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Dart,
Gajardoooooo Dad...whoops!!! Sorry, but I was so caught up that I have written in Roman slang.... Coooooooollllll Dad.
Gajardoooooo, Son! Whatever that means! :ahhh:
Perhaps, one day I, too, shall learn Roman?
Until then, thanks for translating for me, Son! And Thanks for the kind words!
I don't think Daz sees their products that way.
Everything has to be viewed in light of how well it helps or hinders the sale of 'female characters' - the likely main revenue stream.
This is basically a Barbie store for digital playtime.
Daz Studio is their big software application and revenue driver.
Carrara has too many elements for an entry user. The ability to do a bit of everything can be a hindrance.
Carrara competes on one end with Hexagon and Blender, and on another end with Bryce and Vue, and on a third with Daz Studio and Poser. But that third is its weakest point - where the tools can feel 'added on and unfinished'.
The problem with pushing Carrara to the front is that its success would come at a cost to Daz Studio and Bryce.
Bryce is ok to harm in this way (from a company point of view). But harming Daz Studio impacts the entire product line. Carrara takes more energy to get to the 'make art' button and render your skimpy female pictures... (some 90% of what occurs in this hobby) :)
- The bigger the barrier you put in between selling a customer a copy of the latest female character and having them turn out naked pics of her... the less sales you're going to get.
Quite a few believe you cannot even load the current models into Carrara...
If you made Carrara as easy to hit that 'make art' button as it is for Daz Studio, for someone with no experience or knowledge of 3D art, then you could push it to the front. Likewise if you could reliably market it as the 'pro' version of Daz Studio - a seamless experience to move from one as basic to the other as advanced with just expanding your knowledge rather than having any relearning
(in other words, if Carrara was just a plugin to Daz Studio, or Daz was just a stripped down version of Carrara).
- But then this risks the Vue problem... a perception that if you enter with the gimped version, you're going to suffer from lacking the full one.
So instead you have to want Carrara to succeed with your customers that have moved beyond Daz Studio's limitations, without competing with Daz Studio for the center stage.
Carrara would actually be "safer" for them to market up if it was more limited like Bryce. As is, its market space is basically: you need a bigger barbie doll toy box than Daz Studio, and we need to keep you from switching toy companies or making your own dolls - this application will let us keep you in. Carrara is trying to sit in that huge space between playing with the dolls and making them. Its a huge space knowledge wise - but a small space userbase wise.
I agree.
The last thing I would ever ask of DAZ 3D is to try and compete directly with DAZ Studio. In fact I feel that, due to the differences in all of them, I feel that we could easily promote the heck out of all of the applications sold here without bashing the sales on the others. They are all incredibly worthwhile solutions to 3D needs. Although sold here for another developer, published by DAZ 3D, I also wish to also promoted Project Dogwaffle as well! The directions that it's going during the 'balls-to-the-wall' development going on, Howler is growing into an animated art Monster! Although it can also dub as a photo editor, I wouldn't approach my promoting of a replacement for PhotoShop or PaintShopPro, whatever image editor you use, Artist (non-animated) and Howler are powerful tools for pushing further into the realms of "Art' as opposed to Digital Imaging, even though you can use either for amazing digital imaging, what they really exceed at is taking digital imaging or a blank screen or anything in between, into a piece of art. Howler being the big bad wolf that can push art into amazing animations and animated effects!
Anyways, I'll be producing promotional videos for several methods of a fantastic Carrara Pro - DAZ 3D - Hexagon pipeline that can make the sort of work that an asset tweak specialist might want into a huge time-saver as well as being totally conducive to letting your creations sail on the wings of your imagination!
With the DS <> Carrara bridge that I propose, the major benefits that I currently get via Hexagon would fade, and I'd not be really using Hexagon anymore. But I know that many DS <> Hexagn users would LOVE to see a new 64 bit version of an updated Hexagon. I didn't mention Bryce recently because I still don't know Bryce, short of reading a quite a bit of the manual. What a unique beast of a 3D animation piece! If I wasn't such a Carrara geek, I'd be all over that Bryce thing, for sure! I am one whom believes that DAZ 3D would do very well by updating Bryce and Hex. They will not compete with DAZ Studio. But they increase the usability of DAZ Studio for a larger user base. For example, I use DAZ Studio only to benefit my use of Carrara.
Even more, though. Carrara doesn't have to remain among the same source of client targets as DAZ Studio either. What about the Video Camera community? Animated Christmas Card community? While the two (or three or four) might end up being advertised at the same sites, they'll be drawn in by different people for different reasons.
Although what I wrote was very much tongue-in-cheek, on a more serious note, I sincerely hope that Dart's video helps to promote the use of Carrara. I certainly don't see Carrara being in competition with DS - or Hex or Bryce. They are all complementary.
So, why not promote Carrara? It's sitting on a server, so it costs nothing to produce and sell a few thousand more copies, which will bring in a few thousand more customers to buy many more thousands of e-dolls :)
I wonder whether Daz has done any market research to find out just who buys all these e-dolls? Is it limited to the DS/Poser users, or do some Carrara users occasionally buy a couple of items? The way Carrara has developed over the past few years, I'm sure that there are many users - probably the majority - who buy a lot of stuff, so increasing the user base will certainly promote sales of Daz items.
As for discouraging users from making their own stuff - well, those of us that do, will continue doing it, with or without Daz products, but still buy those things we don't have the time, talent or inclination to make.
I always thought that the purpose of Daz acquiring Carrara, Hexagon and Bryce was to do some asset-stripping and combine the best of them into one product. It would be great if this could happen - these could be sold in modular form, the way Vue does.
Roygee, I respect your work and opinions, but I feel that last idea is terrible. Especially the Vue sales model. If DAZ ever did that, they would flat out lose me as a customer and a Carrara advocate.
Roygee, I respect your work and opinions, but I feel that last idea is terrible. Especially the Vue sales model. If DAZ ever did that, they would flat out lose me as a customer and a Carrara advocate.
Totally agree with you there, keep the programs separate, thjey each have their own strengths and each have their own advocates. Jack of all trades soon becomes master of none.
DAZ 3D does not EVER want to discourage their user base from making their own stuff. They want everyone with the drive to do so, to do so, and get good at it, and then they'll help them to become DAZ 3D Published Artists!
No, the fact that we can model in Carrara has nothing to do with its much smaller user base. That comes from the fact that, those whom step into using Carrara have ambition to create full 3d something. Be it lettering for videos, animated people, creatures, vehicles, and/or effects and more, or anything in between or beyond.
The thing is, I use Carrara nearly the same way that most DS and Poser users want to use DS and Poser! Just that, since Carrara is so easy to use, I end up doing a whole lot more, just for fun and a better outcome of my original intention - doing stuff that you just don't or can't do in DS and Poser.
I don't mean to take anything away from DS or Poser, but Carrara can certainly do all of that very well, and just as easy. The added power of Carrara doesn't really confuse that end of things... it just adds to our possibilities - and it does so very quickly and easily!
This is exactly why the somewhat hide Carrara and put Daz Studio all over the front page and most sub-pages of the site. :)
They don't want to EVER discourage their user base from RENDERING their own art. :)
Two competing UIs can create customer confusion - leading to things like support drama, and users who give up rather than power through. Especially the novice users.
Daz Studio is designed to make it as easy as possible to go from buying a character on the website here, to sitting there happily looking at a render you did on your screen, and wanting to do it again, hopefully with another product purchased. :)
- All the power in Daz Studio is either in plugins, or pushed to the side - so it doesn't confuse a novice. BUT the tool is then designed to grow well up to a certain point. All those hidden things can be easily put to the fore and made readily available, once the novice had moved to a point where they are ready to do more.
Its actually a very smartly designed application - its one of the few pieces of software that is designed to teach me how to use it, as I use it, and looks to have been designed by people who understood software education rather than "the boys in IT" or "the folks in the art department."
Any other opinions of Daz aside... they did a very good job making that application be one that would let new customers get to the art very fast, and then easily grow their knowledge. If I were nominating awards in good UI, I'd put them in for one. I know a lot of people in some places I've read do not like its UI at all... but when I look at it from that critical lesson of "how well does it teach the pure noob to get a happy result" - it is very well done.
Carrara by contrast is a very very very powerful application. But its UI was designed by the company that thought the future of the internet was animated banner ads... Metacreations... thought big round trackballs all over your screen... meant slick UI.
- Over the years the UI has been greatly improved over its Poser-4 like roots, but it is still NOT a UI designed to teach itself to you.
Carrara is the kind of application that can scare a novice away. It did for me. I pre-ordered Carrara 1. The books for that are sitting on a shelf in the next room in my house. I didn't start using Carrara until Carrara 5 because when I preordered, I was still too green with 3D to handle that learning barrier... and it took me just long enough to get past that that by the time I did, I also had a copy of Vue 3 because somebody told me that was easier to learn (at the time, Vue 3's UI felt like using windows 3.1... But at least that was familiar).
Carrara's UI is not bad... we're not talking 3DS, Blender, or AutoCAD here where you need to take a college level course just to open the application...
But its not what you hand the guy who 'heard you can make pictures with them computer things.' I'd put Carrara in the list of "your second or third application, after you understand how 3D works."
Carrara is a great application, for an intermediate user. But it needs a UI rewrite to be good for a novice.
Sometimes being able to everything just means you are overwhelming - it doesn't have to, but it can if the UI isn't intentionally planning for the novice.
Yes, you were being "Dart brief", which is similar to "DAZ soon".
Great job from the Carrara head cheerleader.
I'm certainly not advocating combing all four apps - not under the present owners :) What I said was that I thought that was the intention at the time they acquired them. At that stage, they probably did have the the technical expertise to do so.
But, just for sake of discussion - what is really wrong with the modular approach? To get a start in 3D, get the free buy-and-render module. Ready to progress, get the next one, want to model, get the modelling one, etc. It would be exactly as we are doing now, using the four apps to complement one another, but instead of transferring stuff between apps which don't quite work together well, you would have it all in one.
Just because Vue makes this approach so expensive, is no reason the trash the concept :)
We already have a bridge between DS and Hexagon, DS and Bryce, almost a bridge between Hexagon and Carrara and DS and Carrara.
I, for instance, started off by modelling and have never gotten into the buy-and-render phase. So I would get the modelling module and the rendering one and that would be fine for me. Others would go further up the pipeline.
No reason a jack-of-all-trades can't be really good. Look at Maya, 3DS, Lightwave, Modo and, yes, Blender. All pretty difficult to learn, all really good.
But none of this excuses hiding Carrara's light under a bushel - unless Daz is afraid that acquiring a few thousand more users will also result in a few thousand more complaints :)
" Carrara’s UI is not bad… we’re not talking 3DS, Blender, or AutoCAD here where you need to take a college level course just to open the application…
But its not what you hand the guy who ‘heard you can make pictures with them computer things.’ I’d put Carrara in the list of “your second or third application, after you understand how 3D works.”
Carrara is a great application, for an intermediate user. But it needs a UI rewrite to be good for a novice.
Sometimes being able to everything just means you are overwhelming - it doesn’t have to, but it can if the UI isn’t intentionally planning for the novice."
boy did you hit the nail on the head !!!
One thing I've always loved about Carrara is its ease-of-use towards using it first for what you're comfortable with, and then moving on to more and more advanced features as you go. It's the interface that helps to lure me into trying more things, like particles and physics. But most things you simply add to the scene and answer the settings on the UI... pretty friendly in my opinion. While I kind of liked the Poser camera thingies, they were cumbersome to use and were way too huge, taking up way too mush interface room. I love how Carrara has the same style of icons, but tiny, and off to the side of the screen.
Perhaps I'm just strange.
Oh well... in the up coming videos, I plan to show how easy it is to use Carrara straight out of the box, and for use with DAZ 3D content in shorter, more exciting videos with much less talking. We'll see if people still find Carrara's interface anything shy of awesome.
I really don't like the modular approach as it nickels and dimes you to death. I certainly don't object to different grades such as standard and Pro, but the idea that you have to buy a tree modeler or cloud generator does not appeal to me.
I know that Carrara has a learning curve, but for some reason I took to the UI right away. Well, not the Story Board room. I think I've opened that twice in all the years I've used Carrara.
The learning curve for me had more to do with not how to get somewhere in the program, but how to do what I wanted to do when I got there. For instance, the Spline modeler was a hold-over from Raydream and the interface was very familiar, so I felt comfortable there. The Shader room was a change for me, but the terminology for some of the shader channels and their parameters was the same as Raydream, even if the interface was not.
Then of course there were the primitives, such as fire and fog, and the deformers and modifiers. Most of those are identical or nearly identical to the Raydream versions.
Carrara was the first 3D program that I ever used. The UI was what attracted me to it.
It seemed far more “natural” and intuitive to me than the other programs I looked at.
I totally agree about Story Board room, I took a peek at it, and quickly decided it was not something that I needed or wanted to use.
Along with what ep and Kakman are saying,
I find it incredible cool how, when I first decided to 'bite' on that Fire icon in the toolbar. More specific is the "Fire" under the 'Insert' menu, which is how I always insert Carrara aspects, the Fire menu in the Modeler Room opens automatically offering me a logically-named selection of sliders to tweak about - with a really exciting one: "Completion"!
Completion lets you set the end at which a fire animation happens along the timeline. So for a four second animation, at the final frame, you can set the Completion to anywhere between 0 and 100% to either animate, or solidify your flames during the animation!
But we can do a LOT with just the Fire primitive. The rest of the settings are really quite self-explanatory, yet require practice to realize exactly the effect that they have on the flame generator, which is fun and rewarding. The "Container" setting can be changed from Box (default), Cylinder, and Sphere, that latter of which makes for drastically different effects with the primitive.
I picked the Fire Primitive, but all of Carrara is like this. The features have settings with logically named settings to set up for your desired effect, with some sort of controls for animations and other aspects, and we can immediately, even if we don't make any changes, go back to the Assemble Room and see the current output with a Spot Render. To me, the interface is its own Carrara School of 3D-CG!
Dart, check your e-mail!
BTW, if you set the completion slider to 100% at the beginning of the timeline and 0% at the end, I seem to recall that it moves in reverse.
**Checked e-mail
Yeah, and we can also set the tweener to 'Oscillate' and sawtooth the oscillator! ;)
So, back on about the ease-of-use interface GUI of Carrara, and some of what my video speaks of, I decided to make something that any beginner starting off in Carrara can easily achieve:
In the video, after the perusal through the native content browser, I demonstrate how an empty scene in Carrara is all set up to provide an entire lighting solution and surrounding background for whatever project you might think up. So at first I was just going to do this with a solid background color, which helps to explain the rather bizarre choice of shaders on the text.
Instead, I decided to use a simple, realistic sky and followed my video's advice on turning the default light source into a sun.
It was an accident that I decided to use the Ocean primitive, replicated vastly to help cover the horizon, as I thought it would add a little extra movement to the animation.
The text animation is super simple. If you ever try to scale the text primitive along the Y axis, you quickly notice that it's like the same thing as grabbing the face of the font and pulling it out. So I use the Y translation handle on the translation (move) tool and set the text way back in the scene, and then scaled it out in the middle of the animation.
For simplicity sake, I selected the text and went into the Texture room, where I applied the colorful squares shader to the front face of the text, and dragged another from the browser into one of the side text geometry shading domains. Now it's a simple matter of dragging that same shader from that domain into all of the others for the whole text model.
I also animated a distant light which affects only the text and animated its strength and color.
Finally, knowing that I wanted to show this thing here, as a looping GIF, I made the whole thing reset to its starting position at the end, reduced the resolution to keep the GIF file size smaller and, for that same reason, lowered the frame rate to 12 frames per second.
Here's a VERY quickly made Birthday Card!
Dartanbeck,
I enjoyed your What is Carrara? video. It's a very nice overview. I've used Carrara for years as a virtual photo studio mostly with purchased content. It does what I need--beautiful lighting, easy scene setup, textures, and rendering--really well. If I need landscapes, additional props, costume items, fur, etc, I love that I can make my own inside Carrara as well. I know I'm not tapping Carrara's full potential at all, so your reminder of what other great features are there to explore is much appreciated. I hope it gets others interested in Carrara as well. I look forward to additional videos.
I hope so, too! To help in that, I will be doing more as time comes. I have some cool things on the way - and I look forward to your opinion on those as well ;)
Like you, I just love how easy it is to work in Carrara. I find the learning curve to be a pleasant one - uncovering new things that I kind of knew were there, but never really tried yet. I doubt I'll ever truly uncover everything that it has too offer, but I'm going to have a lot of fun trying! :)
Wow. This is awesome Dartanbeck!! I'm going to watch it again and again. Thank you.
Thank you, Rashad!
I'm truly honored to hear this from you, as I have huge respect for you, in our discussions we've shared over the past couple years!
From here, I plan to get more fun with things, and 'hopefully' keep them to much shorter views ;)
Fantastic.... thanks so much!!
xx :) Silene
Dart, Excellent presentation on the attributes of Carrara software.
Ease of use is one of the reasons I've stuck with Carrara for so long. I don't have to remember "Alt+Shift+left click+ whatever" just to do something in a software like some I have (Lightwave and Zbrush).
The menus although hard on old eyes (text is too small) are easy to understand and well placed.
For the non-commercial software artists and casual hobbyist Carrara should be their first choice of 3D software.
Hey Silene and Design Acrobat,
Thanks for the kind words and feedback!
Silene can confirm that, even with the wonderful ease-of-use interface, that we can find it pretty easy to find ourselves in over our heads with the fact that we truly CAN do anything in Carrara, which can lead to a need for a learning curve. But Design Acrobat nails it on the head, too... the well laid out tools menus really makes Carrara a lot easier to use than the more costly power 3D apps.
Something else that really needs to be mentioned in an upcoming video is how helpful and educational this forum is! With all of us together, we can figure out how to get anything to come to fruition within Carrara!!!
Thanks, my friends!