Does DAZ still sell Carrara 8.5 Pro
Zach Wilson
Posts: 92
I thought about recommending Carrara to a friend of mine but when I searced the store for Carrara 8.5 Pro some products come up but the actual program does not.
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https://www.daz3d.com/carrara-8-5
Ah yes, forgot to pro...
the native content is listed in prodlib under carrara8
Carrara Pro periodically gets deeply discounted. At a minimum, your friend would want to get a short-term PC+ membership to benefit from the price reductions that come with that (Carrara 8.5 Pro full price = $285, PC+ quarterly membership + Carrara 8.5 Pro discounted = $24 + $65 = $89). During sales, the price of Carrara Pro often dips even lower, so if they can wait, they could get a better bargain.
But to be honest, I don't know if I'd recommend anyone buy Carrara. I love it to death -- I think it's a great application. But its future is deeply uncertain. It's unclear if it will ever be updated again. I expect it to keep working on Windows PCs for a while, but it's probably about to become unusable (if it hasn't already) on newer Mac hardware and software.
If your friend is looking for something that does roughly the same as Carrara, Blender might be a better bet. I don't find it as enjoyable or easy to use, but the price (free) is hard to beat and it looks like it has more of a future.
i'm a pc memb urrently seeing c85p at
Thanks everyone. Especially about the info on the discounts. I'll pass this info along.
I also made a page of all of the cool content that comes with Carrara 8.5 Pro, along with a pdf of the browser models from Native Content
Carrara 8.5 Pro Content
So it's easy to see how one could actually look at it like getting a massive discount on the goodies, and getting Carrara Pro for Free! :)
So true! :)
You already purchased it. To see it you have to turn OFF "Hide Items I Own".
I agree, Carrara is a great software. But it's old.
No matter how good it is, I wouldn't recommend a software that hasn't got any update for nearly 8 years. And it's perfectly clear for me that it will never be updated again.
Your friend might get very frustrated when he realises he can't really use the last two generations of characters (at least not easily).
If you do recommend it, you should warn him about that.
I disagree. Ever since I started this journey in 2016, a few people here have posted, warning about the furure of Carrara. Meanwhile, I have had the time of my life playing with this great software.
I wouldn't trade the last 5 years for any shiny new toy out there.
I continue to recommend Carrara. The price is so low, there is literally nothing to lose. And what you get is amazing. I have explored maybe 10% of its capabilities. Few people ever master it.
The simple fact is, Carrara will run forever if you want it to. It just depends on how much you want to keep using it.
Carrara fills a niche. If it doesn't meet your needs, move on. But frankly, the "warnings" get tiresome.
The reason I started back into Carrara was after I decided to get back into doing some 3d stuff and naturally started playing with the latest Blender. It didn't take me long to come back to Carrara. Blender is nice but I immediately missed the simplicity of Carraras interface such as the primitives (sky, terrain, particle, plants, fog, fire etc...) and the relatively easy yet powerful shader interface. Anyway I think we all realize that Carrara has limitations, but in a strange sorta way it is those limitations that can push our creativity. One day we might have to bite the bullet (as it seems some MAC OS users are now experiencing ), but maybe we can dream for a future update or DAZ selling it off or OMG making it open source!
BTW, being old software it runs terrific on todays computers!
I'm still learning new stuff with Carrara and can achieve stunning results much faster than the usual pipeline of cobbling together several differing software packages specialising in rendering, shading, modelling, post working, rigging, etc, etc, etc. I love the fact that I can just sit down with an empty scene and start creating from the get-go!
Would I recommend it to someone new to 3D? Probably not! But I would definitely recommend it to someone who's dabbled with various packages and not been able to get along with most of them...
Yes, I am one of the longtime Carrara users who sees no reason to abandon it, even if DAZ did long ago. Admittedly, I'm happy with Gen4 characters (M4, V4, K4, F4) and the vast amount of content I've acquired to support them. All of which works perfectly in Carrara, unlike the newer DS figures and content. And of course, the features in Carrara have become second nature to me, usually no thinking "how do I do that?" And I cannot think of a feature that Carrara lacks that I need (I'm not a modeler). Plus there are new Poser format products (that work fine in Carrara) coming out daily, just not here at DAZ.
So its like switching from a QWERTY keyboard to a Dvorak layout. Or switching to a Mac (admittedly probably better hardware, but again the operating system and piles of software I've gotten used to ...) Not gonna happen ...
But for someone starting out, I can see reasons not to go with Carrara. As I've mentioned elsewhere in these forums, E-on Software's VUE Creator is worth a look, even though its subscription only. I'm enjoying my version, including animation on a 12 core/24 thread AMD machine.
There is something to loose. Time. It takes a lot time to learn to use a software like this. Spending time learning a software already old and with no future, I think it's wasting time. Granted, many of the things you learn in Carrara would work in other softwares, so it would not be a complete waste of time. But it would be simpler to learn directly these other softwares. Blender, or Daz Studio are free, so it's better in that aspect too. And you can find a lot more items, informations, tutorials etc. than for Carrara. And you can get amazing results with these too.
If you are already using Carrara, it suits your needs, you're comfortable with it, then by all means, please continue. I'm still using it myself (since 2009, less and less, though)
But to recommend it to someone new to 3D, without even warning him ?
Bytescapes included a warning about lack of Daz development support, which was before UnifiedBrain posted. I include warnings about Daz lack of development when I praise Carrara to a wider audience, but I don't feel the need to repeat the warning if someone else has given it.
The question regarding warning a new 3D user about the difficulty of using the newest characters, makes no logical sense. A "new 3D user" would have no knowledge of Victoria 4, much less Genesis. To a new user, there is no "lack of development." Everything is new. Development is always relative. And further, to a lot of Carrara users, some who have already posted on this thread, G3 and G8 (which can certainly be loaded into Carrara) are not missed at all. A lot of "development" is just marketing hype.
For sure, my art is not dependent on being able to use the latest Daz character. It is logical to assume that many "new users" would eventually feel the same way, is it not? So why project your "latest software bias" onto someone else? Talk about wasting time.
Five years ago I read that Carrara would not be updated, and that I would be "wasting my time" in learning it. Who actually determines that, anyway?
When are you going to die? When is Carrara going to die? You really don't know the answer to either question. Live your life. Enjoy Carrara. Let the chips fall where they may.
I plan to continue enjoying Carrara into the forseeable future... and to continue recommending it to others. To do otherwise is the real waste of time.
I still recommend it as a modeller and a landscape generator with trees, particles, physics etc, I usually suggest postwork and composition to add your latest DAZ figures, iClone stuff imports fine FBX animated so those people can use it too, in fact pretty much any FBX will, DAZ studio on the other hand it's all mangled.
A lot of gamers want to render their customised players, Carrara can do that.
Just seen today via the Gallery it's on sale for $65
i like to be 'in their face' using ds content in carrara. lol
i feel like a brat saying 'so there'
but i also vote with my wallet
don't worry, the way they are shutting people with lesser hardware out of DAZ studio, the Bitcoin miners grabbing all the high end Nvidia cards, people may start looking for alternatives including Carrara
my nvidia has 2gb on it. just barely enough to play ESO
the pbr plugin lighting renders decently fast on my quadcore. with 2gb nvidia 730 card
if i can render a frame in 30 seconds, i'm happy with it
GTX 7xx cards no longer supported by DAZ studio Nvidia iray either
4.11 still does, I am hanging on to my copy for my 780 if I ever get it working again in my Win7
i'll be on 4.11 for ever. and poser 11. and prolly carrara 8.5.1.119
wings 95.5, sony studio plat 11.
if i could buy a new pc with win7 as an option, would stay on win7 foreva.
As it sits, the last version of Carrara is well-sorted and still supported by the community. People still use TrueSpace, so why should Carrara be any different?
I second the motion. I will use Poser if I have to for the rare scene that doesn't import to Carrara very well (e.g. impressive lighting, sometimes a PITA to duplicate in Carrara), and VUE for some spectacular landscapes (even anmations now that it supports 12 core AMD chips). But whenever I can, I use Carrara and usually can get 1280x720 (standard lighting) frames rendered in 5-10 seconds on a fast machine.