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Thanks! I must have been low on coffee... :red:
no problem Woolyloach,.
Glad to help :)
Any experience yet on how 8.5 and Genesis plays with IPI mocap yet?
Should we expect it to behave normally, or have there been issues?
OK I've asked this on the Studio forum but got ignored amidst the flurry of technical issues, so I'll ask here
What is the size of the RC2 download and how much longer will it be valid before being replaced? Does the .duf format work for exporting Optitex sims to Carrara?
I ask because the last DS4 was close to 1 Gig, most of which was useless to me, so I need to judge whether it is worthwhile to use up my bandwidth allowance.
HI djmulcahy :)
While I don't use IPI mocap, I do use BVH from endorphin, and BVH works on Genesis as long as you're using the genesis bone rig to create the motion. as with all BVH it's name specific. and Genesis has more bones than V4/.M4 or other poser type figures.
You can also use DS to load the BVH and transfer through Animate2 to genesis, but that transfer needs some adjustment work.
Hi Roygee :)
Daz Studio is around 460mb depending on the system and version.
No idea when the next RC will be released.
Hi 3dage
Thanks for that - so it's gone back to what it was size-wise.
I seem to recall reading somewhere that .duf can't yet transfer dynamic clothing to Carrara, so I guess I'll sit this one out.
Cheers
I found two big issues for me with this latest beta
non-Genesis clothes does not autofit to Genesis with morphs and softselect does not work on them in the vertex room (my usual workaround to fit clothes)
would it be too much to ask for a manual for 8.5? Makes it easier for my students to pick Carrara.
Apparently it is far too much to ask of DAZ. 3dage is about as close as you will get to a users manual for carrara.
So far my experience with daz dynamic clothing and DUF to carrara has been lock up, crash, or screwed up. Textures lost, clothes in pose but figure not.
Over a fricken year now and we still don't have studio and carrara working together again. If DAZ can ever get this freaking working again I might, MIGHT, resubscribe to the P club and shop here again. But as it stands I have given up on DAZ.
And there I was ready to buy animate 2 and some dynamic clothing. This has all been on hold for me since DAZ broke this.
I was about to totally loose confidence with DAZ and Carrara for a while, what with the number of Carrara 8.5 betas and the length of time it takes to get to a production version. But now realize that it is an immense task to overhaul Carrara form almost top to bottom with the introduction of Genesis. And the latest beta, for me, is almost up to par. Just a few tweaks here and there. So my confidence in Daz and Carrara is restored. Yeah!
I was trying out the Howie Farkes Stony creek scene in 8.5 Build 149 and it is SOOO slow.
I loaded it in Carara 8.1 and it is slow there, but not crawling.
I haven't installed 4.5 with DS yet. Could that be part of the problem?
I haven't used DS or Carrara in a while now because of all these constant Beta updates. I'm not sure whether to update to the DS beta or not.
Is there any word when these are leaving beta? I want the plug ins for DS before I upgrade. But if Carrara 8.5 runs faster with DS 4.5 maybe I will have to do without them.
I have officially lost my patience with Daz today. At this point, I don't care when 8.5 comes out, because I am fed up with the increasingly high pressure sales tactics (limited coupon replacing vouchers, no sale expiration dates), the broken website, but most especially the perpetually incomplete development cycle of Carrara. I guess it's just time for me to start saving the money I've been wasting here, and move on to Maya.
I have, and use, Maya... good luck saving anything with it. Expensive to buy, expensive to use, expensive to run. You haven't seen high pressure until you've dealt with Autodesk. Good luck.
Kendall
I've avoided Autodesk for a long time, but lately dealing with everything at Daz from the website to Studio to Carrara makes me feel like their perpetual beta tester. Is a little professionalism too much to ask?
I hate to be a forum complaint guy, I just don't feel like I can rely on the company any more, especially to support Carrara. Which is ashamed, because I really do like these guys and their products, but there seems to be have been some turn in management lately. It seems to me that they rushed to release Genesis without the full infrastructure in place to support it. My guess is the company is bleeding money, resources are getting tighter, and they're risking alienating their customers to squeeze out short term profits to try to make up for the chain of poor management decisions coupled with the bad economy. If I'm right, Daz wouldn't be the first tech company to go down this way.
Again, I hate to not be supportive, but it seems like all my support is getting me is higher prices on products I still cant fully use, and more delays in development.
I've avoided Autodesk for a long time, but lately dealing with everything at Daz from the website to Studio to Carrara makes me feel like their perpetual beta tester. Is a little professionalism to much ask?
I hate to be a forum complaint guy, I just don't feel like I can rely on the company any more, especially to support Carrara. Which is ashamed, because I really do like these guys and their products, but there seems to be have been some turn in management lately. It seems to me that they rushed to release Genesis without the full infrastructure in place to support it. My guess is the company is bleeding money, resources are getting tighter, and they're risking alienating their customers to squeeze out short term profits to try to make up for the chain of poor management decisions coupled with the bad economy. If I'm right, Daz wouldn't be the first tech company to go down this way.
Again, I hate to not be supportive, but it seems like all my support is getting me is higher prices on products I still cant fully use, and more delays in development.
I'll be the first person that will say to use the tool best suited for the job. The only reason I responded to your post is that you used "saving money" and "Maya" in the same thought process without a negative in there somewhere.
As for professionalism. Don't confuse "expensive" with "stable." Maya crashes... a lot. And I'm not on cheap or under-powered equipment -- try Microway Servers, 2U rack mounted, multi-processor multi-core, error-correcting RAM, Autodesk Listed and Approved Graphics Adapters. Autodesk presumes that you have an in-house IT department to "resolve" their issues, or that you are paying them maintenance monthly to receive bug fixes. Not paying maintenance? Don't bother calling support unless you have a Credit Card with a large open balance available. Even with maintenance, you still get a lot of: "Hmmm. Never heard of that one before. Have you tried rebooting your machine? OK. Well then, go into Control Panel. Oh, you're using our Linux/Mac version? Please hold while I find someone who can help you. (queue on-hold music) Thank you for calling Autodesk, your satisfaction is our most important -- click. dial tone."
Par for the industry. Happens with NewTek, Maxon, you name it. For the price, the DAZ stuff is a steal (EDIT: Even at the original full price), and support is pretty darned good -- even without a maintenance agreement.
Kendall
well two answers to my issues I found myself
firstly newly loaded Genesis figures clothes autofit and morph with the figure
just the old saved projects from previous beta do not
( I did mean to clarify, Genesis morphs not the clothing morphs which never worked)
softselect still works on non Genesis autofited stuff, tends to be a bit limited in it's influence on Genesis autofitted mesh, well next to useless
I'm starting to use Cinema 4D made by Maxon. I use it as well as Carrara. Maybe I'm just lucky, but it doesn't crash very much, as far as I can tell. Once in a blue moon, maybe.
I've avoided Autodesk for a long time, but lately dealing with everything at Daz from the website to Studio to Carrara makes me feel like their perpetual beta tester. Is a little professionalism too much to ask?
I hate to be a forum complaint guy, I just don't feel like I can rely on the company any more, especially to support Carrara. Which is ashamed, because I really do like these guys and their products, but there seems to be have been some turn in management lately. It seems to me that they rushed to release Genesis without the full infrastructure in place to support it. My guess is the company is bleeding money, resources are getting tighter, and they're risking alienating their customers to squeeze out short term profits to try to make up for the chain of poor management decisions coupled with the bad economy. If I'm right, Daz wouldn't be the first tech company to go down this way.
Again, I hate to not be supportive, but it seems like all my support is getting me is higher prices on products I still cant fully use, and more delays in development.
I hope you are wrong about that, but I fear you are right. I cut my teeth on DAZ products and have a soft spot for them but they seem to be in some sort of decline. I have my fingers crossed as I do love my Carrara.
I don't believe it's in decline, it's at least the same as it always was and better in places.
Perhaps your expectations and demands have gone up? We always become bored of that which becomes familiar.
You always have to consider whether your needs have gone up and if they have can you afford to take the 'next step up' in software.
not just for carrara but Daz and site in general
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAcMzuu70A8
I've got a lot of complaints right now, especially considering I had planned on starting a project with Carrara and Genesis earlier in the year... and right now it looks like 8.5 won't be finished until fall or winter. Hopefully.
However, "decline" seems like a fairly harsh assessment.
Yeah, we've been in perpetual 8.5 beta forever now.
Yeah, the rollout of the forums has been a mess.
Yeah, the changes in the store have been FUBAR.
But, big picture (and obviously none of us know what's going on behind the scenes), Genesis is a fantastic product, one that I'm drooling to be able to use consistently.
The overhaul of the forums and the store doesn't seem like a move from a company on the brink. You'd think they'd rather just save their cash and leave things alone, no?
All these changes, even if they've been badly mismanaged, suggest to me a company that's looking forward, not planning on sitting still.
I think things are still pretty solid here, provided DAZ can recover from the botch-up we've seen so far. :)
Its obvious development resources are scarce. The first indications were when they stopped working on bryce and hex and gave them away. Then there is the carrara beta eternal version 8.5_ _ . Then we have the website troubles deluxe. (This one really boggles the mind from a content provider whose bread and butter is selling content. ) but all this points to scarcity of resources.
as for Carrara ---I think sometimes the idea of an open beta is great but not when it is going on this long. It just makes it seem like nothing is ever going to get finished. It turns out to be a horrible marketing fisasco. People lose faith in the company's ability to develop the product . and the future development hopes become dimmer and dimmer .
This is frustrating for all the Carrara folks to sit by and watch and deal with...and so its not surprising more folks are looking around for alternatives. One only can hope DAZ can turn things around before they lose too many customers.
It probably is accurate at this point to say that my personal interests are just growing apart form Daz. But despite my frustration, I really am rooting for the success of the company in general, and Carrara in particular.
So here's an interesting thought....
Let's say you were a software company, and you had a choice between:
A. Keeping a very expensive and very specialized development staff that was skilled in FOUR (count 'em, FOUR) different software applications that are different from anything in the industry, requiring huge investments in labor and time to make difficult and complicated software improvements that take on the order of years to pay back, in a high price market that would tend to perform poorly in bad economic times, or
B. Keeping a small staff of content developers that only needed to have a fraction of the skills, with labor and time investments a fraction of those in A, and payback cycles on the order of months, not years, in a low price market that would tend to perform better in bad economic times...
Hmmm......
That's a tough one.
Although, I've always said that DAZ has a fairly brilliant market position that most of those other companies that only produce software don't have, and one that is far more likely to weather bad economic times. People are much more likely to drop $19.95 on some V4 clothes than $800 on a high priced graphic software.
I really do hope Carrara makes it past 8.5, though I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't.
Well, all right, but...
DAZ sees itself as primarily a content developer, right?
What software can I use DAZ content in, relatively easily, aside from DS and, to an extent, Carrara?
I mean, importing characters from DAZ to Blender, or C4D, or Lightwave, is an enormous hassle. Rigging or textures or morphs or something is always messed up, and not usually an easy fix.
So, if Carrara doesn't exist after 8.5, doesn't that leave DAZ as a content supplier without any software using their content?
Poser, even though I'm not a big fan, still does multiple times better with pathways to other software. PoserFusion isn't perfect, but it actually allows you to use Poser content outside of their software.
Where is this easy Genesis pipeline? Genesis is going to sit here, look pretty in DAZ Studio, and no where else?
I can't imagine that.
Without Carrara or some strong pathways to other software, Genesis is going to die.
DAZ created a wonderful product in Genesis, and now there seems to be no consistent and reliable ways to use it.
AHA !!! Excellent point, and perhaps the key to much of this discussion.
So if you were at the helm of DAZ, what would you do in terms of the direction of future development? Well (.... and I don't know this, but I'm speculating...) I'm guessing that there's more to Genesis than might appear on the surface. If I was leading DAZ, my primary goal right now would be not to add new cool features to any of its software, but rather to make it EXTREMELY easy to be able to use all of DAZ content directly in Blender. Then make sure it can be used in every other software platform, starting with the most common and widely used. Make sure anyone with 3D software can load any DAZ content directly. No fuss, no muss.
And keep in mind that by having D|S and Carrara and Bryce still out there, presumably in millions of hands right now after the giveaway, all that content works, or at least will work much better once they get all the Genesis import/export stuff cleaned up. And it's not like all that DAZ software (Bryce, D|S, Carrara) is suddenly going to stop working. All they do is keep a few people around who can tweak the apps once every few years to make sure they run smoothly as OS's progress, and that's it.
Once that's done, that's all they need. Sit back and collect the cash....
Actually I think a key point is being missed - 3d in films, commercials, etc. is a realm of specialists. They don't need daz models.
A lot of people on forums seem to think that one person does modelling texturing animation and post. There is a different person for each of those and sometimes several for each area.
So if you buy Maya and PS it doesn't mean you can do professional level work all by yourself unless you have the skills to do it all (I have only met a couple that REALLY had those skills) and the time. A professional commercial - 30 seconds usually took a team of ten about three weeks to complete (only including 3d artists).
Again- one or two animators 3 Weeks all they do is animate. Modelers "modeling" from (for a car commercial) a CAD model already completed by the car manufacturer. That is to say - they prepare the model by taking away stuff that won't be seen and rigging it for the animators. And that is pretty much all those people do for 15 - 20 hours per day.
My point is Carrara on my home computer is about PRO level circa 1999.
But I still cannot do one pro commercial with 1999 level quality without 30 - 40 WEEKS of work.
No. I think virtually everyone on this board realizes we're hobbyists, and virtually all of us realizes the professional work we see on tv and in movies requires a team.
My own interests involve hobby work, and also using DAZ/iClone for training materials for the workplace. The reason I like DAZ is because I DO realize I can't do it all, and I enjoy the content by DAZ and other artists, which is well above what I could model on my own.
I'm confused by your point. Because Carrara isn't Maya... we shouldn't want it to work well or something?
This is a myth, promulgated to increase the "wow-ness" of the work. Feature films may very well model their characters from scratch, especially when the environment is other than "normal". But other "professional" work like commercials, background inserts, filler, etc use purchased content. Some at significant cost. However, the models cost is insignificant compared to the personnel costs that would be needed to custom model, and the cost of the model is directly deductible as a business expense.
Don't discount the use of pool material in these works either. One might be surprised at where some of these "professionals" cull their models from.
Kendall