Reality and Carrara compatibility

murph101

I keep coming back to looking at Reality, but I see it's a plugin for DAZ specifically. Does it work for Carrara as well?

Phil W. had urged me to try the Octane, but I found it challenging for the short time I was evaluating it, so I didn't purchase. I'm hoping for something easier. The characters I create use Carrara hair and I don't suspect they can be ported back into DAZ. If so, I might do that for some renders using Reality. Come to think of it, I've never tried porting a character from C to D. Is it possible?

Thoughts on Reality and the Carrara dilema?

fixmypcmike

Paolo decided a while back not to create a Carrara version of Reality -- don't know if he might reconsider. Luxus does have a Carrara version.

evilproducer

And from everything I have read, you will not get Carrara hair in anything but the Carrara renderer.

I believe Reality use Lux? There is a Luxus plugin and one in beta for Luxcore, unless I they're the same thing....

Anyway, I know Joeping uses Luxus a lot and has composited hair renders done with Carrara's renderer into Luxus renders with editing software. Look up his threads about rendering with Luxus or PM him to get specifics.

Jonstark

I believe it would be as simple as doing a hair and shadow pass (where the hair is the only thing enabled to cast shadows) and they could easily be composited to either Octane or Luxus to match the two. Carrara hair is truly outstanding, and it makes sense to match the most realistic hair possible with an unbiased renderer for results.

I've done this in still renders, but have not done it in animation yet, though I'm hoping by the end of the weekend I'll have a chance to prove concept with Octane. (As long as the camera view is the same as used in Carrara, should work just as well with Luxus I think, which is the Lux plugin for Carrara).

There is no Reality plugin for Carrara, not sure there's a market for it now though now that Luxus plugin is out (and Luxcore plugin is in development). Don't think there's likely to be a Reality plugin anytime soon.

I think I have heard of people porting from Carrara to Studio, strange as that sounds to me at first glance. I've never done it, but maybe someone who has will chime in.

DustRider

As other have noted - it's doubtful there will ever be a Reality plugin for Carrara. As for Carrara's dynamic hair, it isn't exposed via the API, so it's doubtful it will ever be available via any render engine other than Carrara (it won't export or convert to anything similar to fiber mesh either). If DAZ 3D ever adds Dynamic hair to the API, then developers may be able to exprt it to external render engines.

PhilW has very successfully used the method that Jonstark mentioned to composite Carrara dynamic hair (rendered in Carrara) with renders done in Octane. The renders in either render engine are the same dimensions and view.

PhilW

I was going to comment but it's all been covered!