Carrara or not?
khalibloo
Posts: 76
Background
I'm first and foremost a Blender user with almost no experience at all in other full 3D packages (maya, max, c4d, etc.).
But I'm also choosing to specialize in character creation.
I'm not trying to compare the softwares, I'm merely trying to see how I could benefit from Carrara
Physics
The description of Carrara is very vague and it tells me almost nothing about the software itself except that it has physics. Blender has that too. Perhaps even more robust (smoke, cloth, rigidbody, softbody, ocean, explode, fluid)
Render
blender has 2 great renderers + Freestyle!. And in my experience with DAZ Studio's renderer, it's very slow and takes forever to render a single frame. In fact, even after the final image has been produced, it still takes an eternity to finish doing God-knows-what and start responding again.
I sincerely hope Carrara's renderer is much faster than that. I hope it has a toon-style option with toon lines such as blender's freestyle.
Compatibility with DAZ Studio
This seems like a place where Carrara could win me over, but I don't know...
I also noticed Carrara has some very important tools i've especially missed in blender. Autofit, morph projection, etc. Will those work on custom-made (non-genesis) characters as well?
From the standpoint of a potential DAZ content creator, is there anything else Carrara offers?
Of how much use will Carrara's tools be if I wanted to make my own characters from scratch and not on top of genesis?
One of the toughest tasks I've faced in DAZ Studio is the rigging. The bones don't automatically connect. Since the figure setup tab can only import objs, i can't use collada to work around the rigging process (by pre-rigging in blender). Does Carrara solve this problem with one of those "bridges"?
All the product details seem to be focused on the renderer. Is it really that different from DAZ Studio's renderer?
Again, I'm just trying to find out how I could gain from Carrara.
Are there any other possible benefits I'm missing?
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Comments
1- physics - blender is better
2- Carrara is faster then DS - better than Blender don't know
3- no doesn't work with non characters
4- you would gain nothing
5- no - Carrara rigging doesn't work in DS at this time - maybe in time
6- render time depends on whats in the scene
7- if you know Blender well - you would gain nothing moving to Carrara ( even if you do animation )
I like Carrara and do use it - just can't think of a reason for you to change .
I see... thanks a lot :)
I'm very sorry to "pile on" here, but facts are facts, and you need to know facts so you can make a decision.
--> Blender has a fully customizable and fully modern UI. Carrara does not. And that's being nice to Carrara.
If you have high-resolution monitors and you are 40+ or if you have any vision challenges, then you might very well struggle just trying to SEE Carrara's UI components, toolbars, buttons, dropdowns, and texts.
--> Blender is completely free. Carrara is not. I say this even though I have both and I am willing to pay for something that is worth it. But would I do it again? Maybe not until the UI is fixed in Carrara.
--> Blender seems to get updates about once every 6-8 weeks and there always seems to be a fairly stable beta out there for free download. Carrara has bigger but less frequent updates. I think the last one was in October.
--> There are tons of tutorials available for Blender, both free and payable. Check out the whole CGCookie site. Carrara has a few educational resources, but not nearly the number I've seen for Blender.
Personal Comment: I want Carrara to do better. Really, I do. Most of us cannot afford $1,700 to $3,000 software offered by the big software houses, and Carrara can fill a need, and very economically too. I would like to buy the next upgrade of Carrara. But we now have a possible show-stopper, and that is the outdated and hard-to-see User Interface. If the UI gets no modernization or visibility/usage updates for Carrara 9, then I will have to decline and save my money. I hope DAZ does not let this happen.
LOL, that is funny considering Blender has the worst UI IMO.. Latest version is much better, but coming from 3DSMax , it is still confusing.
I have to agree though, that if the OP is wanting to create content for DS, they might as well stick with Blender if they know it.
@subtropic pixel,
thanks very much for that info. i never would have found it anywhere else. especially the UI part. I find it hard to work with cluttered UIs
@fsmcdesigns,
maybe it's just because i'm used to blender's UI, but i find quite natural in most cases. I know where to find what i need, and if the need arises, i know how to script custom functionality. Or perhaps it's because blender was my first 3D app.
anyways, thanks for the advice
the biggest factors that almost won me over were the morph projection, auto fit, etc. I really wish blender had those built-in. It got to the point that i even started looking for ways to write my own custom morph projection modifier and graft modifier for blender. If carrara can't do that (for non-genesis characters), then i wonder which software would be able to.
Carrara is good for animating Poser and Daz content which it supports unlike Blender
as in runtimes like Poser and Daz click and load
and for me at least easy to use, I personally find Blender's UI impossible
it is nowhere near as robust as Blender though
i'm not primarily interested in the genesis platform. I have my own meshes with lots of morphs already. I just need an interface to integrate it all. I initially tried with DAZ Studio, but got stuck in the rigging/weight painting process. I've already done that in blender, and moving to DAZ Studio and starting with an obj from scratch is just unproductive.
On the other hand, i thought carrara might be able to fill in where blender lags. Especially in the field of character creation
tools like morph projection and so on
On a different note, i wonder if anyone here can advise me on poser. Since there's no standard poser figure, its tools should work well regardless of what figure you have, right?
poser's page suggests one could transfer morphs between figures, but is there a catch? It sounds almost too good to be true unless of course they mean "figures with identical topology".
what's it like to create characters from scratch? is it possible to load rigged characters (using collada/fbx) and start from there?
So far, i like the comic style render capabilities, the opensubdiv, the automatic walk cycle generation... the fitting room looks really powerful too. But I've never seen them in action. Are they really as good as they sound?
There are also some other places to look for Poser information, like:
http://forum.runtimedna.com/forumdisplay.php?332-The-Official-Poser-10-Poser-Pro-2014-Forum
The Morph Brush: Transfering FBMs to other characters.
http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?79163-The-Morph-Brush-Transfering-FBMs-to-other-characters
-------------------------------------------------------
http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?79299-W-Mapping-older-figures-in-PP2014
Weight-Mapping older figures in PP2014
THIS IS NOT IN THE MANUAL. !!!
W-Mapping older figures in PP2014 is a ONE click. :-) = YES, a single Click.
Select figure
Goto Figure, top menu
Click "Merge All Zones To Weight Maps" = Done :-)
Check the bending of your figure.
Open the Joint editor and correct if required. Paint the maps, and if you need them, paint the Bulge Maps.
Mostly some Smoothing of the W-Map is all that is required to get a W-Mapped figure.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some content created specifically for Carrara will NOT work in any other program. The textures/shaders created for most products will not work well in Carrara and it is very frustrating and time consuming tweaking every single texture zone and atribute. There isn't a lot of content created for Carrara.
on a side note, carrara includes a nice bundle of content, the 8.5p has M5/V5. if you get CA on sale, imo it was a good value.
on another side note, the ca tutts in the store are kinda pricey.
Ca comes with gi, terrains, and renders faster than lux :)
thanks guys!
hmmm... the contents are really tempting :) but i still really want my own character meshes, not genesis
anyways, i've been doing some research myself. So far, no software fits my needs exactly. Poser comes really close, but not quite there.
Perhaps i'll have better luck extending blender some more.
I've been reading Makehuman's scripts. Who knows, maybe in time, i'll be able to come up with my own blender studio.
If you are capable of creating your own character meshes, Blender has everything you need.
It just need to spend a significant amount of time to master it.
It depends upon which version of Poser you own or buy. Poser comes with Gigs of included content. There are also a number of figures both free and for pay that are designed for use in Poser.
No, it is not true that it's tools will work well regardless of what figure you have. If the figures are current or legacy content designed by SMS or any of the previous owners of Poser, yes, they will work without problems. Stand alone figures that are listed as Poser ready will also work provided you have the version of Poser they are listed as Poser ready for or above.
Miki4 and the Poser 8/Pro 2010 figures use a different rigging that previous Poser versions so they will not work in Poser 7/Pro or below. Figures designed for Poser9/Pro 2012 with weight mapped rigging will not work in Poser 8/Pro 2010 or below.
All versions of Poser from Poser ProPack (enhanced Poser 4) and up can do legacy rigging. Poser 5 and up has the material room, face room, hair room and cloth room. P8/Pro 2010 and up can also do the joint encapsulated rigging. P9 and P10 can use the Poser weight mapped figures but they cannot do weight map rigging. Only Pro 2012 and 2014 can do weight mapped rigging. Only Pro 2014 has the fitting room.
Pro versions of Poser also come with the Poser Fusion plugins for higher end apps. Collada is iffy as there are several versions of Collada and I don't know which version Poser uses.
The fitting room is very powerful but has a steep learning curve. How well any app works or does not work for a user often depends upon how much time and effort the user puts into learning.
Not sure what you want to know by what it is like to create characters from scratch. Perhaps if you are a little clearer.
...indeed, if you are already at the level that you are creating original character meshes from scratch and comfortable with Blender's UI, you are ahead of the game.
Like some others here Ive tried to get a handle on Blender several times but found the UI's learning curve seriously complicated the already difficult task of comprehending the concepts of 3D modelling. There has been a recent upgrade (2.7.0) whereby a tab system was introduced that organises the application's different functions more clearly which s a step in the right direction. I feel there is still a need to port some other basic functions to a pointing device rather than just hotkeys. An open and fully customisable UI may be great when the user already understands how to tweak the application itself, but for someone just "walking in" for the first time, the concept is often extremely overwhelming. Usually this ends up in frustrating the new user who often moves on to some other (usually less capable) software like Hexagon, Wings3D, Silo, etc (all which are still 32 bit as well which severely limits these applications and often leads to instabilities due to memory constraints, Blender is available as a 64 bit install).
I have installed the most recent version of Blender to give it another go.
The modelling tools in CarraraPro work OK and (at least for me) the UI doesn't "get in the way" of the learning process as much (I've had a reasonable amount of experience with Carrara for scene setup). I do agree, that adjusting shaders and textures can be a rather tedious process. Overall I find it works well for creating props, vehicles, structures, and such but a character mesh would indeed be an incredible challenge. Also what is created in Carrara, pretty much has to stay in Carrara whereas Blender models are more easily exportable (FireAngel models Poser/Daz content exclusively in Blender). Currently there are issues with the Daz import bridge crashing, even when working in 64 bit. Back in ver. 6.1 I had little trouble setting up a basic scene in Daz studio and exporting it to Carrara (and that was on a 32 bit system back then). Not sure what went wrong.
@Artini,
i've mastered most of blender already... sadly, it doesn't have everything i need at the moment.
I'm looking to maximize re-usability of clothing/props/morphs across my different characters and not have to start from scratch each time i make a new character.
Blender could be customized by coding to add new features and i've done (and still do) so, but there's so many things to program... not to mention i have my hands full already with lots of personal projects including a full blown 3d game.
@Iceprincess,
I'm mostly just interested in the latest Poser... Pro, if I have to.
I'm not really into the characters that come with Poser. I have mine already. What will it take to get them into Poser? And if I do, will I be able to fit clothes across different custom character meshes? I get that I'm gonna have to make morphs for each character mesh separately, and that's fine. I'm also willing to learn whatever it takes. It beats having to code a ton of features for blender :)
The collada was one of the major let-downs for me when I looked up Poser.
If collada won't work fine, then there's no point doing anything in Poser... or how will I get my rigged morphable character back to blender?
@kyoto kid,
Blender was my first 3d app. my mind was just clear, i guess. Blender came naturally. I find most other 3D apps like walking on ice. Blender's ui is easy once you get started. it has everything (ok, most things :) ) exactly where you would expect them to be. You should probably start with some Andrew Price tutorials, just to get familiar with Blender. I bet you, it'll be worth it :)
To use your own figure meshes in Poser, you would have to group and rig them using one of several methods. As I stated in the earlier post, Pro 2014 gives users 3 different rigging options. The standard legacy rigging that can be used by all versions of Poser from Poser 4 on up. The joint encapsulated rigging the can be used by Poser 8 and up. The weight mapped rigging that can be used by Poser 9 and up.
Most of the information on rigging in Poser currently available is for the legacy rigging. Poser legacy rigging has some very strict internal naming conventions with regards to the groups. This includes specific spelling. Deviations can lead to all manner of problems.
If you can locate a copy, I highly recommend: The Secrets of Figure Creation by BL Render. This covers just about anything and everything you would need to know about legacy rigging.
Poser weight mapped rigging is very similar to Maya's but there are differences. I don't use Blender so I don't know how it's rigging tools work.
There is no reason you cannot use the Pro 2014 tools with your own figures and clothing providing you have them rigged and set up properly to work in Poser.
As for Poser Pro and Collada, here's the link to SMS info on it:
http://poser.smithmicro.com/collada.html
If you need more information then I would suggest emailing Smith Micro.
the collada export is a very big deal breaker for me. fbx doesn't seem to work well either. gosh, these guys.
thank you very much nonetheless.
...again, I can understand why Blender works for those who started with it and/or worked with it over the years.
My first 3D programme was Daz Studio (1.5) and later Carrara 6 so I became more used a programme that employed a "point and" click based UI rather than one which was predominantly keyboard driven like Blender's (at the time ver 2.46). Both programmes offer a degree of UI customisation built in (more so with Daz Studio than Carrara).
Basically it comes down to what you first learned on as that is where you develop your habits..
As an analogy I'll use sport kite flying
Sport kites employ two or four lines that allows the flyer to directly manoeuvre the kite in the air, allowing for a wide variety of aerobatics and tricks.
Most fliers learn on a dial line kite (one line for each hand attached to an adjustable "harness"at the kite end) which offers a fairly straightforward amount of control. Pull back on the right line and the kite turns right, pull on the left line and the kite turns left. Granted, It takes a bit of practise but usually within a day or so one has acquired the basic command to keep the kite in the air, make it go where one wants to without crashing. This lays the groundwork for learning more complex and advanced manoeuvres and tricks as one becomes more experienced.
Four or "Quad Line" kites are different in that there are two lines on each handle one upper and one lower which attaches to a more complex harness that flexes the kite itself. This offers extremely precise control of the kite to the point one can fly it backwards, sideways, spin it like a propeller, and literally stop/hover it "on a dime" in any position, making it almost appear to defy the laws of aerodynamics. However this level of precision requires a completely different and more complex technique than dual line flying as the flier needs to use wrist movements as well as a very limited amount of pull/push input (compared to that needed for a dual line kite) to keep the kite under control.
Hence many who transition from dual to quad line flying, experience a fair degree of difficulty and often frustration at the outset as the moves learned and reflexes developed from flying a two line kite are hard to overcome.
Meanwhile those who first learn on a quad line kite seem to take to it much quicker as they don't have the "old habits" and reflexes learned from dual line flying to break.
In this way, going from years of working with Daz Studio or Carrara to Blender is similar, as it (Blender) has a more "complicated" set of controls which do allow it to be a more powerful and precise tool.
Were I not steered to Daz Studio first (which was also free) seven years ago, as I wasn't about to plunk down hundreds for for Poser or Vue when I wasn't sure if I'd even like working with 3D,CG, most likely I'd probably have been using Blender as well.
7 years... that's a lot of "old habits" to kill :)
i've been in the 3d world for only 2 years now. got my first blender in april 2012.
even i can see how strange blender's interface is. i haven't encountered a single software with the same ui concepts. i must be really lucky to have blender as my first love.
but looking at 3ds max, modo, rhino now, i really do prefer blender's interface. but i gotta admit, DAZ studio does have a nice neat interface. most things feel straight forward, unless of course you have to open up the property editor
if you wanna go for it, i'll be happy to assist in any way that i can. feel free to holla at me anywhere you see me... here, on blenderartists forum, deviantart, etc
really loved the kite analogy. i suddenly wanna fly a kite :D
on a different note, i think i've found the solution to my problems. more accurately, i stumbled upon it! iclone!
it looks really good. with emphasis on making custom characters! nothing on fitting clothes, yet. and apparently doesn't export to fbx or collada directly, but has some sort of bridge to most apps including blender (need to read up on the details)...
the rendering speed, lipsync, terrain tools all look nice so far
i'm still reading the reviews, though
...there is a community member here, wendy♥catz (AKA "The MadCatLady on YouTube) who has some experience with Iclone.
She usually can be found commenting on the 'Stupid" and "Complaint" threads here in the Commons.
Thank you for the offer. Been dealing with a RL issue that has been sapping the energy from me over the last several months so my 3D production has fallen way off from last year. There are weeks where I don't even start up the workstation anymore because the enthusiasm is just not there right now.
As to sport kite flying. That was my former "addiction" and passion until they stopped running buses to the coast (Oregon) from where I live. Now you need a car to enjoy a day at the beach and I don't even have a licence to drive (nor can I afford to).
Really miss it. Lots of fun and extremely relaxing. During kite festivals I used to be out from dawn till dusk and sometimes, even afterwards (using lights on the kite). I have quite a collection of sport kites, both dual and quad line, many of which I used in flying competitions which led to numerous awards including regional champion several years running and fourth in the Nation in Freestyle at the Grand Nationals back in the late 90s. Even started working on designing my own kites.
If you live near one of the coasts, Great Lakes, or have a large open area with few trees or structures nearby, I definitely suggest giving it a try.
Poser Pro 2014 if you looked at the link I gave you does import and export Collada format.
If I cross platform with Max or Maya and Poser, I do it via the Poser Fusion plugins that come with Pro.
You might want to post either at the official Poser10/Pro 2014 forum over at Runtime DNA, the Poser fourm at Rendo or even the Poser forum here regarding Poser, Blender and Collada. I haven't used Collada in several years but the last thread I read here in the DAZ forums regarding DS and Collada it was stated that there was no one standard version of Collada.
will look her up, thanks!
apparently, iclone doesn't auto-fit clothes... real disappointment
on the flip side, it does export in fbx
i guess there's always a trade-off with these sort of apps...
EDIT:
@iceprincess,
i did look at the links. the limitations of the collada export were just overwhelming
1) Poser Pro’s implementation of COLLADA has been optimized to work with bipeds, and non-standard figures such as quadrapeds may generate unpredictable results.
2) Poser Pro’s rigging paradigm is different from COLLADA’s vertex weight model and bending may translate unpredictably for some figures.
3) Figure set-up angles can affect the appearance of exported content.
4) Medium resolution character geometries will generally work better than low resolution character geometries.
5) Conforming figures in Poser Pro do not reliably export via COLLADA
6) Poser Pro’s COLLADA exporter is still undergoing development, and as enhancements or improvements are available, they will be offered in application updates.
ok, 2 and 5 mostly. considering Poser's price, collada SHOULD work well. plus, i'll be using conforming figures a lot
there's no Poser fusion for blender, right?
True, collada has no single standard version, but for just meshes and rigs (no morphs or animations), the variations shouldn't matter much.
I sent an email to smithmicro, but they had nothing to add on the collada topic than what was in the link you gave.
The workflow i have in mind is very long and Poser is just at the beginning of it. if Poser doesn't export as expected and i find out only when i'm halfway into my work, Poser would have caused more trouble than help. That's why i need to know i can trust the collada exporter first
@kyoto kid,
maybe i can help with that, just give me the details
as for the kites, now i wish i hadn't left Lagos... such nice beaches :)
maybe i'll be able to find a nice spot somewhere close by. will keep an eye out
I always wondered what it would be like if i had started with Blender since it confuses the crap out of me, LOL
I have been working in 3D for 18 years. I started with small game specific modelers and then Milkshape 3D and then Gmax and then 3DSmax and Maya. I have used Rhino, Silo, Modo, CD4, Lightwave, Hexagon, Blender and a few others and it always came down to UI and what made sense to me which is why 3DSMax has been my main program. Poser and DS are extensions with specific 3D uses to using main modeling apps IMO. I really had high hopes for Carrara since it is trying to be an all in one deal, but the modeling UI always confused me.
I tried poser first thanks to a design partner and liked it. DS never made sense to me. Then I got Reality and HAD to learn DS and now I can't imagine using poser, go figure.
LOL :D
wow! that's a long journey... i guess it's also nice that you had the chance to try a lot of things. kinda makes you appreciate little nice things in your favorite softwares.
In the 2D field, i'm still on my own journey of discovery. Photoshop looks daunting to say the least. Gimp looks easy enough, but with such a difficult-to-organize ui, and hard-to-control sliders. I always find myself jumping from tab to tab unnecessarily. Manga studio looked great and worked well, but misses (or hides) some commonly used features. Krita looks promising, that's where i am today :)
whenever i see something in Krita, i find myself really happy about how it's placed, or how well it slides...
still, i'm very glad that journey didn't happen to me in the 3D world... or i'd be clueless at this early stage
In part, what saved me (and still saving me in the Poser/DS realm) is people like you. I'm grateful for all the help i'm getting :) and not having to try and fail myself
plus, the DAZ community has a very friendly atmosphere to it... feels nice :)
....seems that to get good 64 bit modelling software costs a lot in either financial resources (3DS, C4D Lightwave, etc.) or time (Blender).
Sad that Daz never continued developing and updating Hexagon. I find it's UI fairly simple and straightforward, but the programme is seriously hamstrung by bugs, poor UV mapping, lack of sculpting tools, and still being only a 32 bit application (the latter which I feel contributes to its instability due to the severe memory limitations it must operate under). Same for the other more affordable dedicated modelling software like Wings3D and Silo (I easily managed to bog down and eventually crash Silo on my 64 bit workstation when it exceeded it's memory allocation while I was using subdivision on a very simple test mesh).
Don't understand why someone cannot offer a good, stable, and intuitive standalone 64 bit modelling application that doesn't cost a couple bodily extremities or require the patience of a Buddhist Monk to understand.
:D
well, i sometimes find myself falling back on 32-bit blender. It's surprisingly more stable, in my experience. When editing characters that have over a hundred shapes, like just this morning when i was testing my batch-export DAZ script and its companion batch-import blender script, i easily exhausted my poor machine's 2GB ram on the 64-bit blender and it crashed a few times. When i turned to 32-bit, it handled the memory quite well. didn't crash even once. It also comes in handy on long renders/bakes.
There could be other factors of course, but i have a generally good opinion of 32-bit blender. Can't say so about other softwares, though.
I guess lots and lots of patience is required to learn blender
The circumstances surrounding my learning of blender were quite unique in that way. they forced me to have even more patience than a monk. I had virtually no internet connection then (cos i was in a remote part of the country). I was just lucky that i had downloaded the blender noob to pro pdf book earlier. It was the only learning resource i had. and it wasn't even updated. I had to learn using 2.49 interface in 2.62
and in 2 months, i was able to model Kuchiki Rukia from the popular anime, Bleach. After my monkey, of course :)
From the beginning, i knew where i wanted to reach, and i took no breaks. i did whatever stood in my way. when i got back access to the internet, i found shortcuts for lots of things i had to do manually before. those lessons stuck instantly! the pain of finding out that you wasted days doing something you could have done in a few clicks. one time, i had to place uv vertices manually for a mesh with about 5000 verts. imagine my surprise when i found uv sculpting tools in the next blender release.
another time, while working on my Nkechi character (check her out on my DA or BA links below), i had to manually match up her vertex weights with an identical older version of her. the next blender came with weight transfer :D
Even now, i'm exploring uncharted waters in blender and i have to make my own tools as i go.
the funniest part of it all, i'm not looking for a job or anything in the 3D world, i'm in it purely for the fun of it :D
the thrill of making discoveries, and solving problems from angles you never imagined
So kyoto kid, just push on! the ui can pull you back all it wants, but you're gonna get the hang of it... and it will become your greatest ally