Almost afraid to ask, but...
WsCG
Posts: 391
With DAZ actively developing Hexagon again... is that a bad sign for the future of Carrara? Or perhaps there's intention to begin supporting it again, too?
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Daz hasn't got the resources to do any developing with Carrara..
apparently there is a beta version which can load Genesis 3 but that was years ago and nothing has been released to us users.
I guess they can't do much if they aint got the money which is sad.
and Carrara is starting to throw errors up in Windows 10 now and tends to crash more often.. often after a crash and I reboot windows an error message is flasing up which has been too quick for me to see.. I've never had this error before and it is happening often.
I agree with Stezza that DAZ does not have the crew to develop Carrara, apparently an entirely different task than creating content for the inferior DAZ Studio. This has been obvious for years. But I have not had any problems with Carrara 8.5 in Windows 10. Maybe because I'm sticking with Gen4 DAZ figures and only Poser and Carrara format content, but I dunno. Whatever, I am glad I got Win10 on my newest machine, actually a mistake by the builder who forgot I wanted Win7. I realize I am tempting the gods of computer crashes ...
I suppose they felt Hexagon was the better choice of the two; let Hexagon be the modeling program, and animation to be done in DAZ Studio.
One way of looking at it is that:
Carrara is too powerful - with Carrara in the right hands you don't need to buy content.
Carrara is too much of a competitor for Studio.
It's in Daz's interests to let it (Carrara) wither on the vine.
On the other hand:
It's in our interests to keep it alive ;) And we are doing a good job.
At the moment Carrara works fine for most. If it's not broken don't fix it.
Most of the time it's cheap as chips.... best bargain out there.
And as a plus, there is a mine of information available here and elsewhere.
And the plugin makers are rocking - thank you so much!
That's typical for me. I finally take Carrara seriously and it's on the Iron Lung. I'm the guy who always arrives too late for the party it seems. Now if Carrara went "open source" and gave Daz the finger. Hmmm.
DAZ would have to be the one to make that change, though.
It's not entirely unheard of. Blender started out as a proprietary in-house production software that only became open source after some crowd-sourcing to raise enough money. It's improved 1000% since then. But if it's the case that DAZ wants to keep Carrara to make sure it can't become a competing program, then.. yeah.. I don't see that happening.
Carrara is a wonderful program still.
No iron lung needed. Plenty of tutorials available.
This might be of interest, all images made last year in Carrara. No iron Lung in sight.
Best to be amongst the minority - it keeps the magic.
mrhugoball.com
I started out on DAZ Studio before I converted to the "dark-side" and started using Carrara, and am very glad I did so.
Love the work that the crew here put out, is a source of inspiration to keep learning and keep improving.
Will be using Carrara for as long as I can, and use the other software as "plugins for Carrara".
head wax,
The Enlightening Journey of Mr Hugo Ball
DADA ... yipes .... I'll take a look, Thanks for the info
Maybe Bryce can use an extra Iron Lung for their animation section. Now I'm getting nasty. Too much caffiene this evening.
I love Carrara, but I too am getting more and more crashes with each new Windows 10 update, even with no rigged figures at all in the scene. It's gotten incredibly frustrating to work in which is why I haven't been posting any new Carrara images lately. I'll keep playing with it though until it stops working altogether - especially with all the new plugins available lately.
I am getting more crashes in Windows 10 for every program I try to use. Aaargh.
RE: Carrara crashes. Yes, sometimes I get them even if everything in my scene was modeled by me in Carrara, and I use only procedural textures. Not saying it is frequent, just that it can happen to me even if there are no Daz or Poser figures, similar to MDO2010. I also still get occasional Hexagon crashes even though the current version is supposed to be more stable.
Bill Gates - stop messing with us!
re: crashes,
To truly be able to count on Carrara in its current stasis state, I may acquire a dedicated W7 license, and decent dedicated machine to Carrara as it currently exists... - as well as any development tools/SDKs/compilers/versions that would also likely need to be kept 'stable' for this place in time. I would think that a decent Virtual Machine running W7 on a kick-butt HW platform might still keep this baby humming (noting that VMs can run on Linux, etc.) Not sure how I would tie in to GRID renderers, but maybe luxus becomes the render-farm path... While VMs probably count out Octane, it would keep the base system working/stable, I would think.
Definitely looking at holding on as they try to sneak it away through their so called W10 'upgrades'... Anyone else have any interesting life-support ideas going?
--ms
I don't think Bill has much to do with it any more ;)
For any old app:
The old and free VirtualPC app is built-in into Win 10Pro, there are other free options like VirtualBox.
I'm not willing to defend microsoft (believe me, I curse at them often enough !), but I'm running the last version of Carrara (8.5.1 Pro build 19 64b) with the last update of windows 10 Pro (1803) and it rarely crashes. And when it does, most of the time it's because I closed the file with the octane render window still opened (which I know crashes Carrara almost every time). But it already did that with previous updates of windows.
good to know that it *can* work in the current OS releases.
tnx,
--ms
I'm afraid I disagree.
A large part of daz content is made of characters, clothes and hair. This is organic surface modeling. Carrara's modeler is rather for hard surfaces, so this kind of content is very difficult to make with Carrara.
Besides, even for what you can make with Carrara, it takes time. I prefer to spend time on creating things that don't already exist in daz's shop.
Of course, it depends on the kind of scenes you make, but I think that even if you're mastering Carrara well, most of the time you still need to buy content. There is a topic somewhere in this Carrara forum asking something like "how much items do you have". And it seems that many Carrara users have purchased a lot of items.
I'd add that since you can make content with Carrara, you can create items to sell in daz's shop, and I think daz rather likes that.
I'm afraid I don't understand. studio is free. They get no money directly from it. Only with the content. I don't think they care whether you use this content with studio or with Carrara.
Yes. daz's decision makers clearly think their interest is only to sell content, not to develop software except something allowing their customers to use this content, but no more (or not much more).
Hey @MerKhrys
Yes my view is only one way of looking at it ;)
Almost afraid to ask, but...
how yoo convert grayscale bump map into carrara normals map?
i vaguely remember reading in the old poser 'node cult' a normals map can bump in 3 axisies, very vague tho. was different colors iirc
I am really late for this party too. Owned Carrara since V5, but am only now (finally retired) getting around to picking up all the great plugins and set up some machines. So many horror stories about a Win 10 update "breaking" compatibility with older software or hardware has lead me to set up some dual-Xeon server units (built from used/surplus parts that I got for literally pennies on the dollar) with Win 7 Pro. They will be dedicated to Carrara/Grid, an older version of Poser, Luxrender, Blender/cycles, and an older version of DS, and maybe Bryce. Once they are all set up, they will be disconnected from the 'net. I figure this system will be useful for years to come, and help heat my house in the winter : )
I use one of two programs, ShaderMap, or njob.
ShaderMap is free but can update to a Pro ($) version.
https://shadermap.com/home/
http://charles.hollemeersch.net/njob/
I am running Win 10 and (touch wood) running Carrara fine except for when my files get too large, which is easy to do with 3 Genesis figures in a scene - my Genesis figures have a lot of bloat due to the large number of morphs I have in them.
TY shadermap looks interesting.
Your are welcome Misty !!!
ShaderMap is the one I use the most.
I'm thinking of going the 'Virtual Machine' w/ W7 route to maintain/ensure that this stuff continues to run for me, but I really like the setup you just described. hmmm.
Do you have a favorite starting vendor that you would recommend we go to find such 'beasts' at good prices? (@jonstark, if you see this, please chime in if you have a favorite too!)
cheers/tnx,
--ms
I was planning on going this route, but ryzen pricing is getting hard to resist.
For xeon processors, or dual xeon workstations, most people shop on ebay. But I have found nice deals on craigslist too, and I prefer it in general.
Edit: Added for clarification - I did not buy surplus complete PC's, I assembed these from components for greater flexibility, and because I was not aware of the vendors that basically assembled them for you until I had bought most of the parts.
For the stack based on the Supermicro X8DTT-F blades (LGA 1366, Dual Xeon X5660), I purchased almost everything used/surplus from highly rated vendors on EBAY (no particular one really), although I do buy DDR3 sever ram new if I see a good price.
For the stack based on the LGA 2011-V1/V2 Supermicro or Asrock Rack motherboards, I have been buying the MB new from NewEgg as they have had some good sales, where the new price rivaled the used prices on EBAY. Power supplies new from Newegg or Amazon. CPUs from Newegg marketplace or Amazon Marketplace, new or used. Both systems use the same DDR3 RDIMM.
So far so good, although I am only partially done. Have a E52670V1 CPU that will only work in single-cpu mode (and that was one of the "new" ones), but I put that on a single-cpu X79 board to use for something else.
Looking to the future, I have been setting up a few test boards with dual boot Win7/Win 10 (using a separate HDD that I plug and unplug for each OS). None of these boards are certified for Win 10, but SuperMicro does provide Win 10 drivers for the X9 LGA 2011 V1/V2 boards. I have Windows 10 running on two X8 blades, although I am not confident that an update will not "break" the compatibility. Initially, Win 10 said it was not compatible, but the problem was the on-board VGA chip - there is no driver. The workaround is to use the VESA VGA driver. The Supermicro 2011 boards seem ok with Win 10 so far. The Asrock Rack boards seem to have some problems with Win 10, but it looks like there is a way around it, since the problems seem to be related to some server functions (now disabled), and to the Marvell secondary Sata III controller (which has some reported stability issues in general).
These motherboards have odd/huge form factors, and case for the LGA 2011 boards are huge, expensive and hard to find. I am setting up three workstations, and the rest of the boards are going in metal wire shelving units with insulated/ventilated spacers. This will save a lot of money and space. I will also claim the two render stacks as post-modern industrial minimalist sculpture, once I add the blinky lights : )
One advantage to the delays I have had dealing with pesky RL stuff is that the next generation of CPUs is now greatly reduced in price, and I can pick up E5-2670 or 2680 V2 10-cores now for a much more reasonable price.
If I had to do this again, I would probably go with one of the vendors (Jon Stark had some links, and I found others) that build these systems from surplus parts to your specs, and ship them to you. Last time I checked, they were actually cheaper than what I am building myself. These vendors sell via Ebay or direct, last time I checked.
Anyway, if there is interest, I will report back on this. I work on it as I have time, but am trying to get it all done before Microsoft closes off Win 7 activation.
I got all my dual-xeon workstations on ebay for a song (and that was over a year ago, closer to 2 years really, so prices probably have fallen even since then). I think the most I paid for any of them was still under $200 and the best deal I got was just over $120 if memory serves. The key is to avoid search terms that normal consumers would be searching by, like 'i7', and instead search for the model of the workstation itself. What happens is that lots of real-world businesses upgrade all their lineup of servers and then tend to mass-dump their old workstations on ebay. Usually some bored office worker who doesn't care anything about making any money off of it will post them on ebay, not even caring what hour of the day or day of the week the auction will come due. So if you get a glut of the same model of dual-Xeon workstations that all come due in their auction on ebay at (for example) Sundy night at midnight (a time when no other businesses would be open to see/buy them and normal consumers don't know what they are or to look for them either, since few normal consumers even realize that a workstation is the same thing as a desktop computer, just with more power lol and usually missing the types of video/graphic cards that most normal consumers would want, you can end up with a situation where you get a lot of pretty great computer power and not much competition bidding up the prices, which equals low prices. Also you can get the dual-Xeon workstation pretty low cost with some bottom of the line Xeons that don't have that many cores (maybe you get 2 quad core Xeons that aren't even hyperthreaded, so just an 8 core workstation) but you can also find much better Xeon processors of the same generation and just swap them out (I've done this will all of mine, turned a 8 core render machine into a 24 core renderer just by swapping out processors, the same generation Xeon works with the same motherboards, pretty simple and easy).
For model types of dual-Xeon machines, I've got 2 HP Z-600's and 1 Lenovo D20, and 1 HP Z-620 (the Z-620 is a much more recent generation and cost me more, but it's my main workstation with 32 render threads, even though I souped it up adding in a modern Nvidia 1070 graphics card to support my Octane rendering, I can still guarantee it cost a ton less than if I'd gone out an bought a modern threadripper destkop, for example). There are also Dell dual-Xeon workstations that can be obtained even less expensively, but you have to be careful with those, as the Dells don't have the same dual-processor setup, instead they have a motherboard and then a 2nd cpu slot on a motherboard, and a lot of times the machines are sold without a daughtercard, and the daughter cards are pricey. I'm blanking on the model numbers for the Dells at the moment, sorry, but they are worth considering too.
Oh that might be an important aside, because before I did it I had no idea if the older generation dual-Xeon servers could use a modern day graphic card, but I didn't have any problems at all, works just fine, and I could even play Oculus Virtual Reality games through rig with no problems.
2 important things I should mention for anyone thinking of following this path and building a Carrara render farm. 1 is that even with Grid for Carrara I could never get more than 100 cores rendering, even if I added in more computers to the mix, it appears 100 cores is the cap. 2 is that I was obsessed with setting up this little render farm, but because I don't do much animating, I really haven't used it all that much, lol. I'm glad I have it if I need it, but I don't tend to use the render nodes all that much to be honest :)
Yeah, if you look for "HP Z620 Workstation 16-Core E5-2660 2.20GHz 64GB RAM 2TB HDD + 1 Year Warranty" they are asking $789 with free shipping!
Also "HP Z620 Workstation 16-Core 2.60GHz E5-2670 32GB RAM 2x 500GB HDD for $579.99" with free shipping. This vendor verifies in this ad that there are two CPUs.
That is less than I paid for parts for my E5-2670 nodes, even without a case. Wish I had waited and just bought these, but at the time I started buying parts the prices of the available refurbs were much higher. Oh well, at least I am having the fun of building my own... :p
One caveat: If you consider getting one, make sure you verify how many CPU's you are actually getting! Some people interchange threads and cores in descriptions. A 16-core E5-2660 machine should have 2 CPUs as the E5-2660 has 8 cores. I have seen some vendors selling Z620s with a single CPU, and the descriptions are confusing.
Also, consider whether or not you want to enable multithreading. Some graphics programs use all cores/threads for rendering, but only one core/thread for the program itself (Daz Studio, and I think Carrara), . So, if you are running multithreaded, you may only be using 1/2 of a core for the main program, which could be slow (I found this out the hard way with Poser 7). However, multithreading generally speeds up CPU rendering significantly. Fortunately, I have not had any problems in Win 7 or Win 10 switching multithreading on or off in the BIOS (so far).
Another point is that, as Jon pointed out, even Carrara Grid is limited to 100 cores - and it cannot distinquish between cores and threads. So if you have six X8 blades with 2 x X5660 CPUs each (each blade is basically the equivalent of a Z-600), that is 72 physical cores or 144 threads. To use all your CPU poser, you would have to switch off multithreading for at least some of the CPU pairs. Even worse for VUE 2015 Complete. You are limited to 5 render nodes with 8 cores each, and again the program cannot distinguish between threads and cores (fortunately, VUE Infinite does not have this limit, and I hear they raised the limit for Vue 2016 Complete with the last update).
As I have been acquiring parts and slowly getting things built, GPU rendering is becoming more prevalent and GPU Vram is higher. Like Jon, I am wondering just how much I will end up using this hardware. Kind of got carried away by the Uber-Geekiness of building a Renderfarm! (that will also be a piece of modern scupture) from parts (or call it a Beowulf Cluster!, that sounds even cooler). But I can always use it with VUE, which still only uses the GPU for anti-aliasing, and maybe I will get to a little animation someday. And hey, it will help heat my house in the winter : )
"In my defense, I was left unsupervised"