Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
i'd like to get more out of the luxus for carrara i already invested in, specially need skin shaders
and dragon, and whale, and seal shaders.
already have the extra luxus shaders in store.
Wendy may be able to advise more than me, but it is certainly possible to have it render a frame every few seconds in cases where it would take minutes for a Carrara render, plus the lighting will typically be better. There are some different "render kernels" in Octane and Direct Lighting is the one you want for speed, it is similar to using Ambient Occlusion mode in Carrara, not fully photorealistic but still benefiting from a form of global illumination.
Okay, thanks, sounds interesting. I will try the demo after the next 48 Hour Film contest is done.
I usually set it to 30 samples if daylight only maybe 50 if emitters
some things I go as low as 5-10 samples
and yes use direct lighting kernel
I apply a blur filter in virtualdub often too to remove any noise
Sounds like good tips, I hope I can remember ... it'll be a while before I try the demo, got another project taking my 3D time at the moment.
Wendy - good tip about the blur filter.
Wow, really? Has it been updated?
Don't get me wrong - I love Carrara and I go all the way back to Infini-D. As for many have expressed, Carrara really is the full package. I have yet to find a 3D modeling/animation package that makes it so easy to work with characters and landscapes within a relatively user-friendly interface. I think Cinema 4D is sort of a good comparison, but it's $4k price tag puts it in Autodesk territory. Anyone play with Blender? It's free, but has quite a steep learing curve. I forced my way into Lightwave, and it really is very good, but I still can't just jump in and create characters and scens like I can in CP8.5.
Wonder if DAZ would consider selling Carrara.
I recall this and similar topics about Carrara's future coming up many times in recent years. I also recall some folks more knowledgeable than me feeling there is little interest from potential buyers. I have reconciled myself to using C8.5 as is for a long time. No problem, I enjoy using it and don't feel I'm missing much. For short animations, I also use Vue, Poser and Particle Illusion, plus various image editors, sound and music programs, and video FX. So I think I've got more features to use than I'll ever really investigate thoroughly. New features are not high on my wish list.
Do you have the free M4 and V4 lux shaders?
http://carraracafe.com/forum-3/?cid=25&show=217
I use Blender a lot for rendering these days because the Blender Cycles rendering engine produces very good results and is very fast. I don't work with Carrara much anymore, although I still prefer to stick to older generation content that I know will work in Carrara, since I still use it sometimes. These days, I often set up a scene in Daz Studio, then import it into Blender for lighting and rendering. Of course, typically, a lot of things will require material adjustments in Blender (although the same is usually true in Carrara to get good results), but you can get some very good results with Cycles in pretty short periods of time.
kewl thank you very much !!
I don't understand how you can interpret that like "there's hope yet for Carrara", the idea is that Hexagon will be "integrated" in DS so you get a complete package with modeling included, so no need for Carrara any more and it can be dropped, no need to update it any more.
I still use Carrara almost daily, but since they resurrected Hexagon I've been teaching it to myself. My main reason for using Carrara is the spline, as it was oneof the first thinks I learned back with RDS. I also like the dynamic hair. It could be better, but it's still my go to tool.
The main things I want are just adding stability. I wish I could use Gen 3 figures without redoing the code, I wish dynamic cloth worked better, and I wish there was a more cad-like vertex, that didn't have so many artifacts when I did boolean. As far as the actual features, I think they are pretty complete.
well, this scene can be a mess in d/s, while in carrara it's pretty simple to manage if you have enough ram and a powerful cpu: https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/535051
your definition of "complete package" is a bit inflated
Even with Hexagon, DS won't be nearly as powerful as Carrara. Hexagon won't give DS landscape or atmosphere creation capability. It also won't give it realistic hair capability. Yes, I realize there is the Look at My Hair plugin for DS, but I stopped using that plugin a long time ago because it was extremely buggy and very prone to crashing DS. (I could be wrong, but I don't think LAMH works with Iray either.) So yeah, even with Hexagon, DS still has a long way to go before it will be as powerful as Carrara.
hair with true curves would be nice.
Increase the number of segments on the hair if you have issues. You can use guide hairs with fewer segments - makes it slightly easier to style - and a higher number on the actual hairs to smooth any obvious kinks.
I have not used DS since a very early version, but from what I've read, it's animation capability (my main interest in Carrara) is quite limited. Carrara, OTOH, is really fun to do animation with. I also use Poser Pro and Vue, and they are both quite capable for animations, but Carrara is much more fun. Admittedly I have much more experience with Carrara, but I've used Poser and Vue quite a bit, and still use them only when I have to.
Yes DS doesn't have anything like Carrara's ability to do animation. Even with the extra tools that you can get (Animate2, GraphMate and KeyMate) it lacks a number of important functions like a proper IK target. You can't animate materials either. Carrara beats it hands down for animation.
... And despite my praises of blender two days ago, I find myself going back to Carrara as my primary workhorse again. This always happens. I've tried to quit Carrara several times since I'm convinced Daz is never going to update it, but I always end up coming back to it. I've tried to work in Daz Studio, but I keep hitting very frustrating limitations. Mostly due to the fact that it's virtually impossible to produce decent landscape scenes in Studio (which is a serious limitation for a high-fantasy artist like me). And a Studio to Vue or Terragen workflow is not an option for me. As a one-man shop and starving artist, Vue and Terragen are outside of my price range. Daz to Blender solves the problem of Iray not working well on AMD cards, and in my opinion, not producing particularly great renders even when it does work, but it doesn't fix the landscape problem. Furthermore, when importing complex scenes with hundreds of objects into Blender from Daz, fixing the materials becomes time-prohibitive. I've tried things like TerraDome in Daz, but they are very limiting and nothing compared to the power of Carrara. Daz to Bryce? Well, that might be an option if not for the fact that Bryce is a 32 bit application and it appears there is almost no possibility that a 64 bit version of Bryce is ever going to be released. Needless to say, that causes problems for large, complex scenes.
So yep, once again I've reverted to Carrara for most of my work.
It's a shame Daz doesn't do more to promote Carrara. At the current price of $45.50, it's by far the best value in 3D art production. Where else are you going to find a program that gives you modeling, terrain, realistic atmospheres, grass and tree generation, a very fast renderer that supports full indirect lightning, strand based hair, and decent animation? Carrara is the best deal in 3D, but it also seems to be the best kept secret.
I still use it regularly for 3d art, rendering of large, outdoor scenes and space. I really hope they update it at some point. With Autodesk's ridiculous subscription fees, hobbyists are being priced out of the good stuff like never before. There's a market for it, if they know how to promote it.
Great images! Sadly I think Daz's focus is entirely on Daz Studio - and to be fair they are adding a number of great features such as dForce, Iray etc. I don't expect they will update or market Carrara any more (I'd love to be proved wrong!) but it remains a very useful and usable program as it is.
I've seen many pros work with maya, houdini and modo simultaneously, each one rendering a different scene with different renderers (and could add vue or 3dmax or clarisse), I guess it's the routine, so it doesn't really matters one tool specifically but how they complete and supplement each other, and interact with the compositing tools; I feel that carrara can work jointly with D/S and a lot of other tools effectively, and for certain scenes can even be the final renderer, like 3dsmax or clarisse or c4d or any of that kind
I've gotten back into Poser to supplement Carrara, mostly because of some great models that require Poser for some features. The best example is ERC, which is not just for synchronizing the movement of different parts, but is used a lot. E.g. to switch an airplanes props from stationary blades to a blurred image of a turning blade. The model loaded fine, but I could not get it to switch in Carrara. But I still do 90% of my animation in Carrara, way more great features than Poser like NLA.
damn I was hoping this thread was.... .....
....... don't necro it again
Wrong topic. Please ignore.