Carrara 8.5 Pro BACK on sale! (WOW!)
EddyMI3D
Posts: 365
WOW! This is nearly a giveaway!
http://www.daz3d.com/march-madness-flashback/carrara-8-5-pro
The chance for all those who still don't have it.
Post edited by EddyMI3D on
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One of those hilarious days where I was planning on getting C8 Pro with my paycheck, paid today, checked the price before I left and was bummed it was back up to full price.
Came back from an hour with BF, and start telling him all about how it was again on sale, only better sale. Guess who has C8 Pro now. Can't wait to play with it (I was a C6 Pro user, so looking forward to things like a working color chip in RSE, working sliders in RSE, RSE generally behaving period, godrays, and Bullet Physics! Plus the new YAToon 2 shader :D )
Eddy, you might want to amend your subject to Carrara 8.5 Pro BACK on sale!
I noticed it's down to $85.50 if you are Platinum and $142.50 if you aren't. I wonder if version 9 isn't far off??? With fixes? And a small-ish markup? Try putting it in your cart if it's not showing the sale price and see if that reduces it.
Thanks for posting, am sure it will help those who were interested before but missed the opportunity, but there are still bugs to fix, but perhaps that's why they have brought back the sale?
;) SileneUK
ETA: EDDY THANKS! I think it will get a lot of attention... I had to log out and back in to see that the price of non Plats is definitely $142.50. Even if you just join for 3 months at quarterly rate of $24 for one quarter, it's worth it. But I found Plat worth a lot for buying odds and sods for less and there's much in the $1.99 dept or freebies too.
http://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=Platinum+Club+Membership+Plans
Thanks for your hint Lauren.
I was just impressed and was not able to find words :)
Hey all, I'm a new user to DAZ Studio (a little over a month new) and saw this sale today as well. I've read the product pages, but from a honest-to-goodness user perspective, why would I want this product? Maybe I'm just being obtuse or don't know the terminology well enough, but the product pages sounded like they basically do the same thing.
My current uses for DAZ Studio are making characters and avatars for my writings: novels, novellas, and role-playing games (published game design as well as weekends with friends) mostly. I'm not a professional artist nor have any intention of doing so (at least not anytime in the near future) but several books have been published and graphics are always nice to include.
I would like to be able to make my own objects, vehicles, and places (hence the scenery/landscape bullet appealed to me). Does "create from scratch" really mean that or do I have to buy a lot of Carrara products to create from scratch? I'm really disatisfied with that aspect of DAZ Studio, would Carrara really allow me to do this? Can I really pull anything from DAZ Studio up into Carrara? And the other direction?
Thanks for any answers!
P.S. If this is off-topic from the OP, I apologize, but I think it fits...
There is a Carrara forum here that you should take a look at.
Carrara is a much broader package than DAZ Studio, and is a modeller in it's own right. DAZ Studio does not do any modelling at all.
Carrara, unlike DAZ Studio, has collision detection, bullet physics and dynamic hair to name but a few.
Before DAZ bought Carrara it was considered more a DIY community, since it always had all the tools included as a 3D suite - Other than a few plugin developers, add ons weren't really a thing. Carrara also cost considerably MORE back then. DAZ 3D works on a model of low cost software and lots of hyped sales that make buying a "collection" almost compulsive.... Carrara doesn't neatly fit in that category. It wasn't designed to be a content spinner, you were expected to model and rig and animate all within Carrara (DAZ STUDIO on the otherhand is from the ground up designed to be a content spinner which I understand it is very good at, with most other functions added as add ons). It's the business model that works here. Carrara could import Poser content through a plugin, but when DAZ bought it they improved these functions greatly, and have spent a lot of time and effort working out a way to bridge Studio and Carrara but there are still some shortcomings. You just need to understand, Carrara has always been its own program - a 3D suite, with a completely separate render engine and completely separate code.
I don't use Studio. I just use Carrara, so I can't say what the current state of transfer between the two is.
Carrara has several modelers that really help out anyone wanting to make 3d anything and render it out as an image, series of images, or movies.
From the metaball modeler, where you use positive and negative cubes or spheres, both being globs of influence that allow you to model in a very organic way, to the plant modeler which allows for various input to tweak existing, or create all new plants, now with multiple leaf/fruit layers, to the terrain modeler, which uses filters and generators, even a gray scale painter built in for making your own height maps, to the amazing spline modeler and vertex modeler for the traditional 3d modeling modelers.
Carrara has both 3d paint, including displacement painting, as well as the ability to perform displacement painting in the vertex modeler - which can be used as a sculpting modeler. This is really sweet because it allows you to displace actual mesh vertices and/or SubD virtual vertices.
The terrain modeler might not be as cool as it is if Carrara didn't have such wonderful ways to shade a model. Luckily for me, Carrara's native content came with a good pile of terrain shader presets to give an example of how we may set them up. By checking these things out, you can notice that some are set up differently than others - so they're an excellent resource towards learning - as is the rest of the immense content collection that comes with. The terrain modeler really rocks. Set the size to what you want and start adding generators and filters in combinations, switching their order in the list, even inverting them if you like. Many controls available for smoothing, sharpening, increasing or decreasing fidelity, you can import your own height maps and, if you wish, there's a built in gray scale paint room that enable you to paint your own height maps withing Carrara!
Plant modeler is as far as I can tell, fairly unique to Carrara, and it's an amazingly fun experience all in its own. I guess I could say that about nearly any of the many things that you can do in Carrara.
I went off talking about modelers because that is the part that completely and entirely drew me in to Carrara. You can model your own morphs, remove poke through, paint new textures...
Carrara truly is incredibly inexpensive for what it is, in my opinion ;)
You would fall head over heels for Carrara, then. The post above me describes it best. =D
I love my Carrara, and have been improving my modelling and lighting skills recently. =D
Thanks for all the replies, everyone. It sounds like I need to take advantage of this sale price.
Just one more perspective. I am interested only in animation using purchased 3D elements, I do not create models. I used Poser and Bryce for a long time, but was frustrated by the limitations in both. In particular, Poser (back then, maybe still) had trouble with large scenes, e.g. I sometimes could not even locate a light to move it. When I learned that Carrara could handle Poser type elements seamlessly, plus handle large scenes for animation MUCH better, I switched and have been glad I did.
I have tried an early version of DAZ Studio and just got frustrated, now I use it only when the 3D elements require it (very seldom), and then only for still renders, not animation.
One warning, the Carrara documentation is not up to date, last time I checked it is for V.7. This is a pet peeve of mine, which I recall having mentioned here somewhere. :coolsmirk:
But there are sources of info/training here in the Forums and for sale in the store.
So, yes, I think the price makes it worth a try on your part.
Not exactly true.... C8's interface is no different than C7. There are no dramatic "feature changes" that would require re-writing the manual. If you just need someone to say the exact same thing but all over again and call it "new", then I do not understand but more power to you.
There are some *new* features and most are documented.
DAZ3D Docu Center Carrara 8 - http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/artzone/pub/software/carrara/start
DAZ Docu Center Carrara 8.5 - http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/carrara/8_5/start
Although a basic manual is not the same thing as knowing on how to USE a feature, or in-depth information about how the feature works in conjunction with your scene....
Yes, in Carrara, "create from scratch" really can mean create from scratch. From an empty scene, Carrara has the tools to model your own sports car and driver, "rig" the driver to put him in a driving pose behind the wheel, create hair and apply wind so that the hair is flowing, fashion a hilly terrain with a winding road, model plants for the roadside, include a realistic sky with a setting sun, darken the sky with a cloud-front, and render the results out for viewing. You can do it all from scratch in Carrara.
And, because there is no reason to reinvent the wheel (unless you enjoy doing it), Carrara 8.5 can use a car that you buy in the Daz store, the genesis characters and other Daz (or other 3rd party) figures can be posed, morphed and textured, and the figure can wear conforming clothes made by Daz or other content providers. You can acquire 3rd party hair, terrains, and even skies.
And, there is a lot of support. First, there are a lot of helpful people on this forum, at carraracafe, and at carrarators. Second, our very own Dartanbeck has organized much of the help content in a sticky at the top of the forum. Then, if you are willing to spend a few more dollars to make your Carrara purchase worthwhile, there are various tutorials by PhilW, MMoir, and others.
Note - although 90-95% of functions are transferable between Carrara and Studio and back, there are a few stray things that are not.
Yes, in Carrara, "create from scratch" really can mean create from scratch. From an empty scene, Carrara has the tools to model your own sports car and driver, "rig" the driver to put him in a driving pose behind the wheel, create hair and apply wind so that the hair is flowing, fashion a hilly terrain with a winding road, model plants for the roadside, include a realistic sky with a setting sun, darken the sky with a cloud-front, and render the results out for viewing. You can do it all from scratch in Carrara.
And, because there is no reason to reinvent the wheel (unless you enjoy doing it), Carrara 8.5 can use a car that you buy in the Daz store, the genesis characters and other Daz (or other 3rd party) figures can be posed, morphed and textured, and the figure can wear conforming clothes made by Daz or other content providers. You can acquire 3rd party hair, terrains, and even skies.
And, there is a lot of support. First, there are a lot of helpful people on this forum, at carraracafe, and at carrarators. Second, our very own Dartanbeck has organized much of the help content in a sticky at the top of the forum. Then, if you are willing to spend a few more dollars to make your Carrara purchase worthwhile, there are various tutorials by PhilW, MMoir, and others.
Note - although 90-95% of functions are transferable between Carrara and Studio and back, there are a few stray things that are not.
Though not completely necessary, you can also get lots of nice plugins from Inagoni and Digital Carver's Guild. Swap is like 5 bucks, and lets you position spot lights with cameras, and Veloute II I've found to be quite invaluable for its extra shader functions. :)
Then there's also Sparrowhawke's plugins, which are all free, some of them more useful depending on what you're doing. :)
Think of it this way:
Poser and DAZ Studio are more akin to a photo studio, with sets and lighting. Get outside of that and you run into some severe limitations.
Carrara can be like the photo studio as well, but you can actually build your own sets, or even step "outside" and create a bigger world.
I had Carrara 6 Pro as part of another purchase long ago, but couldn't get used to it. Flash forward to a few years down the road, and I've been considering trying Carrara again now that I'm much more experienced. Saw the sale and because of the 6 pro I had, I got a very substantial further discount, PLUS I still hadd my $6.00 coupon for DO's for this month. Long story short, I'm another new owner of Carrara 8.5 Pro.
Sweet!
Come on in, kick your shoes off, grab a bucket of pixels and have some fun! :)
Welcome to all of our new and returning Carrara users!
Here's a bit of a Welcoming Room to get you started, if you're looking for some initial inspiration. Not sure what you're looking for or where to begin? I might suggest scrolling down immediately to the index I've made of video tutorials by Cripeman, our resident Carrara - wielding Superhero! Watching several of these can really help to get acquainted with some of the ease of workflow that can be had in Carrara.
Eventually, you'll start to see that Carrara is actually very easy to use in addition to having so much more to offer. It's all a big Win Win!
Why the snide comment? I said nothing of the kind.
This has all been argued to death, go here for all the gory details, especially tbwoq's comments, including his extensive list of undocumented features, and his conclusion "So here we are, still no updated manual. As I said, ... C8.5 is a step in the right direction (Genesis). However, I still believe making additions to the C6 PDF format is the far better option and add, shouldn’t take more than a couple of months."
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/25968/
Why the snide comment? I said nothing of the kind.
This has all been argued to death, go here for all the gory details, especially tbwoq's comments, including his extensive list of undocumented features, and his conclusion "So here we are, still no updated manual. As I said, ... C8.5 is a step in the right direction (Genesis). However, I still believe making additions to the C6 PDF format is the far better option and add, shouldn’t take more than a couple of months."
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/25968/
Oh, I wouldn't be too offended, because the truth sometimes gets into trouble because we all use a common language. :)
Speaking of the truth, it the past few years, great strides have been taken in revelation on the forums of Carrara's details, but in entire Websites, newsletters and tutorials like Carrara Café.
Then there are people who have revealed their personal undertakings with carrara and just how and what they did.
If you have taken the opportunity to purchase PhilW's courses on Carrara, then you know that many eyes and eager minds have been exposed to revelation of just how powerful the software Carrara is.
Integration with DAZ duf files, imports and exports through an interface to Zbrush and the explosion of sales on shaders, software like Archtools and many more things.
If anything, there is information overload and instructive details so heavy that one can hardly know where to begin.
I'll tell you my secret of learning and doing.
=======================================================
The only way to begin is to begin and the only way to finish is to finish. :)
=======================================================
Yes, I agree, and I made reference to that in my post 11 above. And I greatly appreciate all those who make their experience available to the rest of us. Still, I think a newcomer to Carrara needs to be aware of the status of the documentation as a stand-alone reference. Again, the Forum topic "Carrara Manual" provides all the details.
Well all I got from that thread was a lot of you beating that same dead horse. Can I get my 8min back?
I lost interest before I found the list of things tbwoq says are undocumented. If you'd care to link directly to that post I will personally do what I can to fill in the blanks.
In the meantime, if anyone is complaining about the lack of a "current" manual, but has not bothered to read the C7 manual then AGAIN more power to you. I suggest you read the manual that DOES exist and then go from there, or ask once you get to a feature that is undocumented in the 2 updates I linked earlier.
I suppose *you* could have spent some of that complaint time combining the c7 manual with the 2 updates in a pdf editor and then we'd ALL have a current manual (for better or worse) but hey, you get out of a community what you put in. That's how we have a German manual btw, and it is current. LOL!
But honestly, I read the manual waaay back when and it didn't really do it for me (we also use to get these awesome "fastkey cards" that were laminated and listed all the keybourd strokes to do stuff, and the manual was printed and also came in a fancy box..., did I mention it was hundreds of dollars more expensive then?) There are a FEW sections of the manual that are INVALUABLE (like the shader section, very recommended), but the modeling sections are not very helpful and it never went much beyound "This is the Function button, it does the function." - it doesn't usually say HOW to use it or why.... And sometimes it's really cryptic and circular, like "The Options control the options to the Feature"....
I didn't really "get" Carrara until I bought a book (Carrara Handbook, I think?) - but now I struggle to get through 3 pages of a book (on Unity3D) it's just faster to google.... As has been said, there are so many video tutorials and a plethora of other tutorials, and that just keeps expanding. Frankly the manual was never "great". It *sometimes* can give you detailed info about a feature, but not the same as knowing how to USE the feature or learning it in a context of the function (Carrara is biased. You'll still need to experiment with the settings before you understand the range of a tool, the other tools that influence it, etc). If it was an amazing manual, I would be with you waving the flag for it too. But, honest, it wasn't great.
As was said so many times in that other thread (before I lost interest and which you have SO OBVIOUSLY read before), learning is *online* now. It's like a whole new century and everything.... Back when the manual was a book we had a Yahoo list group to ask questions. It was horrible. *shrug* there's just more important "features" I'd like DAZ to throw money at, and at least 3 times I have read threads that so and so had been hired to write a new manual and it does not materialize.... If I sound snide and dismissive, it's because that's how I feel about the topic. Nothing personal to you or anything so you can acknowledge what I am saying (and everyone else too) as easily as I can, agree it would be nice, if it was significantly better, but.... I find it more useful (to me) to get my learning in ways that are current. And the community is a jillion times better now. You can ask a question and generally have a few answers in hours...
It's about the time for us to remind everyone that the original topic of this thread is not documentation. We would also like to remind you guys to post in a civil manner. Direct comments to the OP's topic and not at each other.
Thanks for the offer, but those are the things we (yes, a number of others agree with me) expect from DAZ. And in fact were promised as part of the purchase price. E.g. when I upgraded from V.6 to V.8, the documentation page stated the V.8 documentation was "coming soon", so I never looked for the V.7 documentation. It said that for several years, then with the long awaited 8.5 upgrade, still no updated documentation. So then I eventually found the V.7 documentation. ( I realize you find this boring, but I feel I should explain the background for others, now that you brought it up.)
I do agree with the comment by a "Power Member" to Dartanbeck, "To keep this reply on-topic for the Manual thread - your work here has been lightyears ahead of DAZ’s own epic fail of updating the Carrara manual." You can find that one here in post 103:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/25968/P90
As I said, I just think newcomers to Carrara need to understand the status of the documentation. If they are OK with what's available, fine.
Post No.4 stated "Hey all, I’m a new user to DAZ Studio (a little over a month new) and saw this sale today as well. I’ve read the product pages, but from a honest-to-goodness user perspective, why would I want this product?" I gave my opinion, basically very positive, but included a negative about the documentation. I feel its on topic, but its your call.
I have been on and off about getting 8.5 for ages but this was really too good to miss out on ..
Carrara 8.5 Pro 16777 1 $42.75
Horror Nurse 17632 1 $1.99
Morphing Fantasy Dress for Genesis 2 Female(s) 18098 1 $1.99
Morphing Fantasy Dress Exp 1 for Genesis 2 Female(s) 17973 1 $1.99
Elven Warrior for Genesis 2 Male(s) 17948 1 $1.99
Platinum Club Quarterly Membership PC-Quarterly 1 $24.00
Subtotal $635.75
Discount -$585.04
Grand Total $50.71
Guess I had discount for having Carrara 7 Express already in my account also... :)
Steve.
OMG! Is this March Madness or something already?
OMG! Is this March Madness or something already?
Even if I had the money, I don't think I could even DL it. My father who will remain nameless, sucked up all the limited bandwidth after ten freakin' days! I'm so sick of the damned satellite. Excuse me while I go swear under my breath about it. I'm just waiting for him to "widen" one of my garage doors because he can't drive in the snow, and tends to think spinning his tires will gain him traction and control instead of lose it. :shut:
Amazing! Carrara 8.5 Pro for the price of a couple of models! Pretty sweet!
For those who might not know:
Carrara has many easy-to-use render settings in its render room, allowing you to go from blazing fast animation rendering to hyper realism that takes days to render. This is a huge joy for me. I like to shoot fast animations, and I want them to still look cool. Using what I see from TV, movies, etc., as examples in how to put together clips of action, I can set up my sequences to render really fast and still maintain a great visual output. It's really easy to try many, many different ways to render in Carrara, which seems unique to me. Most other apps I've tried seemed more limited in this way.
I cannot speak for others in this regard, but the Batch Queue rendering in Carrara is sweet!
I also just found out that, if I save as an avi of full frames, for example, I can open that in the render room again and save it as a png sequence, or bmp, jpg, etc., Not sure how far a person can go with such conversions, but it's cool.
Carrara is Fun!
The Insert menu is really, really cool! Insert > Terrain launches you into a terrain editor with a terrain in the workspace. In the terrain editor you can add terrain generators and/or filters to alter the topography according to these presets with all of their settings that make terrain creation a total Blast! Just slide the sliders, add something new, slide some more sliders, hmmm... invert filter... I'll add that! The other side of the editor allows you to set the fidelity of the model that's being generated. You may import a height map or paint your own in the sketch pad included in this editor. Really, really, powerful and cool stuff!
The terrain shaders included with Carrara give you many choices for immediate terrain looks. Open any one of them to reveal a very easy to follow and alter shader tree. Changing the appearance of any aspect of the terrain becomes a breeze with just a little practice.
Modeling is huge in Carrara as it has many types of modelers to use. This is because Carrara has been set up to help you get modeling done, no matter what it is you need to make. That sounds silly. But Carrara includes four major modelers for 3d model makers, and a slew of others that have input setting for us to fill out and Carrara does the rest. Whether you intend on modeling or not, eventually you'll figure out that modeling is really fun - even if all you ever do is to pull on a few vertices of a model that someone else made - it's just fun.
With Carrara 8.5, and as long as DAZ Studio Pro is still free, you can see how incredibly fun and easy it can be to make very simple clothing or other objects for Genesis and/or Genesis 2 in Carrara. Now bring it into DAZ Studio and use the cool new Content Creation Tools to turn your creation into something Genesis can wear or use. DS Pro takes most of the headache out of the whole process - and all the while, learning skills and having a lot of fun.
Carrara comes with a huge bundle of native content set up to give examples of some common presets or samples of the things that can be done. Very fine collection of shaders and preset landscape scenes and quite a large variety of example models.
Carrara is fun - for those that like to read tutorial , see some great renders and much more
http://www.sharecg.com/pf/full_uploads.php?pf_user_name=jetbird_d2
Amazing stuff, thanks for this!