Carrara product and info disappeared from DAZ website?
Sparkie Shock
Posts: 96
I was trying to show a buddy of mine Carrara and went to the DAZ main page only to discover that there's no mention at all of Carrara .. anywhere? Where did it go? .. why have you removed it?
Sure if you type in a search in the shop you can just about find it .. but it's not even the first product listed!
What the hell is going on? Are you guys pulling the product? Or just getting ready to move Carrara to it's own page. Either way it's a bit disconcerting seeing as how I bought it recently and really don't want this product to up and die on me before I even got a chance to discover it.
And why is the product info for Carrara 8.5 and Carrara 8.5 Pro exactly the same? I was trying to show my friend why it's better to get the Pro version but looking at the info it showed no difference what-so-ever. Now you guys are putting out a new beta of 8.5 so I gather that it's not a dying product ... a REALLY hope not! .. but your'e doing yourself a disservice by taking it off the main page. Like I said .. I was trying to show it to a buddy and it's not very good when you have to spend 5 minutes looking for it.
What's going on?
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If you've already bought Carrara, you have to unclick the 'hide items I own' button for it to show up, but I believe it's consistently been one of the top sellers in the Daz marketplace since forever.
Who knows though with Daz whether it will become abandonware or continue to be developed? Currently they have been releasing beta developments (I think latest was last week) so that's encouraging. On the other hand, Carrara already does almost everything.
You're not too likely to get an official Daz response in this forum, the Carrara forum is very responsive with other Carrara users though, but we don't often see official Daz pronouncements here.
Last time I looked through some sale-weirdness Carrara 8.5 pro was actually less expensive than Carrara 8.5 standard. Pro is of course better, has several things that standard doesn't such as 64bit rendering, Ocean primitive, several modeling tools that standard doesn't have, 3dpaint, among other things. I'm blanking on some of this though, sorry. There was a chart somewhere that showed the differences, hopefully someone will come along and put up a link in response.
I was just trying to send my new boss, whom may be interested in Carrara, those pages as well! Argh!
So I sent him my "What is Carrara?" video instead, where I read those pages in the beginning! LOL
I have a feeling that this means they are redoing them. Last time they disappeared for a while, that's what the reason was. I've been belly-aching about how non-informative they were in their last several versions, so maybe they're making really cool ones now? One can only hope! :ahhh:
I don't know how the company DAZ is structured, but what I can affirm, it's that when one has such a narrow vision of the market (DS...DS...DS...), the end isn't so far…
Reorganization of staff !
Afflicted, my enthusiasm of my youths take again the top…:coolgrin:
http://www.daz3d.com/carrara-8-5-pro
http://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=Carrara
If I were in the search of a serious software and that I could easily find this link on the DAZ Home Page, I would not look at the competitors !
But: - Compatible figures: "NO" and Compatible software: "NO" is not true !
Well .. that's nice .. BUT! .. It doesn't appear on the DAZ main page .. so how would someone who didn't know Carrara existed find out about it? I found it because I looked at downloading DAZ and then saw the Carrara page and was impressed by the "Modern Times" demo video, and by Carrara's functionality.
By all means give it it's own website but it seems like it's being quietly buried right now.
I really prefer using DAZ. DAZ is something that I've learned to produce professional quality images by just pissing around with it and learning as I go. Referring to this forum now and then for help. Carrara is a pain in the arse in that it's very different from DAZ, it can't host my male models from DAZ properly as the hip-Gens texture doesn't ever want to work right. I've no idea how the hell a shader is meant to be used in place of a texture. But I do appreciate that Carrara can do amazing things. I've used it to do animations of a space ship of a TV show!
I'm using it again of the same thing now. And I'm seriously looking into buying one of those expensive DVD tutorials thingamies to actually learn how to use it. So, it don't want the product dying before I get a chance to learn how to use it.
Right. That says nothing but allows it's purchase, and the second regarding anything that comes up in a much improved search of Carrara.
But what is currently missing are pages like this:
http://www.daz3d.com/products/carrara/carrara-tech-specs/
It's just not there anymore, nor are the other two or three pages that went with it.
They'll be back. :)
I've been experimenting with using a procedural skin shader that uses minimal distribution maps to get around the whole geografting bug. I haven't worked on genitals, as it isn't a super high priority for me, but I do think that in practice it may work. The reason I think it may work, is because basically the image in an image map is made to fit a UV template that has been un-wrapped from a model. Basically it's a glorified coloring book, and anything you paint outside the lines doesn't show up when it is wrapped around the model.
So Genesis can use multiple UV maps, but they need to be switched within DAZ Studio, as Carrara hasn't yet been given that functionality. Basically if I load an Olympia figure, and then decide I want to use the Aiko 6 textures, I will notice seams at the map boundaries because Olympia's UVs are different than A6. The same thing kind of happens with the geografted bits, except that even if the UVs are changed in Studio where the bits were added, Carrara still isn't sure how to map the images. If the image maps, could be colored outside the lines, then in theory, the junk (literally) should work.
Here's where the procedural skin shader idea comes in. The base skin shader is applied globally to the object. Unless geografting really distorts the underlying mesh, the shader is applied and doesn't look distorted. Here's the tricky part though. There may be areas that need a transition between shading domains. So for instance, the aureola which is in the Nipple shading domain, just doesn't suddenly end on a real human, there is a soft transition between the darker tissue and the breast. I used a black and white distribution map which I painted using Carrara's 3D paint tool to soften those edges. I did the same with the Lip shading domain as well. If there need to be transitions in the genital's domains, to simulate different bump patterns or colors, then those could be painted as well, but my guess is that the genitals would already need to be applied before doing so, because if the genitals aren't applied when it is painted, you may run into similar problems. You won't see any areas where the template is visible as there is no template, but the transitions between domains may not match quite right.
So, these examples use a couple different Genesis 2 females. One is Olympia and the other is Diana or something. Both seem to use different UV maps, so I stuck the same Procedural shader on them. I also applied dynamic hair eyelashes and eyebrows. The hair is "grown" on the mesh, so the hair was a bit problematic. The Olympia model has much thinner eyebrows than the other model for instance. I had to completely restyle the eyelashes as they didn't translate properly. The reason of course, is because of the major mesh changes between the different figures, which is why they each have their own UV templates.
Dart:
http://web.archive.org/web/20140708021648/http://www.daz3d.com/products/carrara/carrara-tech-specs
EP, You really need to start a new thread with this item, not because it is thread hijacking, but because many will not find the info hidden in a thread about something else...
Here is a short version of the added features in the Pro version.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/55201/
I've been thinking,... With Carrara off of the Daz Technologies front page. Call me crazy but is Studio 5 going to be an all in one program???
Replacing Carrara ???
STFU! ;-P :lol:
Seriously, this comes up so often you could set your watch by it. My personal feeling is that even with the hints of dynamic hair, there is still much that Studio lacks. Plus, DAZ is obviously still developing Carrara, as evidenced by the stickied C8.5.x beta thread.