Some questions about Carrara Pro 8
RorrKonn
Posts: 509
Does Carrara Pro 8 support zBrush vextor maps ?
Does Carrara Pro 8 have weight map rigs as good as DAZ Studio ?
Thanks
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Not sure and argumentatively yes. But it's not like carrara can't use DS weightmaping. Genesis works fine.
Can we make these =
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?177616-Defiance-Character-Art-Dump/page2
In Carrara Pro 8 with all the necessary maps. clor ,bumps ,diffuse etc etc. and have theme look as good in Carrara Pro 8.
Can we rig theme in Carrara Pro 8 with weight map rigs ?
I use all three prefer to model and UV in ZB and weighmap DS 4.5 I do add one additional step - group mesh and make bone rig in Poser before weighting tri axis. This ensures comparability. Including with Carrara 8. Its the beta 8,5 that accepts Genesis and pure weight-mapped rig. ( I think)
Can I weight map rig characters in Carrara Pro 8 with out using DAZ Studio ? Not use DAZ Studio at all.
Can I weight map rig characters in Carrara Pro 8 with just Carrara Pro 8 ?
Wow. Those are excellent models. You can do all of the rigging and weight mapping within Carrara. Personally, I would go for a multi-tool arrangement exactly that, which Dream Cutter describes... but those models are beyond my current capabilities. Thanks for posting that original link. That has inspired me big time!
No matter what you use to rig the model, I like to use Carrara in the animation and final rendered animation files. It's fast, flexible, has atmospheres that are easy to work with, you can drop avi and sequence image animation on just about anything that accepts a map, etc.,
Carrara is really fun to create films with.
Don't under underestimate yourself .You can make any thing any other CGI Artist Can make.
zBrush galleries / fourms is one of my favorite galleries for inspiration.
Does Carrara Pro 8 have morphs just for Carrara Pro 8.especially for face expressions .
not making morphs for use in DAZ or Poser. Just for Carrara Pro 8
Yes you can make morphs for poser/DAZ figures. Not sure it will work in carrara made figures; it should. I tried for quite a while in C5 to make a carrara figure that could be clothed and used like a poser figure. never worked.
But if you have the talent and understanding you could use Studio 4.5 to make your figure a Studio figure and it would work in carrara. For me studio is an excellent support app for carrara; much like Hexagon.
OT
Now, as far as the Defiance game. I was one of the alpha testers. Like most game developmental companies testers are for reporting bugs, not for making suggestion for the betterment of the game. At the release it was a half finished bug fest. The game actually worked it's best 2 months before release lol I had actually given up on the game a couple weeks before the release. At that point the game was unplayable. I feel for anyone that paid the $60 for the basic or even worse $150 for the deluxe version of the game. When even some one with little time to spend on it can have it done in a week.
Hi RorrKonn
.No Program has morphs,.
You create morphs within the program,.. for your model,. and yes,. Carrara can create morph targets, and add a control to the UI to allows you to adjust the morph setting.
Morphs can be created for any part of your model,. including facial expressions.
Carrara also has a "Mimic" plugin, which will create lip-sync animation from a vocal (audio track) and will use the facial expression morphs in your model, to create the lip-sync animation.
Great,. as long as you're working within Carrara, and not worried about transferring the model to Poser, DS, or any other program,. then you can do anything you want to in carrara.
Carrara also has a GOZ plugin to bridge to Z-brush.
Perhaps the best way to answer most of your questions is to suggest that you download the Free 30day Demo of Carrara 8
the trial version performs as the "Pro" version for 30 days.
you can find the download at CNET
www.downloads.com
search for Daz Carrara.
Hope it helps :)
lol, except iClone, Carrara rigging AND created timeline baked facial morphs work well in iClone5 FBX exported via 3Dxchange5 pro
Unity and Unreal game engines also import them rigged and animated but not my area of knowledge
I myself have gotten it into Houdini apprentice and via .dae (collada) into Blender, I CANNOT get Daz/Poser rigging into Blender working but can Carrara native rigging! animated (not that I can use Blender)
what they do NOT work in is Daz studio and Poser!
I think Max and Maya users can also import Carrara rigging, even have a plugin! (not sure, do not take it as gospel)
How stable is Carrara Pro 8 ,Does it crash much ?
Its a subjective question on a multifaceted application. It depends on what Carrara version (O/S, Release or Beta) , what task you are accomplishing and the host hardware & software configuration. Also experience with other similar apps and the level of pain and inconvenience you can tolerate will affect the perspective of stability. Recommend testing a general release version in your production environment, as hardware and software factors will be significant. A 3D workstation based on professional graphics, lots of ram and multi-cpu is much better than using a high end gaming rig. Avoid consumer gaming 3d cards. Even a low end, sub $200 pro card will do better than a $600 gamer card. Especially if you plan on developing 3d figures and rendering animation. This will do much to improve stability in Carrara and many 3d apps.
I'll have to agree. C8.1 and C8.5 have always run quite well for me on my machine, almost rock solid. Last night was the first time in a long time I locked C8.5 up royal. But I have read some horror storys on the forum.
I'd brought a dynamic clothing animation in from Studio and was calculating dynamic hair. Everything locked up for about 15 minutes before I had to do a 3 finger restart. But I don't think I can pull this one off with my machine. Quad core and 6 gig just isn't enough :(
Was the mouse moving? is so - it still may have been computing the dynamics. I've seen it go long time - like 45 mins or more.
If stability is key - I was able to reduce 50% of hangs across the board in 3d dev apps by swapping out a 2GB gaming GPU with a AMD 1GB FirePro V4900. Would like to have sprung for more, but that would have dipped into the content budget :| Understand NVIDIA Quadra 600 are also solid and good value. Most happy with the result with the FirePro.
I just remember back in the 90's Truespace,Carrara didn't have a stable rep.
Would have been a good idea to post hardware specs when asking about stability .Good thing I never claimed to have any since ,LOL.
Windows 8 - 64 bit ,Quad core ,8 gig RAM,500 Gigs harddrive ,Geforce GT 620.
The new PC is the biggest reason I'm shopping for a new Main all purpose CGI App.
My CGI App's are a lot of old versions made back in the windows 1998,2000 days.
There just a bit out dated ,I think in PC years that = 2.85 Centuries.
Any one know if Carrara Pro 8 supports zBrush Displacement Maps ?
Any one know if Carrara Pro 8 supports zBrush Vector Maps ?
3dage mentioned above in a post that there is a Zbrush bridge that you could buy from DAZ. Why don't you look at the product page. You may find a list of supported features and functions.
What do you do with the displacement maps outside of Zbrush? What do you do with the vector maps? Do you mean that Zbrush generates displacement maps to use in other programs, or does Zbrush use them internally to paint displacement on the mesh during the modeling process? The purpose of a bridge is to simplify the transfer process between applications. Since Z-Brush is a modeler and not a render program, I would think the bridge would favor going from Zbrush into Carrara. Since Carrara also has modeling capabilities, I would imagine the bridge could go both ways to make it easier to take a model started in Carrara and refine it in Zbrush, then back again to Carrara.
Perhaps the best way to see what Carrara can do, would be to follow 3Dages suggestion and DL the 30 day trial.
I have heard other discussion on the merits of the Pro" vs "Gaming" card.
In my understanding, the hardware is essentially identical. The "Pro" cards however have much stricter checks regarding performance, and components that do not make the "cut" are used on the "Gaming" cards. So essentially if we are talking about the hardware alone, a "Gaming" card is just a "Pro" card that does not meet the performance specs.
Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, there is driver functionality that is implemented on the Pro cards that is turned off for the gaming cards. So the card could be considered a dongle for the driver software. Its possible to override the identifier on the card, so that it reports that it is actually a "Pro" model and enabled the additional functions in the driver. This obviously voids the warranty, and most likely the license agreement for the driver.
The high end app developers have teamed up with the graphic card developers to create a requirement in the software for the Pro card. For example, some functionality is turned off in the application if the Pro card is not detected, although the card may be entirely capable of the function.
I can't spend $3000 - $4000 on a graphics card just because the developers expect that they can get big corporations to pay for it. The self employed individual has to seriously consider whether it is worth it.
EvilProducer : Do you have zBrush ?
Does Carrara Pro 8 support zBrush Vector Maps ?
If you don't have zBrush this are zBrush features.
http://pixologic.com/zbrush/features/Vector-Displacement/
You can take a character of polycount 3000 easy to rig pose
Add Vector map render a 4 million polycount character.
Jarad's using Mudbox,Maya but ya get it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kb3uC1nY7Q
You can burn the vector for maps
It's how these game meshes where made.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?177616-Defiance-Character-Art-Dump/page2
Yes I know about Carrara Pro 8 GoZ for $60.00
http://www.daz3d.com/goz-for-carrara
I don't know if Carrara Pro 8 GoZ is the same as the othere GoZ's for other App's.
trueSpace had a plug for Vray but it was not all of Vray.
It was not the same as Max ,tS was more of a Vray lite.
zBrush has all I need but Weightmap Rigs.
So all I really need is Rigs for zBrush but I need a third party app to do that.
So I need a app that has Weightmap rigs ,GoZ & Vextor Maps.
App's I have some version of.
DAZ Studio :Weightmap rigs ,GoZ& Displacement Maps.
No Vextor Maps.
Don't know about the shrink wrapping.
Poser :Weightmap rigs ,GoZ& Displacement Maps.
No Vextor Maps.
Don't have SubD's.
Blender :Weightmap rigs
No GoZ .Don't know about Displacement Maps.
I know it's free but man my times not.
Lightwave :Weightmap rigs ,GoZ& Displacement Maps.
No Vextor Maps I think.
LW 12 might have Vextor maps.
in the LW 7 days LW didn't seem to care about zBrush ,seems that has changed some.
C4D :Weightmap rigs ,GoZ& Vextor Maps.
$3500.00 is a bit much for Vextor Maps.
App's I know something about
Max :Weightmap rigs ,GoZ& Vextor Maps.
$3000.00 is a bit much for Vextor Maps.
Carrara Pro 8 :Weightmap rigs ,GoZ & Displacment Maps.
Don't think it has Vextor Maps.
Modo : Need more research
Maya : Need more research
Softimage : Need more research
Houdini : Need more research
If anyone care to suggest another app I'll check that app also.
Before I get a 30 trail I read the manual watch tutorials.
Before I read the manual and watch the tutorials .I check and see if it has the tools I need.
I can't check out multiple 30 day trails all at one time anyways.
So far it seems either I give a lot of $$$ for Vector Maps or settle for Vector textures and or displacement maps.
I have heard other discussion on the merits of the Pro" vs "Gaming" card.
In my understanding, the hardware is essentially identical. The "Pro" cards however have much stricter checks regarding performance, and components that do not make the "cut" are used on the "Gaming" cards. So essentially if we are talking about the hardware alone, a "Gaming" card is just a "Pro" card that does not meet the performance specs.
Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, there is driver functionality that is implemented on the Pro cards that is turned off for the gaming cards. So the card could be considered a dongle for the driver software. Its possible to override the identifier on the card, so that it reports that it is actually a "Pro" model and enabled the additional functions in the driver. This obviously voids the warranty, and most likely the license agreement for the driver.
The high end app developers have teamed up with the graphic card developers to create a requirement in the software for the Pro card. For example, some functionality is turned off in the application if the Pro card is not detected, although the card may be entirely capable of the function.
I can't spend $3000 - $4000 on a graphics card just because the developers expect that they can get big corporations to pay for it. The self employed individual has to seriously consider whether it is worth it. That's one of my favorite aspects about Carrara.
It just jams, with the most modest of card. By building my own, incredible inexpensive eight core computer (under a grand - including Win7) I noticed an enormous difference in render times. But I was still cranking out some good animations on the computer I had. Just the Batch Queue, alone, really helps. I'd just plan the most time-consuming animations to be rendered starting from just before supper, until after I get home from work the next day. Put a few in the list, just in case Carrara finishes before I get home ;-)
The big thing is that Carrara 8 can now use Normal Maps, which ZBrush generates. So if it can't use those you mention, there is still that work-around until it can.
Carrara does have displacement. I have no idea about Vector Maps. I have no idea about GoZ. I understand there is a bridge to Carrara, so, I would assume you have to have GoZ. What level it is I can't say.
Carrara has the ability to use displacement maps, Carrara 8 also supports normal maps. As 3Dage mentioned, Carrara has it's own rigging and weight painting. It's a bit of process getting the rigging out and I have no clue if the weight painting is converted or not. I think you have to export using .fbx to do it.
I really do hate to sound like a grouch, but there comes a point where you actually have to just try it yourself. Only you know exactly what you want to do. You can get a 30 day trial of Carrara for free, and DAZ has a 30 day, money back guarantee as well, so the financial risk seems very minimal. Just try it. Asking the same question five different ways doesn't mean you'll get different answers.
I have heard other discussion on the merits of the Pro" vs "Gaming" card.
In my understanding, the hardware is essentially identical. The "Pro" cards however have much stricter checks regarding performance, and components that do not make the "cut" are used on the "Gaming" cards. So essentially if we are talking about the hardware alone, a "Gaming" card is just a "Pro" card that does not meet the performance specs.
Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, there is driver functionality that is implemented on the Pro cards that is turned off for the gaming cards. So the card could be considered a dongle for the driver software. Its possible to override the identifier on the card, so that it reports that it is actually a "Pro" model and enabled the additional functions in the driver. This obviously voids the warranty, and most likely the license agreement for the driver.
The high end app developers have teamed up with the graphic card developers to create a requirement in the software for the Pro card. For example, some functionality is turned off in the application if the Pro card is not detected, although the card may be entirely capable of the function.
I can't spend $3000 - $4000 on a graphics card just because the developers expect that they can get big corporations to pay for it. The self employed individual has to seriously consider whether it is worth it.
I too hear the same RE: Pro workstation cards being same hw as thier gaming siblings, only held to higher spec. May be true - however dont underestimate that advantage. (I DID for years) . Whats key is the OPENGL Driver support and compatibility. With OpenGL well optimized to the card, the various 3D apps are able to extract the highest level of performance because its a known and established reference (video card & drivers set)no that is close to what the app developers use.
No need to break the bank to get this performance, an AMD V4900 costs just under $150. That said, expect the graphics card to only affect system stability when the scene on screen is being manipulated or animated. It dont do diddly for 3d render speed, especially if not rendering to screen.
Now what would a MOBO equipped with dual 12 core AMD Operation Magny Cours CPU's deliver? That should bump the render along at a faster rate. In my dreams :)
No vector maps. The Carrara GoZ PDF Manual has a section that tells you how to create Displacement Maps.
I've got Z-Brush but don't use it often.
Carrara 8 is pretty stable. I've only had it crash a few times in the years since I've been using Carrara 8.
Blender has GoB for Z-Brush.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Import-Export/GoB_ZBrush_import_export
Some stuff on Vector Maps. DAZ studio can use these in the new Beta build. Ptex maps are Vector Maps.
Carrara might get the ability to use them at some point down the road, given that DAZ Studio has them in the Beta and future products may make use of them, so Carrara will need to be able use them to ensure that those products can be used in both programs.
That's killer ,Thanks a lot for the info.
Newest version of Poser will be able to use Ptex maps too. It looks like the ability to use Ptex maps is going to be a standard feature in most 3D software programs in the future
Killer