best place to put your money. And if you buy a new car it wil last for many years and you can sell it for a decent price when you want. So you ditch the VW and take a loan to buy a decent car.
The point is the same with Carrara. It's just not the best place to invest resources. And yeah, it would be nice for DAZ to tell everyone what their plans are, but there are a number of rational business reasons why they would choose not to.
And please, don't attack me for suggesting Carrara is like a 1963 Volkswagen. It's not. It's just an exaggerated illustration of the main point I'm trying to make, that Carrara is relatively old and outdated, and would require a great deal of time and resources to bring it up to date.
I bought a new car once....although it has been nicely featured and dependable, it was not a good investment. I paid 27 grand for it in 2002....now it books for about 8 grand.
Now I am building an older vehicle (1951 Willys pickup)...it will have even better features and continue to climb in value.
The key to making Carrara worthy is to build in all the nice new features, not throw it in the scrap heap to rust away.....it has great potential to be a dream.
BTW, What happened to my username? New forum gave me some random name?
Yes, I also discontinued my multi-year PC membership, and have read here and at Renderosity that a number of other long time Carrara users have done the same. Based on their reaction for the last couple of years (virtually none), I doubt that any of this will have an effect on DAZ, who have apparently written off Carrara as non-profitable. PhilW, whom I greatly respect, seems to think DAZ will still support Carrara, but I have serious doubts. And headwax, who does great work with Carrara, is trying ro reason with DAZ based on the non-Carrara purchases made by Carrara users, e.g. Poser format items for use in Carrara (like my 1600+ items, mostly Poser format). But again, I doubt DAZ is listening. Time will tell ...
Interestingly, I think your example is also a great illustration of the DAZ Studio vs. Carrara discussion...
If you remove "age" from your example as a consideration, your '51 Willys is DAZ Studio, and the new car you bought many years ago for 27 grand is Carrara. Think about it...
DAZ Studio "....will have even better features and continue to climb in value". On the other hand, DAZ spent a lot of money in buying Carrara years ago, and now it's not worth nearly as much for a future investment. At least in the eyes of DAZ management.
You feel you made a mistake in buying the "new" car, and I'm guessing that DAZ has, for a long time, felt uneasy about buying Carrara and Hex and Bryce.
We all do what DAZ is doing. Looking for the best way to get a good return on our money. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong. But it's hard to fault them for doing what they think is in the best interests of the company.
I have no argument with that, but after many years of using Carrara, I'm still learning new features and tricks. Plus plugins (Fenric et al) and re-learning basic features I'd forgotten, e.g. with PhilW's tutorials. For my purposes, short animations using mostly Poser format elements, Carrara has plenty of features now. More is always better, I agree, but having a full set of the animation tools I need is very nice. An example: I have an old laptop I use for a long discontinued desktop publishing app that won't run in anything later than WinXP. It has Photoshop V.5 (~1998), which has virtually all the features I need for image manipulation.
You can change your username here: https://www.daz3d.com/customer/account/edit/
The previous forum did not enforce unique usernames, so some usernames were changed.
I like your new name, it's kinda catchy, I see there is another mcGuiver crusing around tho...
I had the same thought when I saw it, but I could not quite place the rhythm. Then it came to me:
ha ha love it :)
yes I am leaving pc too when it comes up... I have enough free sword and pike things, and bits of wood with nails in them now,
Carrara, at I type this, is number 9 on the What's Hot list on the store home page. It follows some of the newly released products that are selling for around $17 of which Daz takes half. Carrara on the other hand is 100% pure profit for Daz. If they sell it to a PC+ customer for $65 they keep it all. If they sell it to someone who just landed on the site for the first time for $142 they get $142. It seems to me that if Carrara is on a regular basis keeping up with all of the newley released products, they are making a LOT more money from this one product than any other item in the store. And while we all say that Daz is a content company, let's be more specific. Like nearly all companies, they are a to "make money" company. It seems rather daft to let a cash cow like that fall by the wayside. Then maybe my logic is just massivly flawed. I don't know.
Going back to the 63 volkswagen/Carrara example.
If I put a new engine & drivetrain in my Volkswagen aka: 64 bit Carrara plus other improvements, would I be able to sell it if I kept it in the back corner of the garage and didn't advertize?
No.
But if I polished it up, advertized all of it's great features and put in in a busy place that everyone could see, would it sell?
Duhhhhh.
DAZ needs to re-think....I have never seen a showreel for any of their products, just a very short description....... Change could do good.
Edit: Yay...I'm McGuiver again!
McGuiver, I have a word for you to consider...
Relative.
Yes, of course, if you clean up anything and advertise it all over and call it awesome, somebody will buy it. I remember years ago some brilliant guy came up with an awesome product that everyone MUST have to be cool. It was called a "Pet Rock". A rock in a cardboard box. Just a rock. And people bought it.
You can find someone to buy just about anything. But that's not the point.
If instead of spending that same money to fix up a '63 VW, could you spend that same money on some other project and make a ton more money?
We're talking RELATIVE. If I can make $1M in revenues after spending $500k to fix it up and advertise it, sounds good right? Well, what if you could take that same $500k and invest it in some other project and make $2.3 million in revenues? No brainer, right?
BTW, I looked up "pet rocks" in Wikipedia, and it's pretty interesting. Back in the mid-70's some guy was in a bar with his buddies and came up with a goofy idea to have a pet rock, cuz they don't need to be cared for or fed. The perfect pet.
He ended up selling 1.5 million rocks for $4 each and became a millionaire.
I suppose Carrara could be the next pet rock, but I kinda doubt it...
This may be the answer:
http://www.daz3d.com/08-27-shade-3d?utm_source=bm23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Image+-+30%25+Off+Shade+3D+Today&utm_content=Take+Your+Modeling+To+The+Next+Level&utm_campaign=(08/27/15)+Shade+3D
Geez...I'm getting a headache.
Now DAZ is selling yet another "competing" 3D app in its store, besides DAZ Studio and iClone and Carrara and Hex and Bryce??? Seems like Shade is a fairly full featured 3D app, similar to Carrara and D|S and iClone.
Seems even clearer that DAZ's goal is to become an online store for content and software apps, even if it means selling competing apps. I need some aspirin.
McGuiver,
There was a demo showreel for carrara 8...
Ramon
It does look interesting, although I shan't get it for the usual reason. I wonder how it stacks up against Carrara, feature for feature. (Obvious absence is any kind of support for Poser or DS assets)
can use FBX from DS - from their site .
link to site -
http://shade3d.jp/en/products/shade15/table.html
Actually I was looking at Shade. It is now on the Daz store. In the You May be Interested in the Following Products section I would expect to see Carrara (a Daz product!!!) listed, but no, nothing.
Now that it is here on the store I can discuss it openly!
Shade has Sketchup Import and Poser import. I hope to give it a try soon... when I can find some time.
I have seen Shade for 50% off and Daz often does better deals later on, sso I will wait a while. The exchange rate for me is pretty bad right now (25% higher than just a couple of months ago) so I need to save what I can. Of course, after I buy, the rate will stay constant for 32 days and then drop 30%. That's my luck.
About two months ago SmithMicro offered Shade 50% off.
I guess Shade supports older Poser versions and Poserfusion.
DAZ neglects to mention system requirements for Shade. If one is going to become an online software vendor, this is perhaps something one should think of, and it is something they *used* to remember. Never mind.
If you look at the detailed feature list of Shade, there is pretty much nothing that Carrara doesn't do - so why bother? My view is that it has struggled to achieve much of a user base globally (I think it may be popular in Japan?). I think DAZ would be better off promoting its own programs!
well it does not load Daz figures natively like Carrara for a start, all these apps people over look that
Right, the biggest appeal of Carrara for me is the seamless handling of Poser format items. Its like Poser on steroids, with better features for large animated scenes.