What are the benefits of Carrara versus DAZ Studio?
Inkubo
Posts: 745
I'm a relatively new DS user. I'm trying to do pose-to-pose animation in DS, but I suspect it's impossible. When I tweak the tweened frames, they affect poses both forward and backward in time. I feel like I'll never get it right.
So I'm thinking about using another program to animate DAZ characters. I like a lot of what iClone offers, especially realtime animation(!), but currently it appears to me that DAZ characters can't wear clothes very well, and pokethrough could be a huge nightmare. I think that's a dealbreaker for me.
I'm wondering if Carrara works better, and also what differences I need to know about before embarking on a Carrara carreer.
Do DAZ characters wear clothes and move well without pokethrough in Carrara?
What is rendering like? In DS, I've found that due to GPU acceleration, Iray is far faster than 3Delight for real scenes with sets. Plop a Minotaur in the Lost World, and Iray is done before 3DL gets past 14%. Should I expect Carrara to be extremely slow to render? Does it have any kind of fast, low-quality rendering mode so you can look for problems with the animation without having to wait for days to see it?
What else can you think of that a DAZ Studio user should know about Carrara?
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Comments
well the benefits are that besides loading readymade DAZ content it has a vertex room, a spline room and a metaball room to model your own or tweak your DAZ content in the case of the vertex room.
Pokethrough can also be fixed using soft select in the vertex room.
For animation a full keyframe editor and graph editor, ability to track things with ither things or bones, (such as making two figures hold hands or follow an object like a swing or bicycle pedal) create motion paths things and figures can follow.
there is also a terrain editor, tree modeller, volumetric clouds, ocean primitive, particles, bullet physics and replicators
you can import FBX from iClone, Mixamo and other souces too but not DAZ studio directly (though no real need as most pre genesis 3 characters load natively.
main disadvantage no genesis 3 or 8 support, no HD morphs and geografts lose their UV mapping
(you can use Genesis 3 with a couple of character presets by MistylaraPrincess available at Renderosity but you need to use DAZ studio to convert the clothing to blended weight.
You may remember from posts elsewhere that the Minotaur HD 6 and Lekkulions are particular favorites of mine. They have geografts. What do you do in Carrara to fix the issue of geografts losing their UV mappings?
BTW, I downloaded the Carrara manual and am in the process of reading it. I really like how the room for modeling shows one object at a time and has those "walls" in the background showing 2D geometry. It seems like having all that information in one view would be incredibly useful.
one way is to hide the geograft and fit a second one to the first, JonStark came up with that idea.
For use of Daz humanoid figures, I use the two programs together now. However, I also do some projects with my own custom figures entirely from scratch in Carrara. Carrara has a lot of functions built in that Studio needs costly plugins for.
Here are some thoughts.
- Carrara has dynamic strand based hair that interacts with gravity, physics, and collisions. Studio can use the LAMH plugin for some of that.
- Carrara has native replicators to duplicate and control distribution of objects on surfaces. Studio has instances that can be improved with plugins like ultra scatter to do similar tasks.
- Carrara has native modeler to morph and edit Daz figures. Although Studio itself does not, there is a bridge to hexagon or people export to Blender, ZBrush, or other for similar tasks. Note, Carrara can import those other programs stuff as well.
- Carrara's native modeler can make props and figures from scratch. Studio imports obj from other programs. Again, Carrara can import from other programs.
- Carrara has its own native rigging tools. So does Studio. Carrara can read Studio rigged figures if trial or blended weight. Carrara can't handle quaternion rigging like G3 unless converted first. Studio has trouble with figures rigged in Carrara and then exported.
- Carrara has a paint program to paint directly on a models surface. Again, studio can export an obj and then you paint in another program, and import it back again.
- Carrara has environment tools like a terrain modeler, plant modeler, realistic sky editor, volumetric clouds. Studio has a bridge to Bryce, but figures can't be posed further and Bryce's (great) renderers must be used. Carrara can import height maps created in Bryce and apply Bryce textures to those terrains, but it takes a tutorial to do it.
There should be a Free "Demo/Trial" version of Carrara,. over at www.download.cnet.com
http://download.cnet.com/Carrara-8-Pro/3000-6677_4-10782148.html
this version runs as the FULL (PRO) version for 30 days,. no restrictions,. full features, import export etc.
There are several rendering options in Carrara,. either photorealistic or Non-photorealistic (sketch)
you can adjust rendering settings to suit your needs,. and also save render setting "presets" ,. or load a prebuilt preset,. such as "Draft"
The benefits of Carrara are,..
Full modeling,. make your own things.
Keyframe animation system with multiple tweener types and an NLA system
(Non Linear Animation) ...like aniblocks for DS ,. animate your own things, and save your animation clips to re-use.
3D painting and texturing, plus a very powerful shaders system ,..paint your own things
Hope it helps :)
Couple more thoughts in the category of getting started and getting help on specific topics.
1). Ask. People are generally helpful,
2). Many of the monthly challenges have required or encouraged that a tool or function be used that month. Although the Entry threads usually just have the images and votes, the WIP threads often have great examples of workflow, tips, and suggestions. Past challenges are stickies at the top of the forum. If you are trying to use a function or get an effect, it can be helpful to skim the WIP thread. For example, the Paradise Lost or Found challenge WIP thread has info on using terrains and seamless replicators to make a realistic ocean. Sometimes, it might be a link to the info.
3). I have thread called no one asked me where I have posted screenshots for workflows for a number of tasks. Will point you there sometimes for potentially helpful skimming. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/119181/no-one-asked-me-diomede-posts-screenshots-on-whatever/p1
4). Free online tutorials at Carrara Cafe. Also, search for free tutorials by Cripeman, Marcelo Teixeira, and others.
5). Carrara information thread by Dartabeck is organized by topic and stickied at top of forum.
6). For sale tutorials by PhilW and Mmoir.
7). The manual, but for 7, not 8, so doesn't have info on genesis type rigging, soft body physics, and a few other topics.
Thank you all! Naturally, every answer leads to more questions...
1. Let's imagine I don't get the hang of fixing character textures properly in Carrara. Could I bring scenes and characters over from DAZ Studio without worrying about textures, animate them in Carrara, then export just the animations to apply to the same characters in DS for Iray rendering?
2. On the geograft solution, does that mean you import the character from DS into Carrara with the geograft applied, hide the anatomy in Carrara, and then load up a new copy of the anatomy and somehow tell it to fit to its hidden duplicate? And after that you can apply the geograft's textures to the visible copy?
Besides anything else, it sounds like I should get Carrara for the modeling capability. I've been scared away from Hexagon because so many people say it's crashy. I'm learning Blender, but Carrara may be a better fit with an easier learning curve for modeling items for use in Carrara and DAZ Studio.
carrara has frequently been on sale very cheap especially if you are a PC+ member so watch out for one
just as an alternative to Hexagon it is worth it as it is at least 64bit and more stable with similar tools.
I'm still working on reading Carrara's lonnnng manual, and also scrutinizing the product page. The product page for Carrara says Auto-Fit doesn't work with Genesis 2 figures. My figs are all Genesis 3 plus a few Genesis 2. In general, how do you solve pokethrough and get clothes to animate right on Jeanette, Johnathon, and Genesis 2?
well as I said, I set it up in DAZ studio first
you can autofit clothes there and save as support assets
in the case of Jeanette and Johnathon you need to save after converting to Blended weight too.
my solution for pokethough is to hide clothes covered body parts or in the vertex room use soft select to pull bits in on body or out on clothes.
You can also select vertices and hide them there too
there's a nice blended weight video tutt on youtunes by someone named madcatlady
when i'm transferring morphs, like fitting g3f clothes to johnathon, i save it as a product. leaves the original untouched.
I could just be dense, or maybe I'm confusing auto-fit with being a pokethrough solution when it's really not. So please forgive me if it seems I'm not paying attention--I'm just new at this. What could I set up in DS to prevent pokethrough on any (reasonable) animated motion in Carrara? Does blended weight just take care of it, with no further worries?
There are several options for addressing poke through. Two include using dynamics or using alphas. For dynamics, consider using the VWD dynamic cloth solution. If you are using Genesis 3 content, then yes you would want to change it to blended in DS first just to get it to load and morph to your figure in Carrara. Another poke through solution is to use Carrara to create new shader domains for your base figure and then apply black or zero in the alpha channel to make it invisible to the render.. For example, if a character is wearing jeans and boots, one way to get rid of poke through is just to make the legs and feet of the character not show up at all. The alpha shader channel approach won't work for everything, but the point is that sometimes extreme measures for the mesh and geometry are not necessary if shaders can be adjusted relatively easily..
Hi Inkubo :)
I think the most common method of solving pokethrough,. is simply hiding the part of the "figure" which is poking through the clothing,.
you can select most parts of a figure and click a switch to make that part visible/invisible.
Adjusting the "clothing" mesh in the Modelling room,. as 3digit also mentioned,. is another method,. or using magnets to deform the mesh.
If Poke through is a MAJOR issue that you're seeing a lot of,.
Make sure that the Clothing you're using,. was designed for the figure you're using it on.
not all clothing will conform to all figure shapes and morphs perfectly.
There are often "morphs" built into the clothing items,. to allow the user to adjust the fitting (different character shapes) or the deform of the mesh (windy effects)
make sure that you're checking that the clothing morphs are adjsuted to suit your figure shape,.
On some figures you can also use the figure's shape Morphs to adjust the figure shape under the clothing ,. rather than hiding that body part. use a morph control to make it thinnner.
Setting things up in Daz3D Studio will only help to an extent,. you're still transferring /Importing and translating all of the Studio scene information into Carrara.
some things Carrara does differently.
it's a different program,. accept the difference :)
There are many things you can do in Carrara which simply cannot be done in Studio.
Hope it helps :)