What Content can I use in Carrara? - For New Users
Dartanbeck
Posts: 21,537
What Content can I use in Carrara?
Carrara is unique in many ways. One of them, the ability to natively display, load, and manipulate Poser content, combined with all of its modeling power, is what truly drew my hand towards buying it in the first place. When people ask: "What content can I use in Carrara" or "Why doesn't much come up at the store when I run a search for Carrara products?", it's not always the easiest question to answer. Carrara has been made to easily use many types of content, and it has a very nice approach to organizing what you have bought, made, or otherwise collected, into its rather robust browser. But it takes a little getting used to, at first, before this all becomes as simple and wonderful as it is.
I have written an article for the Carrara Cafe that aims to assist new users in understanding how this all works in an easy to follow method. I hope that my goal is achieved in this endeavor. If not and you still have questions regarding any of this stuff, please respond here or drop a post on the article and I'll edit more material into it or clear up any points as needed.
What Content can I use in Carrara?
by Dartanbeck
A Carrara Cafe Article
If you read the article, I hope you enjoy it. If you are one whom may need the information contained, I truly hope that it helps you out. Until next time, Ciao
Dartanbeck
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
YAY! :coolsmile:
LOL
Thanks for the opportunity, advice, and wonderful support, Holly. ;)
Excellent article, very articulate, informative and set up..
Keep up the good work you do for the Carrarians that appreciate the work and effort you put in.
[thumbs up] :coolsmile:
thanks Dart, I don't care what they say about you but you ROCK! :)
now to go and have a gander
cheers !
headwax, it all depends on who they are and what they are saying! ;)
Nah! Seriously, Dart does rock amazingly hard! Death metal kind of hard! He's amazing!
Dart,
Good article, I really enjoyed reading it.
Occasionally, I run into pose files (pz2) that refuse to work in Carrara.
One older example was Lin Hair, the color presets would never work in Carrara. The would work fine in Poser or Studio.
My latest example: I recently bought the SMG look alike from Renderosity and had the same issues. Load up V4 with the morphs in Studio or Poser, double click on the Face Inj file and V4 looks like SMG. Do the same in Carrara, and V4 still looks like V4.
How it was explained to me was that both poser and studio are more forgiving of errors in the pz2 files than Carrara is. Oddly enough, the body inject from the same package works fine in Carrara.
A non PZ2 example was a Studio only (duf) building that worked fine in Studio had a wonky UV map on one part when loaded in Carrara.
I know it was mentioned, but there are things that, by all logic, should work in Carrara, that do not. Carrara users (especially new users) should keep that in mind.
ncamp
Good point, ncamp. It is true that some things simply act bugged in Carrara, where they work fine elsewhere. I've heard reports of this sort of thing with morph-made characters such as RawArt's add-on shapes for The Brute, and a few others. The person reporting it just loaded The Brute into Poser and applied the RawArt morphs and materials, and then saved the new version into their Poser library, and it then worked fine in Carrara. There are several other cases.
The real bummer about these sorts of issues is that there really is no way to tell by being savvy - because by definition, they really should be working properly in Carrara. Not all published artists at other venues know all of the ins and outs of what must be done for proper file setup. So if it works in the intended application for them... that's good enough. And I'm not picking on anyone or judging... it's just the way things turn out sometimes. I'm glad to have an old copy of Poser hanging around. Since I use content made for Poser, it only makes sense to me to have that intended app on hand - just for such occasions when tweaks from the intended app are needed. Now with Genesis, I keep DS Pro and several of its plugins installed on my machine as well. It is a constant help, and a great tool - even though I don't use it at all for its intended purpose - but only as a means to create content of my own, and to tweak out or create aniBlocks - again, only for actual use in Carrara.
The rest of you as well,
Thanks for the super-kind comments... and the humor is always welcome, too! :ahhh:
I have another article well under way, and intend to make quite a few of them.
I make no claims to being a Carrara expert - that's for sure. But being a rather active member of this community, I receive fairly regular questions in my PM box and I really enjoy it when I can help whom ever might be asking. Often times I don't even know the answer, but have an idea of where I can look, thanks to being social with all of you, generous Carraraists! There was a time when the gloom and doom ruled this forum with an iron grip. So I picked up a cutting torch and started slicing my way through. Gloom and doom is a necessary thing, so I've been told. I used to attack it - but have been told that I cannot - and that is correct. I imagine that my overly optimistic approach on life gets sickening to many, perhaps most - maybe even all of you. So thank you for sticking with me.
Cripeman's optimism about always being able to find a way to solve something using Carrara put me in a mode, fairly early on in my endeavors. And I've been finding that he's right. Conventional Scmonventional. I've seen features that have just been developed and made available to the CG community for the super-high priced apps, and perhaps later for Blender too, being demanded for Carrara. Why? I could see a friendly request, but demands are silly when you've already scored the deal of a lifetime with Carrara's amazing ability to have many options for taking many different approached towards realizing our goals, for such an amazingly low price tag. Carrara has obviously won my heart as my CG app of choice. I do see issues here and there, and potential downfalls, just like anyone else. But, like Cripeman, I don't see these as an end to the game, but more as the beginning of a quest. Some apps just cannot allow this to the great availability of options that Carrara can - and that makes Carrara special - once again.
Ooops... is this thing still on?
Wow that guy can babble, eh?
Sorry mates!
I'm getting a "not found" error when I try to read your article. Is it still around anywhere?
I think this may be the link you are looking for:
http://carraracafe.com/articles/what-content-can-i-use-in-carrara/
I think this may be the link you are looking for:
http://carraracafe.com/articles/what-content-can-i-use-in-carrara/
Thank you very much. ;-)
Yes... Thanks Dustrider! I fixed the opening post. Thanks Tigger, for bringing this to my attention. ;)
No problem - it's always nice when I can actually help :ohh:
Thank you. I was looking for information on how to get started once i download Carrara Pro on Monday. Being a Poser-user, not a Daz Studio fan, I'm a bit nervous and your article looks like it will be helpful.
Thank you. I was looking for information on how to get started once i download Carrara Pro on Monday. Being a Poser-user, not a Daz Studio fan, I'm a bit nervous and your article looks like it will be helpful.
Well, the interface is much different than Studio. In fact, Carrara, Bryce and Poser share the same Kai interface lineage (with differences and changed over the years).
The biggest challenge you may need to overcome is the dials for posing or morphing the figure. They're still there, but they're sliders rather than dials and they're in a different spot of course. The shader system will also be very different, but Carrara's is very flexible and robust.
Awesome!
I came from Poser as well, and I find Carrara to be a huge benefit - constantly!
Poser is still useful, especially if you're already fairly adept at using it. For example, I enjoy using Poser's Walk Cycle and Pose saving features to save animations and poses to my runtime libraries, which I then use in my Carrara scenes!
For more helpful reading from a Poser user - to - Carrara user, as well as just getting to grips as a new Carrara user, have a peek through the long list of links in:
►►► Carrara Information Manual ◄◄◄
Of particular note:
Carrara Resources - Although it needs to be updated slightly, this is a list of products available at DAZ 3D that are made specifically for use in Carrara, but a few of them were made for Poser but include Carrara-specific files to take the hand-work out of the equation.
Carrara 8.5 Installation Guide
Carrara Walkthrough - includes a few decent articles worth having a look at (the actual walkthrough is still very much unfinished though):
- Your Custom Browser
- Installing Custom Poser Runtimes
- Navigating in Carrara - most of which you'll find to be very similar to Poser, but I also feel that you'll find that it's a lot easier to manage larger scale scenes with Carrara's camera use.
Working with Content
aniMating in Carrara
Some Miscellaneous Tips & Tricks
Those are some of the things I've found to be very helpful when just starting out in Carrara from Poser. Working with Content touches on the fact that most, perhaps even all content made for use in Poser will need at least a small amount of shader work to look right in your new, zippy render engine. Don't feel daunted by it, because you'll quickly see how it's more of a boon than a burden! Carrara shaders are a blast to set up, once you get a few good practice techniques 'known' in your permanent skill set.
Beyond any of that, just know that this community truly shines on how fast, helpful and efficient it is towards each of us helping one another to overcome stuff that we need to learn how to achieve. You'll quickly see why I am such a huge Carrara fan - you can literally do anything that you can imagine!
Okay... enough of my babbling....
Welcome (soon) to Carrara, and the wonderful worlds it will make real for you! I'm excited... are you excited? You're excited! I remember that time when I was able to count the days to my purchase of Carrara... get ready to download a bunch of cool stuff!
Oh... and do keep in mind that the "Carrara 8 Native Content" package includes the entire browser of free Carrara files. Get that downloaded and installed right away! The "Carrara 8.5 Native Content" is cool too, and includes all of the new Genesis stuff for Carrara. But the Carrara 8 pack has all the scene presets, wizard files, sample lighting, models, modifiers, skies... loads and loads of cool samples and experiment stuff!
Also know that "Render Node" is only for use on a second (and third, fourth, etc.,) computer if you want to Network render. You don't need (or even want) that to be installed on your main machine.
Finally, if you'll be using DIM to install Carrara, be sure to check out Installing Custom Poser Runtimes, as it includes some extra pointers on using the DIM with Carrara. There are other links in the Carrara Information Manual thread's Table of Contents (first post) to help with that stuff as well. Man... can you tell I'm just a bit excited for you?
Yaaaaaaay!!! :ahhh:
LOL Yes, I can tell you're excited for me. Thank you. :lol: Thank you for pointing me to good starting points. That's so generous, thoughtful, and downright awesome. ;-)
I'm excited, if a bit nervous. I have a huge list of stuff that I have to download now, as as you said, Carrara comes with a huge amount of content. As a non-DSON using Poser ueer, I have no experience with Genesis, so I'm a bit nervous, yes... However, I am excited at the prospect of Genesis being usable natively in Carrara as I have picked up a few things for Genesis (e.g Mavka, Sadie and Sam, and Hitomi) on FastGrab during months where I had to find something to use my Platinum Club coupon on. I did try to install DS once and try to use them but that turned out to be a disaster for this Poser user... LOL
As a Poser user, I normally don't use the DIM to install. In fact, it isn't even on my computer system. I download my purchases manually from here. I also have to rezip to get rid of the Content folder in front of Runtime) each an every one and manually install them into Poser. However, given that I have a huge list of stuff to download, I'm thinking about downloading add using the DIM, even though I'd really rather not have that particular piece of Daz property on my system. I don't really trust that it isn't "phoning home" information to Daz that is shouldn't be... I guess I could always uninstall the DIM.
I think I'll "think it over" for today and decide tomorrow. I have a migraine today. I just popped in really quickly to check e-mail and and stuff.
Installing manually is just as easy as it's always been, too. Even easier now that they're not wrapped up in an installer now ;)
I you have any of the Gen 4 figures or earlier, they'll load natively just fine as well. You may need to adjust the highlight and shininess in the Texture room, but other than that, I've had no issues. I think standard Poser figures (prior to P9?) should work natively as well.
There are issue with Genesis and Genesis 2, but I don't have C8.5 so I don't have direct knowledge of the issues- just that they're there and Genesis 2 seems to be a special PITA.
Carrara's native content isn't in a runtime format, but Carrara can load Poser runtimes under the Content tab in the Browser. The Smart Content tab is where the CMS stuff will be located.
I've used the Daz Generation 4 figures since switching computers in late 2011. Until then, I had been using the Daz 1-3 Generations, when I wasn't using my beloved toons. Toons are mostly what I render these days... I imagine some of them might work well in Carrara once i learn how to tweak surfaces, though.
One thing I hadn't thought about asking until now... My Poser runtimes are on an external hard drive that's only plugged in when I'm using Poser. Will external runtimes work with Carrara? I have far too much content to keep it all on the main drive of the PC.
All of my Poser runtimes are on an external drive as well. They work fine. I have not tried to open Carrara without the drive being plugged in, so I'm not sure what would happen.
All of my Poser runtimes are on an external drive as well. They work fine. I have not tried to open Carrara without the drive being plugged in, so I'm not sure what would happen.
Thank you very much. :)