Carrara ... life expectancy ... or still alive?
daveso
Posts: 7,065
I've been away for a long time. Is Carrara still being developed/updated regularly or is it defunct like Bryce and Hexagon ?
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The last update, v. 8.5, was several years ago. DAZ does not make any official statements, but I think most Carrara users doubt that a V.9 will happen. DAZ is still selling it and sometimes it goes VERY cheap, around $20 I think. Still, I use it on a daily basis and can't find anything with comparable features, e.g. seamless loading and animation of Poser format figures, props, etc., while handling large scenes much better thans Poser.
Some related info here, the recent comments:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/55201/carrara-sale-email-message-alert-thread#latest
As far as I know, the last Daz-related communication was in November 2015, so a year ago. It is copied below, and was excerpted from developer thread. Infer what you will, but to me a year seems like a long time. However, it does say that genesis 3 support for Carrara was being worked on for Carrara at that time.
Jon isn't in a position to make "promises" on behalf of the Software Dev team. Jon [and "Rawb"—also known as "other Rob"] are Web Dev guys. The technical side of Daz Connect (i.e. figuring out how it will work, and then making it work) is a joint effort between the Web Dev and Software Dev teams, at the behest of executive management. The policy side of Daz Connect (i.e. deciding whether it exists at all, and when/what it is applied to) is up to Marketing and executive management.
Is Genesis 3 support being worked on for Carrara? Yes, it is. Will I give you a date on when a build that has Genesis 3 support is going to be publicly available? Sorry, I will not—not yet anyway.
I will say that support for dual quaternion skinning (a prerequisite for Genesis 3 support, and quite useful in its own right) has been implemented and has been with the Private Build testers for several weeks now. Feedback on the feature(s) thus far has been positive. I will also say that earlier this month the Private Build testers were asked what they thought about releasing a build with the dual quaternion skinning support. The responses we got basically boiled down to it not being enough to make much of a difference in the current climate. We [reluctantly] agree, and so decided to hold the feature until Genesis 3 support could be implemented.
And on that note, recently the Private Build testers were given a build that provides their first look at Genesis 3 support. Initial reactions have been positive, however there are a few things that we knew were not working correctly before we gave them the build. We are looking for [and getting] feedback from that team to help us suss out where the other problems are.
As for the question of Daz Connect support in Carrara... It is still a bit too early to commit. I know that is probably not what you want to read/hear, but that is all I can really say about it right now. There are still some things to be ironed out, and dealing with those things in two very complex applications at the same time—particularly with a team that runs on the lean side anyway—would be very unwise. Daz Studio is the proving grounds for Daz Connect integration.
-Rob
thanks :) I just picked up 8.5Pro for $1.13 ... had 6.2 but have not really used it ...
figured for the price, and remembering what was, it was a no brainer pretty much.
plus i got some content I did not have..even if I shelve Carrara, the content will be usefyl.
people still putting carrara tutts on ytube. i take it as a sign people are still interested in carrara.
Agreed. Even better are PhilW's Carrara Instructional videos (sold by Infinite Skills), not free but sometimes on deep discount here at DAZ. In general, I prefer them to YouTube since they are organized to cover a full range of topics, in a logical sequence.
http://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=infinite+skills
$1.13 is a pretty good price
, I was headed over to buy another copy ... 
Out of curiosity, if you shelve Carrara, what will you be using?
Good call picking it up. You'll love 8.5 over 6 or 7.2
I like Carrara better than anything else - and, while development for Carrara has been fairly slow at Daz3d, I am confident that they are working on it - even though I really don't know for sure.
I've always been th optimistic one here, and so far Daz3d has never let me down ;)
I really haven't been modeling. Gave it a go a few times..Hexagon and Carrara, but never really went very far with it. Mainly do stuff with Poser ... and used Bryce for a long time ... but now just bought Vue 2015. I had Vue 6.
Cool. I came straight from Poser in 2010
I was really attracted by the modeling tools, but only to tweak stuff to work better in animations and such - not really to become a modeler.
I still mainly use it like Poser in steroids - but have really gotten into how easy and fun it is to use other stuff, like the awesome terrain and plant makers, animated fire and ocean, volumetric clouds and volumetric lighting... it's full of endless ways to make renders better, easier, faster, and a LOT more FUN!
Well... for me anyways.
I'm also not a modeler, just thankful for all the affordable models available for use in Carrara, mostly in Poser format. I also keep up to date on Vue, and use it for particular jobs, e.g. I've had good luck with importing DEM files, then exporting for use in Carrara (the high res export took *days*, but it worked). A few Carrara users recommended a plugin for Carrara (I forget the name), but the demo didn't work too well for me. Maybe just the particular DEM file, I dunno ...
to be honest if Carrara ever stopped working due to incompatibility issues with Windows due to lack of support, I would be faced with the real dilema of using two computers one ofline and never updated or having to find a new software suite and nothing I know of encompases all it does in one program except maybe Blender and I think I would ditch 3D altogether and find a new hobby if faced with that
Carrara's major benefit is that it is a full featured 3D suite which also natively supports (with some caveats) Poser and DS format content. That is unique. If it were to stop working, the choice would be between something that supports those formats, so probably Daz Studio, or something that offers other 3D features like Blender or some of the more expensive options. I'd prefer to stick with what I know and have the best of both worlds.
Agreed, and in fact I'm already using an old WinXP laptop to run Adobe's discontinued Pagemaker. And I also agree no other 3D app has Carrara's features, especially my favorite: seamless loading and animation of Poser figures - no PoserFusion required (with animation done in Poser). A quick google search doesn't seem to show that feature for Blender
What Blender users want, that is what they usually get, and majority of them evidently is not interested in Poser or DAZ content.
I use Blender more often then I admit on these forums, I learned quickly that Blender has plugins for things which are not in the main app, like these ones, for example:
http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/12-useful-blender-addons-everyone-should-use/
The thing I like about Blender, it gets updated (and majority of plugins for it, paid or free) all the time and new features and plugins pop out, it seems, every other day...
Basically, that means that SmithMicro (or even someone else) could make (this cannot be ruled out) PoserFusion or some other plugin (that even imports DAZ figures) for Blender if there is enough interest
I am surprised that there isn't one already!
that as long puzzled me too esp since the duf format is freely available for integrating into other apps, Reallusion with iClone AFAIK only ones to actually have implimented it in 3Dexchange.
Some apps have a transposer aplink.
Okay, thanks for the response. Just to clarify my comment: for me PoserFusion is not a substitute for Carrara's Poser support, since all the animation has to be done in Poser. PoserFusion supports Lightwave, which I have, but that's no replacement for Carrara's completely self-contained Poser support, including full animation of Poser figures. Now if somebody does a plugin like that for Blender, then we're talking ... I admit I'm stuck in Poser Gen4 characters, mostly because I have a LOT of compatible stuff (clothes, mocaps, hair ...). But my interest is short animations and its just easier in Carrara, with features like NLA "clips" and the Animate Aniblock importer. Especially since I've used it so long its second nature.
Well, it looks like Lightwave, Blender, Maya, 3DSMax or C4D are not a problem here, more likely is that DAZ and SmithMicro do not want to bow to industry rigging standards (Collada and FBX), they obviosly prefer customers using their propriatory software and rigging ...
Does version of Poser you have have no at least FBX export ?
An understatement if ever there was one.
I am confident you are wrong about that - even though I really don't know for sure.
Version 8 came out in 2010. Version 8.5 (which was mostly bug fixes – especially on the Mac side – for things that should have worked in v8) came out in 2013. Since then, nothing. And we are just weeks away from 2017.
You do the math. Though they have made no official annoucnments (and I don't expect them to) all indications point to defunct. Also and the fact that you were able to buy software that once cost upwards of $600 for $1.13 should tell you something.
I have PoserPro 2014, it mentions FBX once in the docs, but not in the export formats.
Collada, yes. I haven't used it enough to know much about it, as I'm happily addicted to Carrara. But yeah, DAZ's push to their proprietary format sounds right.
DAZ have limited resources when it comes to software development and there is not mouch money in Carrara as it stands so development is slow on that side, but no reason to assume it's dead, older threads say that there is a version with G3 partial support but it has not been released because there is not enough eye candy to justify a release yet.
One problem that does exist is that they just add new features, there is very little being done to fix even the worst bugs in there like for example "Do you want to save...." before you exit crash, I would guess that that boils down to developers not having much knowledge about the Carrara source that stretches back to times when the wheel was invented so they try to stay away from it as much as they can.
Have no idea about Poser, DS has good FBX support so no reason to complain on DAZ about that, Cararra on the other hand suffer from the ancient source problem, original developers gone so not easy to fix things in those parts of the code any longer, FBX problems are often caused by problems on the import side (but can of course also be on export), typical example is importing FBX on Maya with it's morph limitation and so on.
at least Carrara can import FBX
sometimes I need to go via UUW3D first but most stuff works
FBX import into D|S is a right mess but I will admit it is better at exporting it, except ironically to Carrara!
This looks like Daz is treating Carrara like a patient who has a terminal case of AIDS. With the right drugs, the patient might survive a couple of years then he will surely die. That s what it feels like to me.
That depends on the developers of course, but we are talking about an almost 30 year old piece of software that has changed hands many times and all original developers are gone, some parts of the code is very old and difficult to change, many people think that adding G3 support to Carrara is just taking the source code from DS and put it into Carrara but it does not work like that, the architecture inside Carrara is a different beast compared to DS, but it's more a question on willingness from the owners to put resources into it, but DAZ is a commercial entity of course and they will spend resources where the money is just like any one else would, if they see a value ($) in Carrara they will continue to support it.
Yeah, but not as good as one would expect it to ...
Lot of times it's a mess, texturing translates badly very often, bone handles scaling is usualy bad, too big to see anything, sometimes it does nothing and sometimes mesh parts are apart from skeleton, or skeleton is too big or too small in comparison to meshes, etc. This mostly happens when exporting from Blender, mileage may vary with other software
I like using cutting-edge "always up-to-date" software as much as the next guy, but for me there is something about using a piece of software that is not updated for years. If it still works that is. Of course I'd love to see new features, or more importantly bug fixes. But sometimes, things happen in updates that aren't so good - like when things stop working the way they used to, or when things are moved around because it's allegedly "better for everyone".
It's a bit like the New Coke phenomenon. What I'm trying to say is that perhaps it's "good" that Carrara hasn't seen an update in soch a long time?
While it's a shame that 8.5 may be the last Carrara we'll see, it does a good job just the way it is on all platforms. Sure it could look a bit more swishy and 2017, but it still produces some killer renders.
Yes, I still use a version of Photoshop from over 10 years ago, still works and does what I want, and many of the more recent features are things that you might use occasionally or I don't really need. And as you say, Carrara (for the most part!) just "works" and I feel comfortable with it and what I can do with it. And for me, two more recent plugins have helped to keep it very current - Octane Render for Carrara, which is terrific, and that other plugin that we shouldn't mention that adds dynamic clothing and hair, which is probably the most glaring omission in Carrara's arsenal. There are many other useful plugins as well of course which help keep things fresh and interesting, such as Fenric's and Sparrowhawke and PySwarm, etc.