Why Carrara?
dan.shive
Posts: 0
I see that Carrara 8 Pro is on sale for a significant amount this weekend. This makes me think now would be the time to get it if one wanted it and could afford it this month, but I'm not sure what functions it ultimately serves that other programs don't and the product page doesn't seem to paint the whole picture.
I have Daz Studio, Hexagon, and Bryce. What significant things can Carrara do that I cannot accomplish with those three? Is it a better, more stable modeler in general than Hexagon? Does it have all the pose functionality of Studio while being ultimately better for scenes and rendering?
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Carrara, although an entirely different interface and architecture, is like having all of those three combined under one hood, as well as having one of the fastest render engines on the planet.
I personally feel that Carrara's pose functionality is vastly superior to that of Daz Studio - but that is because I mainly work on animations (Carrara's sequencer, or timeline, is fantastic!) and I've never tried the new GoFigure plugins available for Daz Studio, which seem to make a more Carrara-esque keyframe editor.
With Carrara, to use the modeler you simply switch to a different room within the same program, rather than bridging to Hexagon. Many 3d modeling enthusiasts like Hexagon better than Carrara's modeler - I am the opposite.
Bryce seems to use some very interesting functionality in order to create any sort of anything that you want to make. I've just started perusing the manual but have never really got accustomed to it's very different interface and working view. Carrara has an intense array of landscape options where you can build huge environments by simply dragging sliders and pushing buttons - or even using one of many presets. The plant editor is very powerful and the leaves that are shipped with Carrara are not the single poly with a transmap. They are very nicely created, yet fairly low-poly leaves. The plant editor comes with a slew of presets that resemble various realistic trees - which gets expanded enormously with each Howie Farkes product you add. The realistic sky editor is just incredibly fun and powerful - but also has the enormous functionality of directing global illumination and indirect lighting, which can turn out some superbly realistic renders.
So, all in all, you could use the threesome to mimic what Carrara can do. But most of us who have been working with Carrara over the years find Carrara to be better, faster and a whole lot more fun!
Hope this helps answer your question, but let me know about any more specifics you may want to know.
Dartanbeck
Carrara, although an entirely different interface and architecture, is like having all of those three combined under one hood, as well as having one of the fastest render engines on the planet.
I personally feel that Carrara's pose functionality is vastly superior to that of Daz Studio - but that is because I mainly work on animations (Carrara's sequencer, or timeline, is fantastic!) and I've never tried the new GoFigure plugins available for Daz Studio, which seem to make a more Carrara-esque keyframe editor.
With Carrara, to use the modeler you simply switch to a different room within the same program, rather than bridging to Hexagon. Many 3d modeling enthusiasts like Hexagon better than Carrara's modeler - I am the opposite.
Bryce seems to use some very interesting functionality in order to create any sort of anything that you want to make. I've just started perusing the manual but have never really got accustomed to it's very different interface and working view. Carrara has an intense array of landscape options where you can build huge environments by simply dragging sliders and pushing buttons - or even using one of many presets. The plant editor is very powerful and the leaves that are shipped with Carrara are not the single poly with a transmap. They are very nicely created, yet fairly low-poly leaves. The plant editor comes with a slew of presets that resemble various realistic trees - which gets expanded enormously with each Howie Farkes product you add. The realistic sky editor is just incredibly fun and powerful - but also has the enormous functionality of directing global illumination and indirect lighting, which can turn out some superbly realistic renders.
So, all in all, you could use the threesome to mimic what Carrara can do. But most of us who have been working with Carrara over the years find Carrara to be better, faster and a whole lot more fun!
Hope this helps answer your question, but let me know about any more specifics you may want to know.
Dartanbeck
more fun - mmmmmmmmmmmm
I like the others and they are fun to use .
depends how long you want to spend not just rendering but jumping between apps tweaking stuff and all the pitfalls involved.
textures apparently needing redoing for Daz figures in Bryce and the excruciatingly slow rendertimes,
no easily done animated textures in Studio for those who do animation, some keyframing editing possible now with the new Gofigure plugin apparently but I have not bought it so cannot comment, Carrara's editor is very good, much easier to use than Poser7 or iClone which I also have, and with many tools of which I have only scratched the surface.
I find the other software handy to have but a lot of the time do everything in Carrara alone and render it a lot quicker than studio!
I like Carrara a lot and use it almost daily for short animations. I don't care for DS, and I switched from Poser to Carrara some years ago when Carrara added direct loading of Poser content (via the Carrara browser, and including all the features: pose dials, etc.)
To avoid repeating myself (and others), check out this topic in this Carrara Forum:
"Carrara why do you love it and what do you use it for…."
I've never actually spent any time in Bryce yet. Installed it, went in it and got scared... and here we are now - over a year later.
With Rashad joining in the discussion here in the Carrara forums, I've dug out the hard copy of the Bryce 5 manual that I printed out way back when. At a glance, I can tell that there are some very cool things you can do in Bryce. Plus it has a DS bridge. I may have to set some time aside to mess with it again. But since I own Carrara, it's hard to find the need to.
Yes, it is my opinion that Carrara is more fun to use! Even though the others are exceptionally entertaining as well.
I love carrara. It blows DS away in my opinion.
More intuitive user friendly interface, much more responsive in complex scenes, faster rendering and replicators (http://www.howiefarkes.com/?p=384)
...many more but those are the top 4 I noticed right away when I switched from DS.
With that said I would warn you of a few things.
1. Learning curve. Carrara does a lot of things differently than DS. Just be aware that you need to do some re-learning about how Carrara does things. I have had great results asking here on the forum when I get stuck...so not a big deal imho.
2. Daz and Poser content usually needs some minor tweaking to look good in carrara. Not usually a big deal, usually just have to go into the shader room and adjust a couple settings to make skin look less like plastic etc. But it is an extra step...so if you are more into "plug and play" and hate extra steps then it is something to consider.
The upside of this is carrara gives you an huge amount of control and you can really create some amazing results once you know how.
For an example take a look at this site where someone tried to get a scene to look the same in Carrara as it did in DS. Be warned this is an extreme example, the author wanted very specific results, and he admits he IGNORED good advice given to him on the carrara forum.
http://karl3d.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/ds-displacement-in-carrara-8/
3. Carrara and Genesis are not a match made in heaven atm. Currently with the 8.5 beta it can be a lot of work to get Genesis figures to work and look correct in Carrara. DAZ is working on it...But when you are just starting out in carrara, to save you some extra headaches I would suggest using Gen4 figures, Victoria 4, Micheal 4 etc.
Hope that helps.
I've never actually spent any time in Bryce yet. Installed it, went in it and got scared... and here we are now - over a year later.
With Rashad joining in the discussion here in the Carrara forums, I've dug out the hard copy of the Bryce 5 manual that I printed out way back when. At a glance, I can tell that there are some very cool things you can do in Bryce. Plus it has a DS bridge. I may have to set some time aside to mess with it again. But since I own Carrara, it's hard to find the need to.
Yes, it is my opinion that Carrara is more fun to use! Even though the others are exceptionally entertaining as well.
The ONLY thing I've heard folks mention that Bryce does better than Cararra is terrains, and since you can export Bryce terrains as height maps and then use them in Carrara. yeah Cararra terrain generation is easier, but once you get under the hood in Bryce's deep terrain editor its really not much of a contest it just has a steeper learning curve, and since Bryce 7.1 pro is free, no reason not to dabble with it.
I like Carrara, I've had 8 pro for over a year now.. the only thing I never really got into was the modeling room just couldn't wrap my head around it, same with hexagon which I did find easier to use but kept stubbing my toe on things.. scene setup lighting, texturing and rendering I loved.
so I have a different modeler now, and since thats outside the bounds of this discussion we'll just leave at that.
I'm in the process of making the migration from DS to Carrara.
I'll probably continue to use DS for some things but right now, I'm all Carrara.
First off, I like having the modeler embedded with the renderer and the "posing"/assembly room. I didn't like having to build something in Hexagon (set the shading domains and the UV maps) and then apply final textures in DS or Bryce.
Second, I didn't like DS's shaders. I preferred Bryce's shader/deep texture editor. Carrara's shaders are more like Bryce's although I don't think they're as good. However, they're more than enough for what I need to do at this point.
Third, what I wanted was a DS that allowed me to create my characters and allowed me to create outdoor scenes and large battle scenes.
There are things that I prefer about DS. Carrara isn't as friendly to the Genesis content, especially textures, as I'd like. Personally, I've only been doing this 3D art thing seriously for less than a year and most of my stuff is DS/Genesis based. I never used V4/M4/V3/M3 except to apply their skins to Genesis and use their clothing and props on/with Genesis. And I prefer the DS Depth of Field functionality where you see the DOF and can set the focal point AND F-Stop to create a "window" of focus. Carrara's not as good at that.
But, for the things I want to do with modeling and large scale scenes, Carrara is the most cost effective option out there. Eventually, I expect to start messing around with Vue and Maya but for this moment in time considering where I'm at and what I want to do, Carrara is for me.
HTH.
Unfortunately, there's really no clear answer to this. Carrara is a pretty comprehensive 3D program that does modelling, texturing, rendering, animating, etc, like most of the others, as well as using the content you find in the DAZ (and other) stores. It also has a lot of built in landscapes and plants you can use, which is nice.
But the devil is in the details, and the details depend upon what YOU want to do. And especially with Carrara vs. the others, it will probably come down to personal preference and need. There are no perfect software packages, but if it fits you and your needs it's worth considering. That's why you should take it for a test drive and see if it works for you.
Personally, for modelling I think Hex is far superior. Others disagree. Rendering, it doesn't have any of the fancy new unbiased, physically based renderers, but what it does have is pretty fast and can generate some nice stuff. Animating, it has the basic functionality, but in terms of what's out there in the industry it's fairly (actually very) basic.
It has a cloth sim that's still in beta, so if you need that you might reconsider for now. And if you want any of the fancy other sims, like smoke, fire, fluids, etc., it doesn't have those. And what it does have, that some use as a stand-in for some of those features, is very elementary and, IMO, pretty poor.
So it all comes down to what you need. If you need a fairly basic 3D package without a lot of fancy stuff, and Carrara's interface feels good, then it's probably worth considering. But you can only tell by trying it out.
This is pretty much the gist of it.
What I did was take the Carrara training on Lynda.com which is just an introduction to an earlier version of Carrara. I took a look at some of PhilW's free Carrara tutorial stuff on Infinite Skills.com. And I downloaded the trial version of Carrara to play with a little bit.
I compared that to some training I'd done on 3DS Max, Maya, Lightwave, and Vue... and then compared all that with the price and what I wanted to do AND the DS stuff I already owned... and I decided to pay for Carrara and try it for a few months.
If Carrara isn't doing what I need it to do after that time, I can always go back to DS or I can move on to Vue, Lightwave, 3DS Max, and/or Maya. Or, heck, Poser.