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One thing you might want to consider:
If your 3D app crashes or chokes due to too many elements, you might want to re-consider how you're doing things. One of the reasons that the more professional apps don't handle huge quantities of elements is that they aren't really designed to. Usually the experts want to avoid huge replications and zillions of elements in favor of a more compact and faster scene. There are many techniques you can use to help with that, such as compositing separate elements together.
It takes a little planning up front, but once you get familiar with the concepts it becomes much easier, and almost second nature.
I have it on good faith that daz doesn't fudge.....
ah yes i never noticed
so true !
but I found this screen grab
before it was adjusted
Just a quick note - the "list" price, or price that a non PC+ member would pay for Carrara is about $140 as mentioned, but I doubt that many people who are not PC+ members are buying Carrara. I would guess that almost all sales of Carrara are going to PC+ members (99%?). With that in mind, anyone who really wants to take advantage of all of the possible savings right now could easily get Carrara for $52.50 right now. The current PC+ price is $65, buy a gift card at 10% off for the price of Carrara (saving $6.50) and use one of your PC+ coupons for $6 off, and you;ll pay $52.50.
I realize your not a PC+ member, so I just thought I'd point this out so you get a more realistic view of the pricing situation. I would think that most DAZ Customers are PC+ members, because it can mean huge savings, even if you don't buy a lot. For example, I recently picked up one of the Genesis 2 Pro bundles with a regular list price of around $130.00 for about $6.00. Also keep in mind that many of the customers here are what could be called content/software "collectors", and apparently many literally spend thousands of dollars a year on their "hobby" (yes, thousands, it's not uncommon to see posts from people who have spent 1 - 5 thousand dollars on just content and figures). This may help explain how Carrara continues to be on of the best sellers, yet we don't see many posts here from new users (also, only a very very small percentage of DAZ3D customers ever post in the forums).
Sorry for going a bit off topic here, but for those who aren't PC+ members (which may be several long time Carrara users), the price that the PC+ member pay for Carrara is much less than the "list" price. With the special offers that DAZ often runs, people have actually picked up Carrara 8.5 pro for less than $25.00.
most active daz consumers probably are PC+. but by no means are most Daz consumers PC+. Most consumers aren't that active, that's just the nature of things. That's why PAs have said selling a few hundred in intro is a success. If most daz users were active consumers it should be tens or hundreds of thousands of sales ;)
It's fun when a conspiracy theory logically contradicts itself. :)
On the one hand, we have the premise that Daz finds Carrara so darn troublesome and unprofitable they purposely make it hard to find in the store and do their level best not to talk about it or entice people to buy it, go completely mum about whether there will be any further development and strip down the product page to make it tougher to find...
...BUT, at the same time they just love Carrara so very much and want to sneak it in front of as many eyeballs as possible that they nefariously tinker with their own storefront placement algorithms, artificially displacing a hotter-selling content item to push Carrara sales along. Hey they don't mind the hit they might take in sales of that hotter-selling item that's going to be shoved aside by Carrara, since obviously their favorite thing in the world is selling Carrara, and money gleaned from other sales just doesn't taste as good. (Profits from Carrara must have that 'special flavor' that makes it all worthwhile, and a dollar made selling Carrara is much superior to a dollar made selling all that other content stuff)
Yeah ok, that's one theory. But while I'm all for wearing the tin-foil hat if it fits, maybe it's just possible that as a company that bases the majority of their business on moving/selling content, the Daz store algorithm that shows the current top-selling items is actually displaying... the top selling items? (insert collective gasp of disbelief here) :) Just throwing that remote possibility out there...
I think maybe Daz has been carefully adopting a strategy similar to Smith Micro and offering variety of tools 3D content users might want to use, even if not compatible with their content or software. It could drive more people to the website and then hit them with marketing for content. Think about this, before the intro of iRay into Daz Studio, the Daz name was not on the nVidia site. How much exposure is that getting them from people who have never heard of Daz (i believe they still exist just like the adorable snowman)?
Smith Micro offers a lot of non-3D related content, but Daz differentiates itself by being a 3D focused store.
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As for Carrara obsolesces, I think they are NOT there yet. I doubt a total re-write is in the cards, but definitely a bug stomping, Gen 3 support, and iRay rendering could be in the deck. Maybe update the physics engine. These are not impossible just not quick.
Even if none of that happens. I SAY TO ALL NEW USERS.
If you buy it on a deep discount and some tutorials on discount then use them to learn the package, you will always be ahead of the game. You will learn the principles of 3D modeling, shading, lighting, and rendering. The skills learned can be applied to any 3D package (3D Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, Blender, Modo, Silo, etc...). Yes their interface may be different but the principles and practices of good modeling are not software dependent, they are user dependent.
It is like learning to drive in a 1970 Chevy Bel-air ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Bel_Air ) and then going out and driving a 2015 Fiat 500 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_500_(2007) , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_500 ). The same principles for good driving apply, but slightly different interface and handling.
I started 3D modeling with Caligari truSpace ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueSpace ) and was with it up until the end. That had an alien interface compared to Carrara but everything I learned helped me with using Carrara and Hexagon.
So consider your purchase an investment in learning principles and practices in 3D, AND get to use your Poser and Daz Studio content with it as a bonus.
I am not sure where this top 20 list is, but I just did a search of Trending Now and Most Popular on the store page and Carrara was not in the first 240 items. I did ensure I had unchecked "products I own". Please see attached.
Interesting, not sure what is going on??? I just checked and Carrara showes up #7 on the Most Popular list, and #31 on the Trending Now list.
i just did it while logged out and restarted firefox. Sure enough, Carrara was item number 6, but when I look at the list item sure looks funny. I don't think most popular means most sales. I'm not sure what they are basing it on.
Even trending looks odd. "Indie Game Developer License" is selling like hot cakes ( http://www.daz3d.com/indie-game-developer-license )?
I suspect these terms (most popular and trending) have Daz definition that are quite different from the rest of the galaxy.
I think the "popularity" is based on revenues and not numbers, so the more expensive something is, the fewer it has to sell to get into the list.
My guess would be that both are based on revenue rather than unit sales, and that "Most Popular" is calculated over the past month or two, while "Trending" is time-weighted with a pretty quick drop, so sales a fewe days ago are weighted far less than sales today. Indie Game Developer's License costs about 20 times as much as a typical item, so even one or two sales today might be all that is needed to get into Trending. The 3 Shade versions that were released yesterday are ranked Pro - Standard - Basic, which makes me think the calculation is based on revenues rather than units.
Here's a Blender discombobulation - don't think it has a miscombobulation addon :)
Jonstark,
Thanks for attempting to discredit my post as merely a "tinfoil hat" theory. Perhaps you should take your own advice and learn how to better phrase things, and show a bit more respect for others, even if you don't like them.
That being said, while you might think that placing a product in the "hot" category, even if it's not necessarily a "hot" seller, is, as you say, "nefarious", but companies use marketing techniques like that all the time. You are aware that companies regularly make claims about their products using terminology that is unprovable, just to make it attractive to prospective buyers, correct? Terms like "better", "whiter", "softer", "healthier" and so on. There are some government restrictions on what they can claim, but otherwise it happens everyday.
Again, do you know what a "Hot Seller" or "Popular" or "Trending" really means? Has DAZ explained it somewhere?
If they haven't, then I caution you not to assume you know the answer.
On the other hand, it is possible, as others have mentioned, that Carrara as a single item does generate more revenue every week or month than other items. A $140 Carrara price tag, versus say a $9 price tag for most other individual content items in the store, means that you'd need to make 16 sales of any individual content item to match the $140 revenue from a single Carrara sale.
In that case, what "Hot Seller" might mean is that no other individual, low priced product has generated more revenue than 1 or 2 or 3 sales of Carrara in that week or month.
That seems to be a more likely definition of "hot seller" if it is in fact true. And in that case, all "Hot Seller" is telling you is that they sold a few copies of Carrara that month, because it's very difficult to sell 20 or 30 copies of any INDIVIDUAL ITEM of the low priced content in the store. Someone posted that the $250 Game Developer License is also a hot seller. Again, that means you'd need to sell 30 or so copies of the typical, low priced $10 content to generate the same "hot seller" revenue as only ONE game developer license.
If all of that is true, "Hot Seller" is somewhat meaningless in estimating the popularity and sales of Carrara. And in some folks' estimations I'm sure, it would be a fairly "nefarious" marketing ploy to make buyers believe that Carrara is a "hot seller".
Now I'm sure my numbers are off, but are used solely for illustration. You're welcome to plug your own numbers in.
It is still an indication that Carrara is producing a reasonable revenue stream for DAZ, and keep in mind that they keep all the revenues from that, whereas for most products the revenue needs to be shared with the PA (thank goodness!). And a relatively low level but consistent seller can in the long run outperform a product which is a flash in the pan - Hare and Tortoise etc.
PhilW, I suppose if you consider maybe $500 - $1,500 per month revenues from Carrara sales as a reasonable revenue stream, then yeah I suppose it is.
But I don't think this is a case of comparing a $140 Carrara with the other products in the store, which I assume average around $10 each. DAZ relies on 17,000 products, priced around $10 each, to generate big revenues AS A WHOLE. If they can get customers to buy only ONE copy of all 17,000 products in a month, that's $170,000 in revenues. Again, it's the WalMart business model.
If they can get only 1,000 individual copies of content products sold out of the 17,000 in the store, at $10 each, that's $10,000 in revenue. And it makes Carrara's $1,500 per month seem paltry.
Again, all I'm saying is that "Hot Seller" is meaningless in the scheme of things, if indeed it does indicate revenues from individual products.
Another thing to consider with someone who purchases Carrara is that is not the end of the story. If someone purchases a particular outfit, then maybe they will purchase one more related product, say a texture set. When someone purchases Carrara, they are probably going to be in the market for a bunch of other purchases, some specific to Carrara, some of which is less specific. And even in your example, if Carrara sells consistently at $1,500 per month, that is $18,000 in a year, which beats the product that sells $10,000 in the month of launch but then disappears without a trace. I get that this may still be small beer compared to total sales across all products, but then if you factor in follow-up sales, then maybe Carrara becomes more significant in the overall mix.
PhilW, you may be right. But we're talking about maybe 5 or 10 purchases of Carrara every month. Which means 50 or 100 new users each year buying follow-on products in the store. Compare that to DAZ Studio, which likely has thousands of new users every year. Maybe 10's of thousands. And as you say, many/most of those are buying follow-on products.
Again, this is a RELATIVE discussion. Yeah, Carrara definitely brings in revenue. No question. But is it a real factor when you consider the whole story that DAZ is seeing? When you put the numbers on a spreadsheet, and compare it to other revenue sources AS A WHOLE, I'm sure Carrara's contribution over a number of years is relatively minor. Hence their focus on other things.
I'm sure my numbers are off, but I suspect the concept is fairly reasonable in a relative sense.
BTW, I apologize for constantly beating this "it's all relative" drum. But I sense that there is a common belief that since Carrara generates revenue, then DAZ should promote and develop it.
That's not how businesses work. Business care about "maximizing profit" and maximizing "return on equity". They want the best "bang for their buck". Investors want a high percentage of return on their investment. So if they invest $100,000, they want 10% return (ie, $10,000 profit), not just 2% (ie, $2,000 profit). And 15% is even better.
If Carrara gives them only 1% return, they're not interested. They can go invest in bonds or stocks or a ton of other investments and get a higher return, and won't invest in DAZ. And I guarantee, DAZ as well as any other company that has investors, has to go on a regular basis to them and tell them how their investment is performing. And if they say "Well, Carrara is giving you guys a 1% return", they'll get real upset.
It's the same thing that you and I do with our money. Well, at least we try to. Spend it wisely so we get the best bang for our bucks.
Yeah, I get tired of repeating myself also. It is alll marginal. That is how business works.
Two points seem to be made often, each with some merit, but neither is conclusive.
1) Blender is free, so why would anyone pay for Carrara.
Here are two of many possible replies.
a) Daz could offer Carrara for free. Don't say they are not willing to develop a free app like Carrara to sell compatible content. Studio proves they are.
b) See Jim Gaffigan on people who pay for bottled water when drinking fountains are available for free. The fact that Blender is free is not the final word on whether other 3D programs (Carrara is not alone in that) will get further development. It is not self evident.
2) Daz has not shown a pattern or practice of developing Carrara.
Here are two of many possible replies.
a) Fair enough, but 3D apps are sold among companies, spun off, and simply abandoned all the time. Sometimes they get further development. Sometimes they don't. For Carrara to get further development, Daz does not necessarily have to be the developer.
b) Businesses change their business direction all the time. Daz might change their mind.
If the marginal cost of additional developments (not overhaul) of Carrara are worth it, a profit maximizing business has the incentive to do it, or sell it to someone who will. Sometimes there are spillovers that get in the way of the current company doing it themselves. For example, sometimes a clothing brand cannot sell to young people if old people are observed buying the product, so a separate brand is created for the old people, or the products are divested. That doesn't mean old people don't get clothes. It is possible that Carrara, Bryce, and Hexagon do not fit under the same umbrella if Studio gets the development. That might mean they die on the vine. That might mean that Daz unloads them, then they die. That might mean that Daz unloads them, then someone breathes new life into one of them.
I await being told that profit maximizing behavior is irrelevant in a discussion about how businesses work.
Happens all the time. Dodge was started in part by engineers frustrated with existing auto companies. Did well for a while, then not so much, then well for a while, then...
Marginal cost equals marginal revenue. No emotion. No claiming something is self evident. No assertion that because something somewhere is offered for free (like water fountains), that no one will pay for it (like bottled water). If you want to appeal to pure mercenary incentives, profit is maximized where marginal revenue equals marginal cost.
Diomede, from what I gather you are saying basically,
I agree. Anything might happen. Can't argue with that.
Thanks.
Despite saying this, " agree. Anything might happen. Can't argue with that." You do argue with it. Go figure.
I also pointed out that businesses develop and sell products in competition with free products. I see that you did not disagree. Thanks for that. So you agree that the fact that Blender is free does not make it self evident that other programs will not get further development. I look forward to the forum being devoid of that particular error in logic.
Diomede, you are talking in vague generalities. I am talking in specifics.
You are saying "sometimes xxxx happens" and that's supposed to be an argument which applies to Carrara.
I am not interested in vague generalities of this or that might happen. A pig might fly into my window and hand me a winning lottery ticket. Carrara might get development. It might not.
However, those statements are rather irrelevant and of little use. What is of more use is to provide data and rational analysis to get a sense for what is LIKELY to happen in the present business environment. Which is what I've been trying to do.
Your responses, on the other hand, have been vague generalities on what might occur, with little or no backup data or rational analysis.
I'm sorry Diomede. Yes, some businesses do develop and sell products in competition with free products. That's obvious. But they do that FOR A REASON. And that reason may or may not apply to Carrara or any other app. Autodesk spends a TON on Maya development even though Blender is free. But they do it FOR A REASON, which may not apply to any other 3D app. But you don't discuss those critical details, you only make the vague generality, and somehow that's supposed to be "case closed" on the Carrara discussion. It's not.
Specifics? "It is all relative" is no more specific than "marginal revenue equals margial cost." The difference is that MR=MC is how profit is maximized while relativity is amorphous.
But, OK, let us be specific.
What are your sources for your assertions of Daz revenes? costs? Cost of capital? Lines of credit? Be specific. Do they file a 10K on EDGAR?
What are your sources for your assertions about the relative complexity of Carrara code compared to other code? Be specific.
Without evdience your "... statements are rather irrelevant and of little use." You are not being any more specfic than I am or anyone else.
The reason businesses develop and sell products is to maximize profit. To try to anticipate business decisions and what is LIKELY, one does indeed need DATA about marginal revenues and marginal costs. Those terms might get dressed up as cost of capital or internal rate of return or..., but in the end it is still MR=MC. That is specific.
So, if you think you are being more specific than me, what is your source for the components of Daz's profit data? Be specific. No generalities.
Fine Diomede. I guess the answer to the OP's question about "What's the story on Carrara?", and the same question that gets asked over and over about Carrara and Bryce and Hex, is this:
"Marginal Revenue = Marginal Cost, and Carrara might get developed or sold off, and DAZ might change its mind"
Thanks Diomede for clarifying for everyone.
"There is not currently enough information available to know" is sometimes the correct answer. That is particularly true when a firm has not made public announcements and when its financial statements are not a matter of public record.
I find it nteresting that in one post you express dissatisfaction because you think I made statements that
- "...somehow that's supposed to be "case closed" on the Carrara discussion"
and then in the next post express dissatisaction that I fail to make conclusory statements, as in
- "Marginal Revenue = Marginal Cost, and Carrara might get developed or sold off, and DAZ might change its mind" Thanks Diomede for clarifying for everyone."
So, instead of making this about you and me and whether I am too conclusory, or not conclusory enough, let us return to the subject and the specifics. I am not aware of any public information on Daz's financial statements or other information necessary for anticipating likely profit maximizing decisions. If anyone knows of specific sources, please provide links.
Absent specific links, the answer to the OP's subject line question appears to be, "Daz has not said what the future of Carrara is, but recent behavior suggests Studio will get the bulk of Daz's development efforts."
Anything more than that is unfounded speculation based on vague generalities, not data-driven analysis of business decisionmaking.
And sometimes the correct answer is: "Based on public interviews and comments by company officials over the years, as well as relevant company practices and press releases in recent years, and public information on company size and investors, and a detailed knowledge and experience with relevant business practices and strategies, it seems likely or reasonable that this is the current and future status of the company's business strategy going forward....".
True, if you don't have a lot of background or experience or knowledge of all that stuff, it might seem like unfounded speculation. To others it might seem like an obvious conclusion.
It seems to me that each of you is ensconced in your opinion. Both are best guesses based on your beliefs. Neither of you is going to budge. You've both stated your opinions, perhaps now it's time to walk away from the discussion.
Blender development and Carrara development shouldn't be compared (IMO). Blender gets support from individual supporters some of whom work for companies that let these workers use their money and resources to further blender. It also gets donations from individuals and corporations. In addition, it raises funds by providing coroporate technical support.
My point is, Blender development has a different funding model and different set of goals than Carrara would have. Carrara looks at development with an eye at generating revenue where Blender works more towards a features implementation roap map.
To compare development, i think something like Newtek Lightwave would be a better model. Carrara would have to sell at around $1000 a package to support the development cost on its own with annual billable updates. So selling it off would mean an expectation for the buyer that they could get a Lightwave level of market share in a very crowded market and quickly do the development to transform Carrara into a product that could compete. IMO it seems unlikely.
As for free or open source what would be the compelling arguement? Currently Daz has an intellectual property (IP) source which adds some value to the company's assets. If they have stopped development they may restart at sometime in the future. So open source could lessen the balance sheet value of that IP.
Daz Studio is free simply to drive more content sales and minimize Poser dominance of Daz content. Poser/Daz live in their own content universe separate from all the other types of 3D content so it makes sense Daz 3D wants to make sure as many people as possible have the tools necessary to play with the content they sell and that Smith Micro doesn't control the direction of that content development. Given the reason DS is free, I am not certain I can see an arguement that Carrara free is all that necessary.