Carrara Bundle
Samuel S.
Posts: 322
Did DAZ3D ever sell Carrara Bundled with Plugins? I bought Carrara without Plugins and thought probably plugins are not useful. Now after trying out some famous Plugins I realize that they really add value.
Post edited by Samuel S. on
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Comments
Not that I know of :)
I think value added software always attract customers. Unity has not only integrated great Assets in the engine but they do offer packages of Unity bundled with some cool assets. May be DAZ can do same for Carrara. I think they did integrated some plugins in Carrara in past.
They did. Toon pro and anything glow come to mind
I think Bundling Carrara with Archi Tools (inagoni) full pack and Digital Carvers Guild will great. Even adding great training videos from PhilW to Bundle will be nice.
Personally,. I'm opposed to the idea of including a bunch of plugins,.
The main reason is that carrara has so many tools and functions,. which can be overwhelming for new users.
I think It's important for new users to understand what the core program can do,. without the confusion of additional plugins.
it's important to understand "why" you need a specific plugin to extend Carrara.
Just my 2p
Your point is quiet valid. I was just wondering if it can help increase Carrara's Sales.
If I remember correctly, due to the way Carrara was built, a lot of its current functionality is due to plugins. I'm pretty sure that most (if not all) everything that's in the Extensions folder is a plugin. So in that sense, Carrara 6 was the first version that included the CR2 and PZ2 plugins for Pro and Standard. Carrara 5 Pro (not standard), if I'm not mistaken, came with a separate plugin called "TransPoser" for loading Poser content, like CR2 and their PZ2 files and such.
As for the plugins that are not included with Carrara Pro, those are all commercially sold or given via their authors, like Inagoni, Sparrowhawke, Fenric, DCG, YaToon!, Fred Ribble, and more.
For more on commercially available plugins:
► Carrara Plugins FAQ & Information - By Jay_NOLA
Jay compilled and organized a great measure of info regarding Plugins specific to our
beloved Carrara. FAQ, Information and Links to help you determine which are right for you. Thank You Jay_NOLA!
Well said and much thanks for plugin links. Carrara indeed is combination of many plugins due to its open and extensible architecture
Hey @3d4funandplay , it's a good idea but 3dage has a point.
I think we can increase sales by showing off what Carrara can do. But every little plug in helps :)
Are you taking requests?
I agree but I am not an artist so kind of tough to create amazing art in my spare time. I am Juggling between (1) going back to 0 of whole 3D and Digital Graphics to work on some plugins or (2) write game with Carrara to reveal power of Carrara but it may require me to use other vendors and tools including Music and Props (low Poly). On plugin side there is ton of mathematics, physics and algorithms to deal with while most of the work has already been done by companies and individuals in other products so probably it will be faster to quickly show off quick Carrara game.
Have you guys thought of Carrara Open Movie project may be hosted by DAZ etc.?
At least a couple of times. Hard to get everyone (anyone) to work together on the same page/idea/theme/time schedule, etc.,
Here's the most major attempt I've seen so far, aside from the smaller Animation Club projects held recently:
► The Carrara Community Movie Project
This is a consolidation of CMP links
Thanks Dartanbeck , I will look into this thread.
I vote for
(1) going back to 0 of whole 3D and Digital Graphics to work on some (CARRARA) plugins
:)
I do agree with 3DAGE on his concept. Just commenting in another thread got me to remember back to my earliest days of using Carrara, and how lost I really was about a lot of things - things I didn't yet realize I was lost about until reading in this forum.
When I reinstall Carrara, however, it's amazing how different it feels without my plugins installed! I miss them immediately!
I feel fortunate to have picked up the plugins I needed from Fenric's Den before the store closed. Might be cool to see another bundle from him containing the rest of what his store offered, which isn't included in his last bundle.
Sparrowhawke's plugins are also a godsend. There are still many of them that I have yet to explore - but I do have plans that require me to dig in and get to know them.
Speaking of untried plugins, I'm embarrassed to have not yet tried Frederick Ribble's PyCarrara or PyCloid or Fractal Dimensia's PySwarm! Fantastic, all of them. One day....
I have most of Inagoni's and really like those as well.
DCG has many that I still want to grab.
I truly need my GoFigure aniBlock Importer for Carrara. I really do.
Daz3d's Mimic Pro for Carrara is a treat that I've only dabbled in enough to get to grips with it. I still need to get my voice tracks recorded before truly getting into this one, but I'm ever-so-grateful to own it for it is fantastic how it works. I love how it spits out NLA clips for use to work with, and how we can make our own NLA clips to tweak how our individual characters treat visemes! I have the stand-alone Mimic Pro, which spits out animated PZ2 files with sound injected into them, which is also very cool, and also works in Carrara on Generation 1 through 4 compatible figures.
I've recently learned how to also create voice simulation via animation by hand, which is also very cool, but I'd rather use Mimic Pro for Carrara! ;)
I still haven't bought Brian Scott's, but plan to one day.
I've tried Muphasa's render plugins, available at the Carrara Cafe, and love them! Very cool addition to the Carrara arsenal!
ZGock's YAToon (Yet Another Toon) shader seems really cool. I've read through his tutorials quite a while back. I'm still not very comfortable with Toon rendering, but would love to devote some time to figuring it all out some time.
Finally, from my list, I have a couple of wonderful Render Engine plugins by SphericLabs - Luxus for Carrara (connecting to Luxrender 1) and the beta LuxusCore for Carrara (connecting to Luxrender 2.0 beta, otherwise called LuxCore). Both offer an entirely new way to render using Carrara, and actually add a LOT of power to our artistic preferences. I'm still not favoring the PBR style of rendering compared to using Carrara's native photoreal render engine, but I do enjoy owning them and experimenting with them and their shaders now and again.
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So, while I do understand and agree with 3DAGE's points, I'm also very glad to own these amazing works of art!
Edit > Fenric is a very common trip for me. When I create a newly optimized character for Carrara use, I prefer to not store them to my browser in a T-pose, but I also don't want to just use pose morphs like "Arms Down" and "Arms Back", etc., because they must be dialed back to 0.00 if we want to use pose files or animation data or they will add themselves to the joint rotations.
So, instead, I manually rotate the joints and give them a simple custom pose. To begin with, I just pose the right arm and hand, then the right thigh and foot, then go Edit > Fenric > Pose Helper and copy the right to the left. This is incredibly fast and perfectly effective. It also works on Genesis 1 and 2! Then I can quickly add a bit of asymmetry to the pose if I wish. by some subtle changes.
Joint rotations like these simply get over-ridden by pose files or animation data when the time comes - so it works great for me.
But my Edit > Fenric menu has a very long list - and I love it!
I keep trying to figure out the meaning... but alas... I'm just lost on what you mean! LOL
Right over my head it goes!
Interested in Carrara plugins?
► Carrara Plugins FAQ & Information - By Jay_NOLA
Jay compilled and organized a great measure of info regarding Plugins specific to our
beloved Carrara. FAQ, Information and Links to help you determine which are right for you. Thank You Jay_NOLA!
and I wrote a small article regarding the Fenric Plugins that I own:
► Fenric's Tools
A brief overview of Fenric's amazing Carrara plugins
Dart, your summary gave me a great feel for those plugins, thanks! I'm still working through Phil's material, but plugins are now at least on the horizon.
He was quoting 3DDragonSSAR (new handle?) where he said earlier in the thread that he was wanting to either write new Carrara plugins, or write game development stuff for Carrara. At least, that was my interpretation.
Cool, thanks! I kind of figured it was something like that, but wasn't sure.
Very good information Dartanbeck !! I wish there was good user manual for Fenric's plugins. I like documentation or information for inagoni and Digital Carvers Guild Plugins. Also inagoni and Digital Carvers Guild have very good customer support; I have not tried Fenric's customer support yet.
Thanks, this is correct. It is very easy to write game with Unity, Carrara, DAZ 3D and Morph3D than to write plug-ins because tons of documentation exist for them but not for Carrara Plug-ins development. Even than we have great plug-ins for Carrara which means it is feasible.
Thanks for feedback!!!
Yeah, in the old, old, old forum, from 2010ish, they were all a bit more active in the forum and it certainly became evident that the writers of plugins can often find it difficult and demanding to try and create documentation them. Too bad those forums are gone, there were some pretty extensive conversatios going on - and I was too new at that time to make heads or tails of any of it.
The best documentation I've found are the notes available in their product descriptions - which at least get us looking in the right places.
I have Shader Ops, Shader Ops 2, and Enhance C from DCG and barely use them right now just because of a learning curve without a prescribed direction. I've come to realize that I'll need to really focus on one of them, follow any and all tutorials I can find, and then continue to investigate and experiment until I can get comfortable with using the many new feature that they've added to my Texture Room.
I do use the example shaders on occasion - and they do a good job of showing me (as I try to take them apart) how truly lost I am as to how to set them up! LOL
Maybe some day I can sit down, figure them out, and write about them. I imagine it will make for quite a tome!