Selling elsewhere besides DAZ Shop?
WsCG
Posts: 391
Hi all,
So, I was just wondering about something. Does anyone here use Carrara to produce content to sell on other shops other than DAZ's Shop? So, Turbosquid, or maybe even the Unity3D or Unreal Engine shops, etc?
If so, how have you found those processes to be?
I've looked into the idea, and it looks pretty involved to get things organized properly for DAZ's store - kinda intimidating, to be honest, with all the things you have to account for, and how specific the setup of everything has to be, how everything has to be integrated properly with DAZ's environment (which is kind of confusing to me, still, at this point). Wondering if it's similar for other Asset Store sites out there?
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I am never sure where the boundries lie with the EULA and even in threads nobody else is
I asume any vertex modeling OK and prob same with splines and metaballs etc but using the tree generator, terrain generator etc how much are you allowed to redistribute?
I have made my own vertex leaves and dialled up my own parameters for plants I obj exported as a freebie but its a grey area indeed as to what is redistributable content not in Carrara format, terrains greyscale maps and the alternative of displacement prob OK but the generated craters, mesas etc? am not sure about any of it where user modeling and Carrara presets begin and end.
Distributing in .car format you'd be pretty safe.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/128871/what-can-or-can-t-be-redistributed#latest
my thread and as I never did get to asking CS still none the wiser, I just do renders!
Selling at DAZ is likely to be less restrictive than elsewhere though.
Have you thought of asking someone like PhilW or Dartanbeck or TangoAlpha (there are others, but those 3 jumped to mind) Who are already PAs at Daz 3D and can talk you through the process.
well I know TA used other software to model his trees and the other two stick to Carrara format
All my trees bar one are Carrara trees.
I did use Xfrog in one set, but it's hideously difficult to use, with a UI out of the ark and no tutorials available to speak of. It does do some things that Carrara can't, and some other things better, but the opposite is true too. Considering it's ten times more expensive than Carrara, I don't really recommend it.
happy trees
(or was happy little trees)
yeah got nowhere in my 30 day trial
but then I have Zbrush and can only create awful fibermesh hairdos and odd blobs
I do fix topology up a bit in Zbrush so not a total waste
That's a very good question about exporting trees made with Carrara.
See, I've recently looked into The Plant Factory by e-on. You can "draw" trees and plants, they look phenomenal. Mindblowing stuff, complete with great shaders and all. And their EULA stats that you CAN sell geometry created with Plant Factory, but you must state that you've used their app to generate said geometry.
I would love to know if we can sell geometry created with Carrara. Imagine you're building a scene for DAZ Studio, and assets for it have been created in Carrara. My gut says that should be OK - but is it?
RE: the narrow point of ability to sell content created using tools from Carrara.
I know that Mike Moir, TangoAlpha, PhilW, and others have sold models created in Carrara.
Here is a link to TangoAlpha's store, which includes some products that can be used in Studio that were created at least in part with tools in Carrara.
https://www.daz3d.com/tangoalpha
Over at another online store that rhymes with monstrosity, there is a vendor named JeffersonAF who sells Carrara models, so it isn't just limited to the Daz store.
All my sets include Carrara native versions that were created in Carrara. Actually, the DS versions were also created in Carrara.
ShareCG have recently announced that they're accepting items for sale,. if you have an account (free to set up) and upload stuff you've made to "Share" ,. then you can also set up items for sale,. all payments to you are handled monthly through paypal.
You could just set up an account simply to share the items you're making for free,. (to test the waters)
if money making is the main priority or goal here,. do something else,.. something which has a steady reliable income.
Or,. set up your own website with paypal.
As for the structure of the products,. how they're packaged, for the end user,.. there are very specific file folder structures which you must stick to, depending on the product, or the program it's built for.
The structure of how a product is "packed" isn't a DAZ3D thing,. it's a "user" thing.
most users dont want to know anything other than "click here to install" ...so you need to make it so. ....it has to be fool proof.
But nothing is fool proof because fools are so ingenious. Says so in my signature.
Thanks for the sharecg info.
.
I guess those ShareCG items are now unlinkable too
there is a new independent unaffiliated 3D forum http://epitome3d.com/ with a Carrara subforum for those interested where all commercial products can be discussed and linked to.
Very interesting info!
Well, my question was more about the process of setting up, configuring, etc. the assets to actually sell them. How smooth/intuitive/complex is that particlar pipeline.
It never occurred to me that there might be an issue with selling items made with DAZ products themselves. I just figured it was a given that would be okay, given there's been a lot of professional work done using it/them. As I'm aware, that seems to be one of their main uses.
Thanks!
'other' store, very specific about how you set up install folders. would guess most has a template available
If you are really serious about wanting to learn how to set things up for use in D|S https://www.daz3d.com/content-package-assist
Not sure if it helps any when using Carrara.
A tip when it comes to Carrara scenes is, make sure you set up your textures folder in the place you want it to be right from the outset (most common are /Textures or Presets/Textures/Vendor/Project) as changing it after the fact is a royal PITA. You can use DIM to see the installed file structure of already owned products, which can be quite helpful. Attached is a screen grab of the working folders for my current wip. Both Carrara and D|S projects are represented, although not all files are shown (and of course, since it's a wip, it's incomplete). There are also folders that are relevant to my workflow but not part of the final distribution.
Very good tool to know about!
I think I might want to put some stuff on there down the road, when I'm actually good enough and would feel qualified to do so. Something like that, as well as advice from others here, will be a big help.
As Tim says, Carrara isn't great at flexible external texture file references, so decide where you want those from the start. That causes more pain than anything else. Other than that, it is more a matter of making things as easy to use as possible for potential buyers and users, rather than anything that Daz imposes. If you get P3DO (the paid version, not the free one) you can change object and shader thumbnail images, which is also useful.
thanks for that link. bookmarked on top. preferred TOS flavor too - to be honest, the conflict between furthering my personal goals and DAZ Inc's interests have gotten in the way of my liking it around here much these days (not talking about the great non-daz-affiliated participants, of course!) - but such is the natural course of business I suppose. got some good players aready in company over there it seems. I wish Carrara Cafe had been able to accomplish the same. Still like CC.
To the original post, There aren't that many sites selling Carrara stuff these days, but I think it's market-driven rather than any site refusing to carry Carrara-specific... Rendo, sharecg, and a few single vendors selling their own stuff... Carrara Cafe has a few vendor links that might prove handy.
--ms
Well that works for me, 'cause I'm a stickler for keeping things organized - right down to each item having its own folder and associated sub-folders for textures, materials, models, etc. I'll look at some of the official packages, perhaps, and use those as a reference.
By the time I'm ready to consider something like putting stuff up on the shop, I should have a well established setup/structure to it.
Thanks!
Just be careful of storing textures in your own Documents/Pictures/etc folders. They will be referenced by absolute paths - ie. C:/Users/MYNAME/Pictures etc. When someone else tries to load that, it won't be under MYNAME but THEIRNAME and the reference may well not be found. Best to save them to a folder which will be common to all (or most) users, such as C:/Program Files/Daz 3D/Carrara8.5/Presets/Textures/YOURNAME/Product Name
Being organized is good practice!
AHA!
This explains why I was having so much trouble with installing Carrara content from a variety of vendors. My custom install of all my programs was to try to keep everything off the C:/ drive. All of my Studio, Bryce, and Carrara programs go to subfolders of D:/Stuff for Daz. Once I got a better handle on DIM, I learned how to install where I wanted but I had a devil of a time with Ringo's skin shaders when I first got going. Happily, got it all sorted out, as Ringo's stuff is great.
.
As Poser and DS have standard file structures, you can specify where the root directory is (which can be on any drive) and files are then referenced relative to that root folder. And Carrara uses that for loading Poser and DS type content. But when it comes to native Carrara content, the relative referencing capabilities are pretty well non-existent, which causes issues with using file references that anyone can use, wherever they want to store their stuff. Generally if you get a bad reference, you can specify where to find the first texture file and it will then find the rest, and if you then resave it, it will know where to look in the future.
I see.
So, is there a recommended setup that y'all use? Kind of a "best practices" sort of thing regarding what drive/folder/folder structure, etc?
I'm all for keeping things as simple as possible.
Poser uses what's called a "Runtime" Structure, of specifically named folders, which show up in the user interface as Figures / Poses / Hair etc...
since Poser was the Original posing program,. that file/folder structure became the default for "content" creation.
to a great extent, Daz Studio still uses this Runtime folder structure,. but now also uses it's own "Library" folder structure,. just like the Runtime structure , the folders have specific names,. for example,. all of your daz studio or poser products have "Geometry" and "Textures",. so,.. all of your products are built to have all of the textures for each product stored within the "Textures" folder within a "Runtime" folder,. and all the models are built to end up in the "geometry" folder of that runtime structure.
So,. if you made a product and packed it with the folder names "Models" and "Pics" ,.. that would cause issues.
it's not about the developer working out a structure which suits their thinking,. rather than following the existing structure to the letter, so that the product will install to the correct location (on any users system),.
Carrara is a different animal,. since it doesn't technically need any "content" to allow you to model, rig, texture, animate, and render something.
so the folder "Structure" for Carrara was designed to suit the "user" storing objects, shaders, animations etc,. which they had created in carrara.
Products built for carrara,. need to be placed into the ProgramFiles /Daz3D/ Carrara (main application folder)
normally you'd create a "working folder" (product name) inside your program files/ Carrara /Presets / Scenes ,. Shaders ,. etc
and as you work,. you'd save the Scene file,. any alternate shader variations,. Models and shaders poses animations etc,. are all saved within the Cararra scene file,.but can optionally be saved individually into (Objects / Shaders / Clips) ect.
As Phil and Tim mentioned,. making a folder for your textures inside of the Scene folder,. or any other preset folder,. is probably a good idea to keep things together.
Always build your shaders (AFTER) you've got the texture maps in their final location.
Hope that makes sense.
Hmm... well, this all seems more confusing than I'd thought it would.
I guess I'll have to figure it out through trial and error, especially because I don't have DAZStudio, Carrara or anything installed to default locations. I keep all my software on a separate, second hard drive, so my OS and any system-specific software lives on my C drive. I imagine that would only make my circumstances more complicated.
Thanks for the explanation regardless. Sadly, it's all going completely over my head at this point.
Andy, That does make sense. However I create scene, objects etc in a Carrara Projects/ Project Name folder on a different drive. Is there any reason I couldn't later move or copy the entire scene folder... or rather product name and subfolders as Tim pointed out,.. to "ProgramFiles /Daz3D/ Carrara (main application folder)"?
Tim, Thanks for the example.
My working files are all in /Documents/TangoAlpha/ProjectName (I work on a Mac, path names will be slightly different under Windows)
From there I create two folder structures: Scenes/TangoAlpha (this is where my scene .car files go) and Presets/Textures/TangoAlpha/ProjectInitials (this is where my texture files go). Additionally I might create further folders for props, shaders, tree leaves etc. should I need them.
When the project is done, I can then copy it wholesale into the Carrara application folder (or zip it up and send it to testers), at which point it'll appear in the various browser locations (hopefully!)
For testing purposes, you need to rename the working folder (or install onto a different machine), to ensure the project is correctly using the installed textures and not still picking up the working files (full paths to your working files are embedded in the file!)