Questions on "content" for Cararra 8.5 from a newbie...
LinkRS
Posts: 168
Hi Everyone,
I have been using Daz Studio off and on for a couple of years now, and can bluf my way around it now. After reading up on Carrara and the deals with the new version, I decided to take the plunge with the anticipation of potentially creating my own custom characters and objects. I purchased it (Pro Version) and installed it using Daz Install Manager. Before I installed it, I had narrowed my installation of Daz (Studio) content to Daz 4.5+ only, as I do not have Poser installed. This seem(s|ed) to (have) work(ed), but I have noticed that much of my content does not show up in Carrara. While perusing the documentation for Carrara, I have come to conclude that Carrara uses either Daz 4.5+ (.duf), Poser files, or DSON only. All of my older content that is in the older .ds? files will not work. So my question here is, do I need to install the DSON content in addition to the DS 4.5+ content to have it available for both Studio and Carrara? I have noticed that when I had the Pose compatible files installed when I was only using Studio, I got duplicates of things in the "smart pane" where it showed both what I presumed to be the Studio content, and the DSON content. So I removed it to simplify my library. I am probably using the wrong terms here, so I apologize in advance if I use the wrong terms. Thanks!
Rich S.
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Comments
I'm not sure if this will answer your questions or not. I can only tell you how my system is set up. Because I have Poser, I did download the DSON for poser files to get Genesis to work in that program. To be honest, it is very rare that I open Poser now - it is primarily just used as a plug-in for Carrara when I want to drape some cloth.
Poser and DSON aside, all of my old content has worked in Carrara thus far. I allowed the DIM to install all of my content, both new and old, to its default directory (if you skim the forum, you will see that that might not have been very wise of me). In any case, when I open Carrara, the browser on the bottom of my screen (note - the bottom drawer has tabs for the sequencer and for content - choose content), I can open the browser portion and find two directories (actually more), one called DAZ Content Runtime, and one called My Library. If I open the portion called DAZ Content Runtime, there are subfolders for Faces, Figures, Hair, Hands, Poses, and Props, that correspond to Poser file types as if it was a Poser Runtime directory. In the attached pic, I have opened the "faces" subfolder, and you will see that my old content for Michael 2 (M2) character heads is still available.
This setup might not correspond to your own if you downloaded your content to other directories. You can add other content folders that you have by clicking the "runtime icon" in the upper right of the browser tray. The incon doesn't say "runtime, it looks like a black circle that contains the white outline of a page with one corner turned. If you know where you downloaded your content, you can use that tab to create a runtime for that directory. Otherwise, you can use the tab to get Carrara to autodetect content runtimes.
I hope that I correctly understood your question, and that this helps.
Ooops, here is the picture of the browser tray.
Aside from the new DSON/DUF stuff, Carrara has not historically read .ds scene files, and other .ds files such as shaders and the like. Even with the new import options, things like shaders can be tricky since Poser and D/S use different shader engines. The translation isn't always the best especially when you get into the non-image map based shaders due to differing functions and the like.
Carrara has generally done a better job of using Poser files.