Selling Carrrara for further development?
cobusp
Posts: 303
Carrara's last update (to 8.5) was back in 2015 if I remember correctly. This means that it's been stagnant for at least 7 years now.
One area in which I find this particularly problematic is that due to a lack of further development, it is not compatible with the latest Mac OS. Soon I will be employed by a major media corporation using Macs, and I was so hopeful to be able to migrate my complementary skill set with Carrara into this new environment :-(
This is why I strongly feel that if Daz really cares about Carrara, it will consider finding a software developer to buy it and continue its development. Carrara has so much potential (and it has a strong scoop with its easy access to poseable characters and affordability) that it will be a shame if this software has no future.
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Congrats on your opportunity!
sadly learning Blender at this point is probably wiser professionally
I love Carrara but DAZ doesn't and I cannot see that changing
I am getting older and it's only a hobby for me so doesn't matter
Thank you! :-)
I cannot disagree with you on this. I use Cinema for my modeling, because; let's face it -- Carrara's vertex modeler is much to be desired for. However, Carrara, for its price, offers quite a versatile set of options, but if someone can develop its modeling capability, I think it will be the right move toward deeper market penetration.
It didn't always have that price, but it was always more reasonable than anything else.
I would really Love to see this baby get some lovin' as well. I've always been optimistic about that. Who knows? Maybe one day the perfect person will make that ever-so-right decision!!! :)
...as much fun as I'm having right now in Studio - like a kid with a new bike... another bike... but it's new - it doesn't come close to Carrara for making great moving pictures. There are a lot of addons that give it a Lot... but it doesn't change the fact that Carrara was built with great ideas toward helping an average end-user to animate, model, texture, animate some more, make 2D motion elements... for animations....
Even in its aged state Carrara is really something special!
congrats
actually, I think it may be 10 years anniversary this month
Carrara, Bryce, Hexagon... Updates for all of them stopped at around the same time, a few years after release of DS 4.5, which I think was the time they started working on DS 5.
It does not make sense for a company to stop development and just sit on such programs, unless they have other needs/interest for them.
No - it doesn't make sense. I wonder if Daz has any vision for its software besides Studio?
I have been thinking about integration into Daz Studio
Yup, I still enjoy animating in Carrara, pretty much second nature by now. But I am getting into DS because fo the great products available and the great Iray renders. (Even when I can import a DS product into Carrara, the renders are not near as good). So far just DS background images for Carrara animations, but maybe DS has improved the animation tools? I've kind of lost touch with that topic ...
I would like to see them give Jerremy (sparrowhawk 3D) free reigns to improve, and update Carrara. He has already done so much with his plugins, I feel he would be the one who could make it happen.
I still love Carrara, but have been working on a real-life show car, so no time to play!
I would suggest to take it open source.
DAZ can maintain it, but let those in the community work on, fix and improve it.
Keep its connection to DAZStudio (heck, expand on it).
DAZ has already ventured into the OpenSource world with their various "bridges" for different 3D programs. So they're not new to the idea.
Beyond that, if anyone's not familiar with Open Source, or clear on how such a move could be beneficial...
Look at Blender3D.
Blender started out as a closed-source, proprietary in-house tool for a production studio.
At first, it was released for free, but remained closed source. They made money (or tried to anyway) through selling books, etc.
No one took it seriously. I remember being heckled by people to "use a real 3D software, like MAX or Maya".
Then, Ton Roosendal, its creator, decided to push for the funding (an early example of crowd funding, before it had a name) to release it open source. They succeeded.
Look at how it's exploded. Where people once mocked and called it junk and 'not real 3D software', it's now the first option on people's lips when suggesting software - with a massive community built around it of users, tutorial creators, modelers, animators, etc.
Another example, look at the Godot Engine. It was never seen as a "joke" the way Blender was... but once it went open source, and folks started expanding and working on it.. and now it's blowing up.. Falling into place not far behind Unity and Unreal Engine, albeit for smaller projects.
That's the power of open source, when people are working to improve and expand on a project not for a paycheck, but out of passion for it.
Take a tool like Carrara, with all it can do. All of its built-in tools - a number of which aren't even standard in Blender and require addons that can break with each update (which they're making a lot of lately).
If DAZ keeps Carrara tied into the DAZStudio ecosystem, but frees the source to the community to build and expand on it... I can only see it as a Win for all involved. The software grows, DAZStudio gets a full-fleshed 3D modeling and animating suite to work directly with their flagship program, and they don't have to pay for the coders/coding.. and the artists who use it now, and those who may in the future (again, think of Blender's progression from "joke" to "standard") benefit from it.
Will it happen? Dunno.
Personally, I think it should. Far more so than selling it.
Taking things open source is not easy - for one thing it requires a lot of work in tracking down any libraries used and making sure they can be used in open source applications, and potentially replacing great chunks of code if not.
Nothing worthwhile is ever easy.
And I never implied it would be.
And anyway, difficult =/= impossible.
However, DAZ has been sitting on Carrara for years as-is, and for all anyone knows, will continue to for years to come...
So, instead of letting a pretty remarkable piece of software sit idle, falling further and further into irrelevance... Put that time in into assessing its current state, seeing what can be open-sourced as-is, and what can't.
Release what can be, and let those who want to see it improve dig in and have at it.
Again, I point to Blender. That was recreated almost entirely from the ground up after it went Open Source. Entire parts were ripped out, reworked, replaced, or eliminated entirely.
It's taken years to get there, but it's now it's regarded as a "go-to" option for those wanting to work in 3D.
Certainly that wasn't easy, and they could have said "It's too difficult" and not bothered, and Blender would still be sitting somewhere back in its early 2.x series, with no one taking it seriously.
Instead they made it happen and look where it is.
For those who don't care either way, they probably would just as well let it sit in stasis.
For those who love it and would like to see it given a new chance/life... it'd be a big deal.
First, know that I would love to have an up-to-date Cararra fully compatibale with the latest Genesis models. I'd be more than willing to purchase Carrara Pro again to make it so.
Regarding Open Source, how much time and money do you think it would take to bring Carrara up to the level of Blender? Keep in mind that the Blender Foundation is spending over two million a year to keep running.
After spending that time and money to bring Cararra up to speed, how many people would be flocking to Carrara who aren't already deeply entrenched in Blender, especially a Blender who will have had the same amount of time continuing it's development?
I am sorry to say this, but Carrara has no future. I have used Carrara for many years and always thought it is the best there is. But not anymore. They are now second placed. Carrara is good, but Blender has taken over. Working with Blender for a while now, so I can compare. Blender is at least 10x as good. Almost anything in Carrara can be done in Blender, but with much more options. Their YouTube channel has over 1 million subscribers. There many other YouTube channels with a huge amount of instruction videos. For almost anything there is a YouTube tutorial. There are over 40,000 paid addons (plugins). Blender is free! Updated all the time. You cannot compete with that.
But I am glad I found Carrara, otherwise I would have stopped doing animation. Because of Carrara I had fun doing animation for the first time. The community is great here. That is the part I am missing. So far I haven't joined the Blender community.
I do not like saying this about Carrara, but Daz has given up on Carrara. No updates, outdated manual, new plugins cannot created anymore. Even if Carrara would be free, they cannot catch up with Blender. The difference is too big. And I think Daz knows this. If you do not update anymore for so many years (never seen this before), there will be no more updates ever.
Blender is hard to learn if you are new. Not because it is complicated, but because there are so many options. It has blown me away multiple times.
I am working on a very large project for myself. Only with Blender I can do this.
I wish Daz would have taken Carrara more serious. Then I would never have left.
There is plenty of mediocre work being done in Blender. And in Carrara as well.
The point is, learning how to be a better artist is the goal - or at least it should be. Too many look for "newer and better" software functions, and equate that to artistic improvement.
I don't buy it. I never will buy it. Carrara has the tools to satisfy my needs. I am comfortable rendering in Carrara, and getting more and more comfortable animating.
I don't hate Blender. I even use it occasionally. But I could care less how many subscribers it has on a Youtube channel. More subscribers does not equal better art. It never will.
Bottom line - if you want to use Blender or some other software, then fine. But don't lecture me that I am somehow constrained by using Carrara. That is just untrue.
some people create awesome stuff with Wings3D
several DAZ PAs use Hexagon
so it certainly is the user skills not the tool
use what you are comfortable with, Carrara is my old familiar wookroom where I know where my tools are
Same here. Spend time thinking about what you want to do, rather than how to do it. Or if you can do it.
It' used to be on record that daz bought carrara to keep it out of the hands of competitors.
Good move (initially) and it worked well.
Apparently Daz also spent a lot of time/dollars (in the past) developing carrara.
It's something they don't get credit for.
I'm sorry Carrara is not working on mac.
Dead or alive? The thing that keeps any software alive is the people who use it.
Here's some interesting reads to put things in context (whose context? that's for the user to decide)
Render Out a 3D Object in Eovia Carrara 4 for Final Compositing in After Effects 6.5 - Studio Daily
Review: DAZ Carrara 8 Pro - Studio Daily\Inside DAZ 3D | Carrara Cafe
DAZ 3D: why we gave our software away for free | CG Channel
https://www.joepingleton.com/interview_DAL.pdf
+1
I see it very similarly. It's a very good program. For me it's just a limitation that it only runs in a virtual machine on the Mac.
From a purely emotional perspective, it should be possible to switch from 32-bit code to 64-bit code and replace Quicktime with Metal, then some users would certainly be willing to spend money again.
I just think everyone underestimated everything and the business idea has changed now. Things don't really go any further with Dazstudio and when things get stupid, Nvidia rendering on the Mac is over.
I still have a little hope that Daz will remember and continue with the program, albeit in small increments
Carrara Pro already has a 64-bit Mac version, for what it's worth. Upgrading is still definitely needed to get it working properly, but they've spent roughly three years trying to bring out DAZ Studio 5 and once it's out, will probably spend a few more years getting alll the wrinkles ironed out while trying to keep it working properly with new versions of iRay as *it's* updated.
Personally I don't use iRay, but I would love to see Carrara's rendering engine (and network rendering) available inside DAZ Studio if they're not going to update Carrara.
-- Walt Sterdan
It's true that there is a Mac 64-bit version. Quicktime is installed in it but it is 32 bit and that is where the problem lies. As a result, many important functions are no longer available on newer operating systems. Which is just a shame. You always have to make do with either using an old Mac OS or importing the parts in some other way.
It's all just a pity, Apple should give instructions on how to replace these program parts.
Therefore the idea of open source is definitely not wrong. Daz wouldn't have lost anything.
Well said, my friend!
Here's the thing. Daz 3d had a vision waaaay back when for Daz Studio. Daz Studio was born from the idea that tomorrow there might not be Poser software. That would bring an end to Daz 3d, since they made support content for Poser.
By the time DS 4.0 came out, that vision had expanded Big Time, but was still very clear.
Bryce, Hex and Carrara were bought in from other developers. The only real vision for those were to offer them up to those who wanted them - essentially protecting them from disappearing.
Part of Eovia's selling point to Daz 3d was something like "Do you really want (Poser's current owners) to buy it?"
While Carrara and Bryce were initially developed with that friendly Poser-like iterface by folks who used to work on Poser, they carry a completely different 'vision' than that of Daz Studio.
I still feel that Carrara, Bryce and Hexagon are valuable assets for Daz 3d and their customers. It's a shame to see them slip into the shade. But we can all still be thankful for what they already did to these wonderful pieces of software. At least Carrara did get upgraded to 64 bit processing, which was a Huge undertaking and got a lot of amazing new features to boot.
Not to speak that the market for 3D software back then looked considerably different than it does today. Suites like Carrara and truespace provided a comprehensive all-in-one solution in the low-cost market and an affordable bridge between the expensive professional tools and the very fractured ecosystem of the single-job low-end tools. The advent of Blender and the effort of the professional end to access the game modding community basically killed that market segment
...and then there's that.
I think Carrara was right around half the cost of LightWave when I bought it.
To do what I wanted to do, LightWave was one of my main considerations. Partly because it was considerably less than the rest of the Pro market, but it also seemed that their community of users were more willing to help folks try to get Poser-rigged figures working - whereas the 3DS and Maya users heavily frowned upon the notion.
Finding Carrara was a real winner for me. By the time I saved up enough to buy it, Daz 3d had it.
It's funny that all the time I was using Carrara, I was in the same school of thought as everybody else - you simply cannot animate in Daz Studio. It's still very much like that for the most part, especially when coming into it from Carrara.
But now that I've discovered a good way to make animation in Studio not only doable but fun, I'm also finding all manner of tools that helps bring it right into the realm of software I was looking for when I discovered Carrara. So for me that was a big Win - especially since I also own Carrara and most everything that was made for it. So glad I bought all of those tools and scene kits! Such a sad day it was when Carrara-specific content started getting pulled from the store shelves - something that still doesn't make sense to me.