Daz should immediately stop developing Studio! (and put all development focus on Carrara)

Renpatsu

Jonstark said:

... I just don't get the sense or 'plan' of *why* they are continuing to develop Studio, that's the part I'm struggling with ...

If the core programming is literally stopped, then the program is abandoned - whether there are plugin developers or not. There is only so much you can do with plugin development in a closed-source software and several of the changes and features that were implemented to the core of Daz Studio recently are not feasible to do as a 3rd party plugin or even impossible if you want to achieve some kind of integration.

You might as well ask, why not abandon Carrara development and only focus on Daz Studio? It is very likely that they know the Daz Studio code way better than the Carrara code and 3rd party plugins are and can be written for Carrara ... so, yeah, let the 3rd party plugin developers take care of Carrara - not going to happen either, if the core programming is stopped the software is pretty much abandoned.

I am not arguing for either or, I'd actually like to see the development of both applications in the future (and Hexagon and Bryce for that matter, the latter I can't run on my Mac). Both Daz Studio and Carrara have their merits and I am actually using both nowadays, though I am still in the beginning phase of Carrara. Anyway, learning Carrara doesn't mean I can or will stop using Daz Studio. From where I stand, it won't be a full replacement ever for me. Daz Studio is very quick and efficient at what it does and what it is supposed to do. Not to mention that the Carrara UI would need to have a full duplicate of the Daz Studio UI to come even close for replacing it for me - which isn't going to happen, as it is a too complex job to do from the programming and support standpoint.

Jonstark

Renpatsu said:

You might as well ask, why not abandon Carrara development and only focus on Daz Studio?

Well, I did ask that, in fairness, a little upthread. :) It's not a plan I would be happy about, but it's one I would understand, assuming the announcement was 'Carrara is dead to us, but from now on Studio is getting all our dev resources and we are going to charge folks for it'. I wouldn't be thrilled to hear that, but at least it would be a plan that would make some sense. As it is now, it feels like there's no discernible strategy going on.

And speaking as a customer, personally I'm for every software that I could ever possibly want to use having continued development. Even though Studio holds no attraction for me personally, I recognize that it's a powerful app capable of excellent renders, and it would be an excellent thing (for customers) if DAZ had unlimited resources to develop Bryce, Hex, Studio, Carrara to perfect them all to the nth degree. But recognizing that DAZ has to keep a profit margin and faces certain financial realities that will necessarily dictate they have to make certain decisions regarding where to focus their development, I'm just speculating on what the strategy might be in hopes of making a better guess about how things will shake out in the future.

...Not to mention that the Carrara UI would need to have a full duplicate of the Daz Studio UI to come even close for replacing it for me - which isn't going to happen, as it is a too complex job to do from the programming and support standpoint.

Here's another place where probably my ignorance in programming makes this harder for me to understand. I think of the user interface as probably being the easiest thing to change/re-arrange, as after all you aren't really changing the actual tools and features, just moving the buttons around to different places on the control panels, right? If memory serves, doesn't Studio come with several different included UI to choose from, and the ability to personalize them further? Is it really such a huge task to come up with a number of different UI choices in Carrara, and make some of them look similar to Studio, or in the modeling room make the UI layout look like Hex, for example? Again, this is probably just my ignorance on display, but I would think that would be relatively simple to accomplish, and take less effort than, say, the changing of an existing tool or the creation of a new feature altogether. I'm probably wrong on this though...

Renpatsu

Jonstark said:

Here's another place where probably my ignorance in programming makes this harder for me to understand. I think of the user interface as probably being the easiest thing to change/re-arrange, as after all you aren't really changing the actual tools and features, just moving the buttons around to different places on the control panels, right? If memory serves, doesn't Studio come with several different included UI to choose from, and the ability to personalize them further? Is it really such a huge task to come up with a number of different UI choices in Carrara, and make some of them look similar to Studio, or in the modeling room make the UI layout look like Hex, for example? Again, this is probably just my ignorance on display, but I would think that would be relatively simple to accomplish, and take less effort than, say, the changing of an existing tool or the creation of a new feature altogether. I'm probably wrong on this though...

It'd be easier if both Carrara and Daz Studio used the same UI concepts - on some levels they are similar, one other levels not so much. What Daz Studio does is not so much changing the UI as a whole, but more acting like loading different themes. The Daz Studio UI got the benefit of being customisable on many different levels, which makes the looks quite different. E.g. the whole "room concept" of Carrara (and Poser for that matter) is something I will never ever get used to and I am thankful that I can customise Daz Studio to have everything on one screen at my fingertips. My guess is that the Carrara UI needs quite some rewrite to be as flexible and it is probably also antiquated as for the core programming.

Ghosty12

I read on another forum about someone asking the creator of a well known plugin for Poser and Daz Studio to make it for Carrara as well. They said there were no plans to make it since the user base for Carrara is not as large as the ones for Studio and Poser and thus the returns on their worl would be low and so not worth their time to create it..

The other problem is that the modeler side of Carrara is having more and more challengers.. When you have the likes of Modo, 3DS Max, ZBrush, Silo and even Hexagon, then you would wonder.. And just found today that Celsys the creators of Clip Studio Paint or Manga Studio via Smith Micro. It seems that Celsys are creating Clip Studio Modeler what is interesting about CSM is that it uses the same interface as all the other programs by Celsys..

The one thing have to wonder is how many people use Carrara as a modeller which really is what you would think it was meant for, as for a renderer it is good but when you have the likes of Poser, Daz Studio, Vue, Bryce, and a myriad of other renderers then yeah who knows..