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I've lusted over Carrara for many years. I've purchased various versions that have gone unused. I've been terribly confused by Carrara. I watched for a time when Carrara wouldn't work with one version of OSX. Then I saw Carrara 8.5 Pro on sale for around $23, with PC Club discount, etc. I eagerly bought it, and am trying to find the energy and time to learn Carrara, once and for all. It would help if there was a printed Carrara manual. People have been speculating about Carrara's future ever since DAZ bought it. I hope Carrara stays around for a long time, and that I finally learn to use it before I die.
lol, ron,
just set yourself up to die 'soon' (DAZ time), and you'll have plenty of time to learn Carrara!
it'll be worth it!,
--ms
Ron, when you get started, there are plenty of people here willing to answer questions or offer tips.
welcome to the Carrara forum Ron. As Diomede says 'just ask' :)
Thanks everyone. I'm hoping September will be a good month for me to sit down and make some art, and explore Carrara. I probably won't bother trying to model anything. I just want to see what else I can learn.
If you have time, try to enter one of the kind-of-monthly Carrara Challenges; there should be one coming along soonish (I've been off the reservation a lot lately so I'm not sure who's running them now or it its still rotating).
They are a great opportunity to dive in and try to make something with a theme and people are very enthusiastic about helping out in the WIP threads - just following those threads is a nice way to pick up some cool tips and tricks even when you don't participate. It's a very low-pressure way to learn some things quickly and maybe win some cool prizes. Beginners and first-time entrants have won or placed quite a few times (we grade on a weird curve here
).
Here's my first question: How do I tell Carrara to load up on a different monitor? I have a 27" iMac and a 32" 1080p TV on the same portable desk. The iMac screen sits too far away. I can't read the menu screens. I tried fiddlig around and didn't get anywhere.
I have 3 monitors and just drag it over to each one as I wish
I think if you save a start up scene in preferences it should load on whatever one it was on when saved
I am on Windows though
One thing to bear in mind when thinking about the imminent death of your favorite piece of abandonware is that virtualization can keep things alive long after they should officially have died.
I've had good results running both Bryce and Mojoworld on Windows 7 (and 10) under Parallels on my 2014 MacBook Pro. There's some loss of speed, but hardware has advanced to the point where I think they're significantly faster in a VM than they were on the bare metal of the machine I was using when they first came out. Other disadvantages are a certain loss of ease -- it's awkward to have to fire up an emulator and launch another OS -- and the cost of buying the virtualization software plus the OS, so it's not an ideal solution. But if that's what it takes to be able to keep running the software, it's a price I'm prepared to pay.
I haven't tried running Carrara under Parallels/Windows, but I know of no reason why it shouldn't work.
Also, if I were a Windows user, I wouldn't be too worried that future updates of Windows will break Carrara in the near future. While I personally prefer Mac OS X, I have to admit that Windows seems to have a better track record for backwards compatibility. Apple likes to roll out breaking changes every other year or so; Microsoft seems to feel that it if ever ran under any version of Windows, it should run under the latest and greatest too. (I'm basing this assumption on the fact that Mojoworld, which does all kinds of screwy stuff with the UI, and hasn't been updated since 2005, runs flawlessly on Windows 10; if three major iterations of the OS didn't break it, I start to believe that nothing will).
If you have Windows 10 Pro you atomatically get hyper v and can create VMs. With out having to buy seperate software.
If you are putting windows on it then you would need to have a license for that VM, but linux is all good togo no problem.
One draw back of the VM is that id does not have direct access to the video card so Render engines usine Open CL ect it is just simulated from what I understand.
Oh, I got it now. I fumbled about and discovered Carrara had defaulted to fullscreen mode. I disabled fullscreen, and had control from there. I have a Mac by the way.
Hi Bytescapes
thanks - emulation is an interesting solution/workaround for the future, if a bit clumsy.
I use Mac primarily but have a windows machine too and Carrara is much more stable on Windows. Particularly rendering - the 12 core Mac Pro with 48g ram renders between 30% to 300% slower than the single 6 core 12g ram dell box. (Which is especially galling - but Carrara does seem more efficiently compiled for pc - or maybe single cpu units.
Maybe Carrara can be the next Prime Minister of Australia
its like musical chairs here at the moment
there would be an insurgence by Bryce and Daz Studio would do a Bradbury lol
I vote for Stezza as Pm and Wendy as deputy :)
Can I be Treasurer ?
Of course! You were first on the list. I am down for minister of leisure :)
Hi all as an "outsider" who only used Carrara briefly back in the
version 5 Days, I thought I would offer my perspectives.
If the OP has little interest in "posing Daz content" then he has
serveral options Already listed in the thread.
I am an animated filmaker who use prefabbed Daz figures as my
Digital Actors
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHZvMpniBYycJwtFIKxmXfw
I own Maxon Cinema4D (Really old R11.5 studio)
Lightwave3D 2015 not so "old"(Will likely replace C4D in my pipeline)
Poser "Pro" 2014 ( Dead to me..whats that smell??)
Reallusion Iclone pro pipeline 6.5 (Vital !!,100 percent compatible With Lightwave 3D via FBX& Alembic)
And of course Daz studio(Final Staging & Costuming)
For those who are (wisely IMHO) Looking for a new environment
which to Migrate ,a Daz content based work flow
I would not recommend Maxon C4D as it is ridiculously over
priced compared to LightWave3D or even MODO.
Understand that I use My Old C4D For modeling My own Daz
clothing& content, some VFX and
as a final render destination for my Daz figures animated in Iclone
pro pipeline and lipsynched in Daz studio .
However Maxon has found their niche with Affluent Arch vis
,broadcast graphics and engineering users who are willing to
"buy in" at the initial price of $3800 USD and pay around $700
USD anually to get the new yearly releases.
The C4D particle system has not been touched in well over a
Decade requiring most people to buy external solutions for serious
particle VFX (I use Realflow from nextlimit.)
Maxons Dynamic Clothing system ( single threaded BTW) is only
useful for draping table cloths , bed sheets and window curtains
it still cannot solve clothing on a moving figure Like poser or
Dforce (I use optitex)
Lightwave is reasonably priced with a solid Resume of TV/Film
Credits fo animation and VFX
Its Near realtime Viewport renderer Puts DZ Iray to utter shame
for GI preveiwing your scene
LW imports all of the major formats , of course, but will require alot
of manual work to get your Daz content textures usable for final
renders.
Poser "Pro" IMHO is in the same Situation As Carrarra & Bryce.
A dedicated cluster of fierce Loyalists to be certain.
However from a commmercial viability perspective, these three programs are essentially
Rotting corpses that merely have not recieved a decent burial.
Wendy has likely already given you guys a decent perspective on
Iclone pro pipeline.
The option of Keeping a machine on an older OS to run Carrara etc
beyond its OS compatibility lifespan , is quite viable IMHO if you
own more than one computer.
I own Three
2 PC's windows 7 SP1( Daz studio 4.x iclone Pro 6.5 pipeline
Lightwave 2015 ,Blender for artists)
Windows Vista Home premuim ( Mimic Pro 3 For DAZ genesis 2
lisynch, natural motions Endorphin for ragdoll simulation and export
BVH to Daz studio or IClone.
and an Old Mac where I run C4D R11 studio and Adobe CS with
after effects and Realflow.
Hi wolf359
thanks for your comprehensive post. Really very helpful.
I have been looking at LightWave and it is pretty sympathetic and reasonably priced. I was a little leery as it also went through a few years without updates and only recently was giving a heart starter. Dont want to move from one scenario to the same scenario.
The trouble with keeping a dedicated computer or a seperate boot partition is, of course, the complicated workflow between assets and associated software - wanting to tweak something in photoshop for instance and then go back to Carrara. Networking them all and having a chair with wheels would help I guess.
Get the c4d issue too - silly pricing.
Blender is slowly changing into a "user friendly" CG program.
If both Carrara, and Bryce, die and are removed from Daz 3D Productions and only Daz Studio and Hexagon are left I will leave too, and "Hey Daz" that means one less buying customer.
I am going to bite the bullet myself and move to Blender, I have 3d-coat and such and ds isn't a real option for me as I also moved ot a Mac. So I have a very nice Radeon . Has anyone have a workflow to bring in Daz content. Right now my Carrara Mac has the FBX import broken ( I haven't tried the export yet) I can go from DS of course too. and I need to figure out the shader conversion workflow.
You can start here.
http://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/p/daz-importer-version-13.html
http://www.manuelbastioni.com/
Bye Folks, Have fun.
Milo,
There was a problem with the FBX importer with the latest Mac version. Daz didn’t include the plugin. You can either copy the one from an older version or contact Daz tech support to send you the file.
and it says a lot that years later they never bothered to fix this
I don't think it is dead by anymeans but it does make me wary of Windows updates knowing DAZ are not going to maintain it
I just saw this.. Thanks for the reply and info! :) Its appreciated. Now ot see how it works LOL, its either that or reality for me
******* EDIT. ********. I stand corrected, support sent me a .dll and it worked. wooo
Kinda like Bryce Mac, no fix, perhaps a credit
I am leaving a new comment in case someone read that I didnt think it would be fix the fbx issue, Daz support sent me the correct file for mac and it worked like a charm
I presume you are aware there is a very comprehensive 865 page manual for Carrara - though YOU have to print it . Also a 37 page manual if you get Mimic and numerous other documents especially this link http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/carrara/8_5/userguide/start. which can be downloaded as pdf and printed. Sure will cost a lot of ink but worth it.
.