What do you want Carrara to be?
BC Rice
Posts: 591
I'm wondering what people want from Carrara that Carrara is not currently giving to them. Like, over in the digital camera sector of things, for years and years you had indie filmmakers saying "I want this, this, this, and that". Everyone knew that the camera makers were purposely not giving indie filmmakers what they wanted -- until RED cameras came on the market, forcing the industry to get with the times or die. Canon then started making some worthwhile DLSRs, and the battle commenced.
Nowadays yoy you can get outstanding gear for extremely cheap prices compared to what worthwhile gear used to cost.
So does everyone know exactly what they want from Carrara?
Personally, I literally have only one beef with Carrara, and that's the animation interface still being a little rudimentary. I feel like the keyframe management could be simplified and could be more user-friendly. There may be puppeteer plugins that I just haven't come across yet, but that's what I'd like. Also, real time playback of animations prior to rendering. Right now when you play them they seem to skip quite a few frames.
That's reallly it for me. And that's the sort of thing that could happen in just a general update.
With all that said, though, iClone and Poser both offer lots of opportunity for user-friendly animating that can be loaded into a figure in Carrara, so...
What are you wanting from Carrara? Where do you see it as failing in your workflow? Also, just as an aside, what do you actually use Carrara for?
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My main want has been partially solved with Octane render, a preview of backgrounds
i can at least see any HDRI etc I drop in in the OR4C window making up for it being invisible in preview so fitting camera movement with it a tad easier.
still would be a nice feature for regular Carrara though.
There have been quite a few threads on "Carrara Wishlists" over the years, and I think it's safe to say that you'll probably get 1,000 responses listing 6,438 features that folks want, and few of those are in agreement.
With Carrara being such a feature-laden application (modelling, rendering, texturing, animation, etc.) and people using it for many different things, it's difficult to get anything like a consensus on what features should be developed.
Some care about animation, others don't. Some want a new renderer, others don't care so much. Some want new modelling tools, others don't care. Some want cloth development, many don't use cloth. The list goes on and on.
What do you want Carrara to be?
about $1.99 for 9 pro would be nice
I'm afraid you're going to get a cheap $1.99 Carrara 9 then. I'd rather pay $200 for a solid, bug-free, feature-improved Carrara 9 upgrade myself. You have to have a solid, robust tool if you're going to do something worthwhile. You get what you pay for most of the time.
Since I'm a bit bored today, heavy rain outside, I'll try to inject a bit more energy into this thread. Seems like this forum has been a bit "low energy" lately.
Here's my response to the OP's question, basically a re-print from a "Carrara 9" thread earlier this year. My wishlist has been cut back very significantly in recent years as it becomes more and more obvious that we probably won't be seeing much in that way of major new features. So now I'm just hoping for some tweaks to make existing features more efficient. Or, in the case of Bullet, to actually work.
Bullet cloth:
1. Make Bullet cloth multi-processor aware
2. Provide global Bullet preferences where all objects in a scene can be selected initially to either collide or not collide
3. Fix Bullet cloth to collide with moving objects
4. Add “shrink fit” feature to cloth
5. Enable disconnected parameters, like Density
6. Add/enable a cloth “energy dissipation” (internal friction) parameter
Bug Fixes:
1. Fix the “soft selection” bug, where radius doesn’t match slider value
Mini-Features/Annoyance prevention:
1. Allow Carrara to open old files with different runtime path references
2. Allow users to make morphs on objects which don’t have existing morphs
3. Tweak the slider scales on stuff like texture bump; seems like you’re always operating down at 5-10%, and the rest of the scale is pretty useless. Allow a greater range of adjustment at the low end
4. Make it easier to change shader names, without going to the Sequencer
5. When you select an object and open the Model room, have the view rotate around the object’s hotpoint and not the world origin, even if no polys are selected
6. Filter non-zero morph/Parameters dials
7. Have simple indicators of “bad” (n-gon, non-planar, duplicate, etc.) polygons in an object
8. Allow users to easily change parameters, like Highlight, on a group of shaders at once, instead of manually going thru and changing one by one. Needed for cases like when Carrara brings in textures from different apps that have different Highlight parameters and you have to go thru and change all the Highlights values.
9. Allow quick 'n easy customization of the objects in the instances panel. Like when you load a V4 and it comes with all of those many, many morph things you never need. Or if you're doing an animation and only want to access a few bones or target helpers and not get lost in all the other stuff you're not animating, you can customize it with like a control panel or whatever. I hate having to scroll thru tons of objects that I don't need.
10. Make it much easier to move one object to another's location, rather than that ridiculous, 5 step "Align" feature.
Sparrowhawke has a free plugin that adds several jump-to options to the Edit menu for quickly aligning objects. If you don't have it, you should download it because I use it constantly and it saves me a ton of frustration. It lets you jump any selected object to any other object using either the hotpoint or the center of either one.
You can get it on his website at http://www.sparrowhawke3d.com/TransformsPackagePage.html
Cool, thanks. Yeah, I realize there are a few plugins out there that remedy some of what I listed. But I have a general rule that bans plugins with my software.
Maybe it sounds crazy, but after many many years of doing this stuff I've learned that plugins, especially in the non-professional software apps where they are written by a developer who is doing it in his spare time to make a few bucks, can be more of an annoyance than they're worth. Too often they stop working with new versions of the app, and the developer is no longer working on it, and so on. And you end up having to use the main app anyway when the plugin no longer works.
So I tend to hobble along with the main app rather than add a plugin. I guess I'm just crazy that way...
Fair enough. :)
I'm a Carrara user since RayDreamDesigner which came with CorelDraw long time ago. I'm using it for illustration and product design, often professionally.
What I want Carrara to be? No longer a sleeping beauty!!!
Carrara is still working fine for what it is, but I'm impaintiently waiting for a prince to kiss it and wake it up again.
fbx exporter including morphs to be used in maya or better 3dmax; this feature only could let carrara to be taken into account by cg pros
Hiya!
What do I want for Carrara? That's easy! I want DAZ to actually pay attention to it. I want DAZ to see it as a potential GOLDMINE that it is. Blend in the modeling, painting, sculpting and UV'ing (and ease of use) of Hexagon into it for top modeling goodness. I want them to enhance and optimize Carrara's renderer. I want them to activly promote it on their site as well as others. Right now, the "full package" 3D programs out there are both REALLY overpriced (and many going 'subscription only'), and in the hands of something like maybe 5 companies.
If DAZ could get Carrara up to speed with todays goodies (which, IMHO, wouldn't take much...it's already got all the foundation tools needed, they just need to be "upgraded" to todays expectations of workflow and pipeline integration). Where was I? Oh, yeah, if they could get Carrara updated to 2015's expectations and capabilities they would stand to make a LOT of money...and bring in a LOT of new blood...and bring in a LOT of money from those newb's...resulting in more exposure and bringing in more people....making them more money... See a pattern here?
Yeah. I want DAZ to give Carrara a LOT of LOVE. I'm talking XXX rated, full on, *LOVE FEST*. The resulting child would be *amazing*... IMHO, of course. :)
^_^
Paul L. Ming
what again - same o stuff - just like the other 22
where is the mod to lock this one ?
but FBX includes morphs already, I get them in iClone as long as baked to timeline on carrara made stuff, NLA clips even export as animation
The other option is to just ignore threads that don't interest you.
really? after morphing, say, genesis character how do you get it morphed into iclone or such? what are the right steps? thank you in advance
animation works fine via fbx but the character has to be skinned again to allow changes in my experience
in iclone you can only do it in the expression editor under custom can add other morphs and use facial puppeteer
for genesis I export from DAZ studio anyway only use carrara for other figures not Poser/Daz native
exporting a baked morphed character, and not only bones, from carrara to maya/3dmax like DS does (not the top anyway) would be great because you may expand your workflow limitless; we are only one little step away from getting it, come on daz let me happy
I use Carrara for character (human & talking animal) animation and indoor outdoor scene setup with some atmospheric effects. I model in ZBrush.
Dynamic hair and clothing are a must. I've cracked cloth and water sim enough for basic use, albeit via long-winded workarounds and plugins.
I want texture/material on the fly at render. I like real-time auditioning editing of character looks and clothing under correct lighting condition. OR4C is a workaround.
Carrara is almost there - 50% missing items workaround with plugins.
IClone is almost there too except ZBrush applink (coming soon) and lack of native raytrace or integrated renderer.
So what I want immediately from Carrara is:
Cheers :)
Wow that's some list Mythmaker, pretty detailed. At the moment I've been doing a lot of key framing and its a challenge to move figure motion (bone) keys around, to retime stuff... because there's no higher-level key you can grab and drag around to move them all. THere's all burried and sometimes hard to find, let alone select and drag.
The Shader Room is sort of a mess, if you're working on a bunch of things. Like 30 windows open at once. Wouldn't it be lovely to hide all the clutter, one click. When working on figures, I like to see it leave my zoomed in figure "as is". Don't make me rezoom everytime. Allow a user lock on that preview window or something.
MDO2010, thanks for the tip on the SparrowHawke plugins.
- Don
Since I only do still images, the animation features don't mean much to me, but there are still numerous things I would like to see added or improved (in no particular order).
Now this one probably won't be as well received by DAZ, but here it goes. Open Source Carrara! There are certainly developers out here who would at least try to pick up the slack, fix the bugs, and maybe even add some of the missing features. Although I haven't been involved in a project of this magnitude, I would give it a try myself. I would certainly be motivated!
Clearly you don't want to fund or staff the Carrara project in accordance with its needs. Fine. Give it to us. Let us work on it. Here would be some of the benefits if a community of open source developers adopted it:
Honestly, if you used a permissive license that allowed commercial use without requiring the end product be open sourced, you might even find applications like Modo supporting DAZ content. It's something to think about...
Cool idea. If the financials made sense, could be a interesting alternative... possibly a great way to add new business on the 3D figures/models side.
- Don
Most of the suggestions here are top on my lists as well.
I would add, a real scripting language support with better API's and access to the objects including the protected ones (in both C++ and the scripting language). So that things like Applink to 3D-Coat could be properly implemented. That Carrara could be very well connected to the world and the world with it.
Evil's thoughts on open sourcing Carrara are interesting.
Here are some more thoughts along those lines:
Now I'm sure someone like Fenric can give some more insight into the details of how an open source might work, but I think it's safe to say that while it's a nice idea, in practice it might be extremely difficult to pull off. Especially if you look back on the past "community" projects that have been attempted here. And the resource and time required for volunteers on something like an open source Carrara would be infinitely more than, say, just a movie project.
I'm was a career contract software developer, and was constantly put in the position of being handed a pile of undocumented code and told to fix it, while it was failing in production! Surprisingly, my experiences tended to fall into predictable categories:
* Code written before say ~2005 generally had no logging. Before that developers thought they were saving time by writing cool clever code that nobody else understood, nor really needed to understand, because other team members could just ask you directly what it did. This is often referred to as "write only" code. Not having a log means debugging is hard even for the original developer, and almost impossible for anybody else. After market support - almost impossible. The complaining customer can't provide you with a failure log (evidence) and you as the support person can only guess what "I did this and it didn't work" means.
* Developers generally wrote code for themselves alone, not thinking they'd move on or have to hand-off later. This meant you didn't write many or any comments in the code... because well, you didn't need to. You understood what you wrote.
* Perhaps the most annoying coding style I've seen on a few occasions was a deliberate obfuscation of what's going on, by the developer, in an attempt to maintain job security. This never works and always creates a catastrophe downstream. Probably shouldn't even mention this in a discussion involving venerable Carrara, but this did come up now and then in my experience.
Generally then, my job was to figure out what this clever, undocumented software package did, figure out first of all how it worked, then... how to fix and update it. (You also have to stave off the management, who don’t understand this stuff and only wanted it fixed asap, walking around looking very nervous, standing over your shoulder, also known as management “breathing down on you”).
Adding logging is always the 1st step. That helps you understand how it works. You read the logs, see the decisions its making, how it thinks, then go back in the code and ADD the Comments that should have been there, explaining to yourself and anyone who follows, what the code is doing.
As you add comments, you need to add more logging, as you discover things the logs aren't clarifying. There's some back and forth. Logging has levels. As you understand how some things work, you can lower the logging level on parts that clearly work, so they don’t print and take up space in the log file. You start to manage the logging level at this stage, keeping what you need to see most of the time, and switching off the stuff you trust.
Ultimately you understand most of what's going on, that's when you start to understand the problems in the original code. Not talking about adding new features yet. You're seeing and understanding the code better than the original developers because of your clear and overarching understanding. You see the logic to, and shortcomings of, the modules and code structures taken in unison. My first modifications generally involved restructuring the code to clean things up.
Then finally there's the add new features part. To add new features, say add Genesis 3 to Carrara for example, think about it... you'd need to understand how V4, G and G2 all worked so you could fold in the G3 code in the right way, reusing the good working code and enhance it where necessary. Some of that might be clear from the logging and comments you’ve added, other parts not. This is the “pounding the boards” part of software development. Time consuming. Sort of like carpentry. Try something, see a problem, pound it down, another pops up. This is where you need Beta Testers, they help you pound things out. Given a log file back when a problem occurs though, you’re running on rocket fuel !
Anyway, sorry for the run on. That's how I envision Carrara going open source. Pretty clear in my mind.
Not at all saying Daz has the least bit of interest in Carrara going open source, just that’s how it could be done.
- Don
Don,
Thanks for the insight. So are you saying that the tasks you described, for a complicated app like Carrara which uses some very high level algorithms for 3D manipulation and rendering and so on, would be extremely time consuming and difficult, or not as bad as it sounds?
Seems to me you'd need folks who were not only accomplished programmers, but also knowledgeable in how renderers work, how to do simple and complicated stuff in 3D space and how all of that works, and so on. Not just the average programmer I'd think.
No doubt having graphics experience helps Joe when you're talking about something like Carrara. You can figure out a lot using a good trace log, learning how the program thinks, how it feeds the video card and all, but some of the underlying concepts might still be elusive. Other stuff like current APIs and file formats like FBX or latest DirectX... that stuff has evolved, so yeah wow, that would take study no mater what your experience level is.
- Don
Dondec, if only someone with geek ability could give us a hint why G3F fails and crashes Carrara it may help even the non-geeks among us, with workarounds, I know for instance an iclone import works but uses a lot of resources and does not save for re-use possibly as it hits the 2GB memory limit Carrara seems to have for project files.
i myself think it is the number of bones.
i am pretty much stabbing in the dark though as just a non-nerdy end user, I feel there is something I could do in DAZ studio to make it work if only I knew what, the clothes work and auto fitted to G2F but again resource intensive.
What I'm referring to is stuff like algorithms for simulating cloth. And subsurface scattering. And rendering algorithms. And understanding 3D space and how to calculate normals and velocity vectors. And on and on. Stuff that university professors figure out and software guys have to turn into code. Basically, the majority of the algorithms used in a complicated 3D app like Carrara.
My point is that even if you have a good software guy who knows all the tools you described, you still will look at the code in Carrara and scratch his head and say "okay, I know what calculations it's making, but I have no clue what they mean or what they're doing or why".
That's pretty interesting JaguarE... I didn't realize there was a 2GB limit on project files. I don't know or have any association with the Carrara code but you might be on to something, sort of an internal memory limit. Back in the Win32 days, 2G was the usual system memory limit so they may have coded to that, and its still with us today. If true, if the Daz developers simply increase that limit and allowed for the additional bones , G3 would be good to go. Just an educated guess.
Off topic but related I'm starting to realize that V4 and I think G are a lot lighter weight that G2 figures (and G2 clearly ligher than G3). I need to experiment more on this but with 2 Genesis2 figures loaded from duf files my scene load took a pretty "long time". . Similar setup in DS are a no brainer. Seems like there were some software improvements put in DS that WE WANT :)
I think I read elsewhere (Jonstark I think) that if you load figures from the Carrara Browser they load faster than using duf files. Not sure why that might be, but if you (or anyone) knows anything about this I'd love to know. Thanks
- Don