Announcing the Carrara 7 Public BETA

DAZ Product Management Joined: 08 Oct 2007 Posts: 386

We at DAZ3D are very excited about the upcoming release of Carrara 7. There are many exciting new features as well as a lot of work on stability and making existing features more robust. We would like to give you all a chance to take an early look at the progress that's been made and get your feedback.

The purpose of this public BETA is to provide the most accurate and transparent presentation of the new features to our customers allowing users the chance to gauge for themselves the worth of this latest release.

We believe that DAZ 3D will benefit from this by receiving better feedback on the product as it has been delivered. We also hope that you, the consumers, will be able to see the benefit of these new and improved tools such that you will be reinvigorated in your 3D enterprises. We hope that you also become even more motivated to share your experiences with your friends and acquaintances everywhere, and thereby help to expand the community farther.

Download the Carrara 7 BETA:

Carrara 7 BETA (WIN OS)
Carrara 7 BETA (MAC OS)

BETA SERIAL NUMBER: CA70CRD-0000150-SUF

You will also need a new beta version of DAZ Studio:

DAZ Studio BETA (vers. 2.3.3.138) (WIN OS)
DAZ Studio BETA (vers. 2.3.3.138) (MAC OS)

The documentation for the new features is currently being created and is not available at this time. We would like to invite our users to help provide complete documentation and tutorials via the DAZ 3D wiki, here: Carrara 7 Documentation Wiki - under the section "User Documentation". However, you can review the information listed below for an overview of the new features:

10 NEW FEATURES:

3D Paint
UV Editing/Unfolding
Figure Content LOD Support
Vertex Modeling in Assembly Room
Rendering Optimizations for Transparency
Multi-pass Rendering
Larger Texture in OpenGL Display (4096x4096)
NLA Track Groups
COLLADA export (PC only for Beta release)
DAZ Studio Content Support Improvements

3D Paint
Carrara 7.0 includes a new 3D Paint Tool that enables textures to be selected, edited and "painted" directly onto an object.
The 3D paint tool provides a variety of painting modes including brushing with a variety of brushes, airbrushing, stamping, and support for lines, an eyedropper, and an eraser. Custom brush settings can be saved and later reused.

3D Paint also supports layers, image stamping, and tablet support.
Real-time display of bump maps and specularity has also been added to the 3D paint tool.

UV Editing/Unfolding
Carrara 7.0 includes a new UV Editor that shows a 3D view of the polygon mesh, a 2D display of the UV values on the polygon mesh vertices, and a set of tools to manipulate them.

You can choose from 4 different projection methods to use for custom mapping. The UV editor "Unfold" function allows you to define seams and pinpoints where the UV template will be unfolded and later stitched.
The relax seam tool helps a you selectively reduce the dense areas of the UV for a more uniform map.

Figure Content LOD Support
Carrara 7.0 also includes support for Content Figures that have multiple Levels of Detail (LOD). You can use lower resolution LOD figures in your viewport to enhance performance and then render with a higher resolution LOD figure for the best quality. If you have multiple figures in the scene you can enhance performance by reducing the mesh resolution on those figures that are further away from the camera and don't require as much detail. Carrara 7.0 provides advanced auto-switching capabilities that will automatically switch between higher and lower LOD figures based on distance from the camera. As the figure or the camera is moved within the scene, the system determines which figure to use based on user determined preference settings.

Vertex Modeling in Assembly Room
The Vertex Modeling capabilities that were previously only available in the "Modeling" room are now available in the "Assembly" room. This enhancement saves time by allowing you to perform modeling functions in the assembly room where other objects can also be seen.

Rendering Optimizations for Transparency
Time consuming and complex transparency rendering operations have been optimized in Carrara 7.0 to provide better and faster results.

Multi-pass Rendering
The Multi-pass Rendering tool new in Carrara 7.0 enables you to render multiple passes and save these off to separate image files. These render passes or layers (multi pass render layers) can be edited in another application like Photoshop to increase contrast in the rendered image, change a reflection color, make an edit to a shadow map, or even swap out a background color.

This tool will make it faster to make changes to a rendering which if you needed to re-render to see the changes it could take hours and hours. The edits to layers can be changed in minutes.

Some of the layers you can save out include:

3D
- Position
- Object Index
- Velocity
- Surface Coordinates (UV)
- Normal Vector
- Depth
Fragment
- Fragment Color
- Fragment Coverage
Lighting
- Background
- Ambient
- Ambient Occlusion
- Diffuse
- Specular
- Shadow
- Glow
- Reflection
- Transparency/Refraction
- Global Illumination
- Caustics
- Subsurface Scattering
- Atmosphere
- Post Effect
Material
- Material Ambient
- Material Diffuse
- Material Specular

Larger Texture in OpenGL Display
Carrara 7.0 provides you the ability to increase the texture size that is displayed in the Open Graphics Library (OGL) or viewport. The settings are based on what texture size your graphics board will support, and can be adjusted for performance or quality (up to 4096x4096).

NLA Track Groups
For those of you who use Carrara for creating animations, this new grouping tool provides an improved interface to create groups of tracks then collapse or expand the tracks in those groups. This new tool helps you optimize the screen space so you can focus on your animation.

COLLADA export
Now you can export a figure or scene into a COLLADA format. COLLADA is becoming a new standard for content to be transferred. In this new release of Carrara you will be able to export your models in this new format.

DAZ Studio Content Support Improvements
We have enhanced the handling of .DAZ scene files being loaded into Carrara 7.0. This requires an updated version of DAZ Studio (build 2.3.3.118) in order to see the full effect of the updates.

Enjoy!,

The DAZ 3D Team

DAZ Product Management Joined: 08 Oct 2007 Posts: 386

We are still working on the Documentation, the link to the wiki has some of the new features, but not all. I'll post more info as we receive it.

Have fun, and please provide input via the bug tracker:

http://forum.daz3d.com/bugs/main_page.php

Joined: 20 May 2005 Posts: 244

Woo hoo!

DAZ_bfurner - is there a list of fixes that made it in from the last beta?

Thanks!

poe

Joined: 08 Feb 2008 Posts: 630 Location: GOB

Thanks DAZ Team, i am also interested in a list of fixes - if available.

DAZ Product Management Joined: 08 Oct 2007 Posts: 386

poe wrote:

Woo hoo!

DAZ_bfurner - is there a list of fixes that made it in from the last beta?

Thanks!

poe

Partial list Bug Fixes for this release include:

D|S Scene support: Added support to bring over animations.
Set texture interpolation on by default in the wrapper.

Collada Exporter: Added Collada support

Fixed Final Rendering issues

Fixed an issue created by the new protected constraint functionality when zeroing a figure.

24818 : Corrected selection handling to ignore marquee selection for non expanded tracks

Fixed Poser content load crash

25817: Added support in the .car import and export, DAZ scene import,

25818: Fixed major FBX issue with bones and Poser content export

bug #26136:

26283: Should post a change notification after zeroing the figure parameters. Also, zero figure now actually zeros the figure rather than restoring.

26526: The transformation should take into account the scene instance transformation

26702: Fixed Prim Scaling for Z position of the production axis

26840: Set the working box information also for vertex modeler in assembly room. Also, fixed grid snapping to take into account the scaling factor of the object.

26892: Prevent crash due to excessive validation.

26923: Fixed undo operation bug

27029: LOD used should be according to the number of LODs of the polymesh

27036: Fixed crash on render bug

Joined: 31 Dec 1969 Posts: 8413 Location: NYC

Downloading....

Joined: 20 May 2005 Posts: 244

Awesome! Thanks!

Can we expect another round of bug fixes before this goes gold?

I'm excited to see work being done on my favorite 3d app!

poe

Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 3367 Location: KNS

and the rest of the most important things? Shocked

80% fixes were not the ones expected, heh,

anyway, at least 3 issues that caused me some issues were solved.

Thank you Smile

I love Carrara, I just wish it was heading to animation and Special effects Wink

maybe one day in far far feature it will.... downloading Wink

Joined: 08 Feb 2008 Posts: 630 Location: GOB

First test: Collada Export

Created a blank sphere
Exported as Collada .dae
Imported into 3ds, did work fine

Loaded blank V4
Exported as Collada .dae
"An error occured"

tried it three times

I'll post it as bug in the bugtracker

Joined: 08 Feb 2008 Posts: 630 Location: GOB

GI works fine again, I really enjoy the new multipass feature.

Joined: 07 Aug 2005 Posts: 3254

PaulSW wrote:

GI works fine again, I really enjoy the new multipass feature.

That's good. Thought I'd let somebody else guinea pig. Laughing

Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 3367 Location: KNS

I love multipass, so many amazing things it can do!

i wish I could render just one element from multipass as final render with no need to render the final render as it should be rendered, just lets say render Shadows as a project.

it is amazing!

Joined: 31 Dec 1969 Posts: 8413 Location: NYC

Jetbird D2 wrote:

I love multipass, so many amazing things it can do!

i wish I could render just one element from multipass as final render with no need to render the final render as it should be rendered, just lets say render Shadows as a project.

it is amazing!

Tutotrial! Tutorial!

Very Happy

DAZ Product Management Joined: 08 Oct 2007 Posts: 386

This will most likely be the last build before we do final bugs and get ready for the release. If we see the need to get one more build out to you all, we will let you all know.

Just a note, These beta releases are not supported by our Technical support team. They are not manned to handle issues by phone or email. Please use the forums to discuss questions, or problems. We can help as a community.

Thanks to all!

Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 3367 Location: KNS

I couldn't quite catch if you were joking Holly 2000 but here the tutorial goes,

when you select multi pass rendering you will see that it renders more than one image or video clip, so what you have to do to get this effect like in my images is take Shadow map Wink

no post production, it is just rendered shadows Wink

but they look amazing, specially in video clips, that is why I want to be able render multi pass elements separately with no need to render the whole needed elements and final version with all lights shadows and stuff, you can get more finished art without finishing whole render! yay!

Please, C developers, do this little nice thingie Wink

*hugs*

Joined: 31 Dec 1969 Posts: 8413 Location: NYC

Agree, lots of times I only want shadow or depth but not the straight rgb....

These look so nice. I wasn't joking, but I did know it was "just" the shadow pass.
Gorgeous!!!

Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 3367 Location: KNS

holly2000 wrote:

Agree, lots of times I only want shadow or depth but not the straight rgb....

These look so nice. I wasn't joking, but I did know it was "just" the shadow pass.
Gorgeous!!!

well, maybe someone new to Carrara was watching thins thread and now will know how to do it Wink

Joined: 18 Jul 2008 Posts: 381

I just downloaded the DAZ beta and the C7 beta. Opened, DAZ, made a 2 second animation, saved it as a scene.

When I open or import that scene into C7, the keyframes appear to show up, but when I hit the play button in the sequencer, none of the animation actually comes over (just the initial positions of the varied characters).

Very strange since there do appear to be keyframes in the Carrara timeline that match those I created in DAZ.

Am I missing a step, or is the Animation import still broken?

Thanks

Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 3367 Location: KNS

try to do something with tweeners, like change them to linear or bezier

Posted:Mon Nov 17, 2008 4:25 pm

I'm happy to report M4 plays nice with this build. The pose in the screen shot is from the M4 Pro Bundle. I tweaked the expression Smile

Injected a bunch of poses and there are a couple minor adjustments to make...but the poses come in, what I would consider, normal (actually pretty darn good).

The issues around the calf and thigh areas appear to be fixed (ERC working). Somethings different with the constraints. M4 appears to have a greater range of motion, in this build, with constraints set to full. Hmm.