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hjake, while that's true, actually what he said when asked about future development of Hex was "...LIKELY not".
That doesn't mean definitely not. Just likely. But things might change. And it might get developed. And in the same interview he said they have "plans for their other titles", so that means that Hex might be in their development plans, because Hex is one of their other titles.
Right Evil?
Evil,
Perhaps dismissing others' input as "FUD" and "fear mongering to get reactions or attention" is considered more of a disrespectful dismissal, and personal attack, rather than focusing solely on issues.
Maybe it's best if you focus on issues, don't you think?
If you don't agree with someone's analysis or numbers, provide those of your own.
"likely not" does suggest that it's not in their current plans, so the "plans for their other titles" is more likely to refer to Carrara and Bryce, and I think Carrara is far more likely than Bryce.
I would agree with that. In the survival of the fittest Daz Studio, Carrara, Bryce, Hexagon would seem to be the order.
I think in any company no product is dead, it is just not continued. Dead could mean you have to remove its intellectual property value off your books. Even MS Zune and Vista were never dead they just became the unspoken child under the stairs. I bet hexagon feels lonely down there, but maybe it will have some company soon. Ofcourse any package could be revived sometime down the road, but as the road gets longer the desire for a business to travel backwards becomes less.
BTW, I was being sarcastic in my response about Hex. Just poking a little fun at my buddy Evil.
Hex is dead, has been that way for a long time, and it's only chance for resurrection is if they find a buyer. Which is unfortunate, I really like Hex.
Ah yes, that is possible Joe, however, I did say I was basing my inferences on past behavior and not idle speculations about their books.
Then again, Carrara has been updated how many times since Hex's last update?
If you were to look at it another way, so far, when DAZ comes up with a new figure, Carrara has been updated 100% of the time. Not immediately of course, but eventually. Now, they may decide not to do it this time, but I would argue that the past results outweigh your argument because some of the same logic was applied when Genesis came out and Carrara was not immediately updated. It happened yet again when Genesis 2 came out and Carrara was not immediately updated. Can you tell me what has changed in their business model since Genesis 1 came out? Nothing? Yet 100% of the time, Carrara was eventually updated to use the new technology.
Make up as many numbers as you like. Logic it out in whatever manner you wish. The bottom line is that despite your arguments to the contrary, you don't know that Carrara is abandoned or dead, and I have no definitive proof that there will be an update or when. History tells as that at some point, "DAZ soon," there is likely to be an update to at least add figure compatibility, because their business model has not changed at least since Genesis 1. If Carrara was viable enough for an update then, and for another one with Genesis 2, it is highly possible that Genesis 3 compatibility will come to Carrara.
I do too but I also liked Caligari truSpace, but times move on and we have to move with them. As I have said 100 billion trillion times (no exaggeration), NEW POTENTIAL USERS if you buy Carrara today, right now, this very second, you take no risk and lose NOTHING, even if Carrara was dead as a door nail.
You will learn how to do 3D modeling, scene/lighting development, and rendering. This knowledge can be applied to any tool as JoeMomma2000 shows with his thread about Blender ( http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/58735/ot-carrara-izing-blender/p1 ). BUT WAIT THAT'S NOT ALL, if you act now you will get a fully functional product that you can develop your own 3D content with to sell on the open/black market. AND if that is not enough this product has fewer bugs than Carrara 6 or 7 has/had. So it is very stable and can work on even a modest computer.
What are you waiting for ACT NOW, the Daz store is standing by to take your order. AND don't forget to get the infinite skills tutorials by PhilW they will make learning everything about Carrara a breeze.
* this is an unpaid (unbiased) endorsement of Carrara and PhilW, no animals were harmed in the making of this endorsement.
I never called you out by name Joe. You inferred it. ;-)
I'm sorry, but I don't have time to make up numbers based on pure speculation. Any numbers I were to put down would be meaningless as I don't have access to their books. Neither do you. Despite your assertions to the contrary, your numbers are as completely meaningless as any numbers I put up. You know that as well as I, so why belabor the point? Just to argue? It's one of those things that can never be proved either way.
History will show if Carrara is truly abandoned or not, but since you, me, and any other forum member here not working for DAZ's accounting dept. has no clue what is going on, we won't know until it happens.
I agree, and have said so many times before.
But that can be said about any software ever developed since the beginning of time. Lotus 123 was a cool spreadsheet, probably would do all I need today for most spreadsheet tasks, if it still exists.
Saying that software works now and in the future is hardly a selling point.
Which begs the question...if Carrara works fine now and in the future, why is it bad to say negative things about its future development? Why should new users care if it won't have further development? As Evil keeps pointing out, it works fine and does what it does.
I like Carrara. It's a good app. It does some stuff that can't be done, or done easily, in other apps. But many customers aren't happy with that. They want, right or wrong, to buy a software product that will improve over time. That's one of the strange things about the software industry. When you buy a car, you don't expect it to improve over time. Or a hand drill. Or a pair of briefs.
But software is different. We expect, because of the way the software industry has done things over the years, to have continual improvements. And if we don't see that, we feel we got a bad deal and wasted our money. Crazy I suppose, but that's how things are in software.
DAZ has no obligation, whatsoever, to improve any of its software for us. When we purchased they never agreed to improve or update the software. But they do. Sometimes, at least.
So if customers feel bad if their software is no longer developed, don't blame them. DAZ's practice over the years was to update, and in general the software biz does regular updates, so we expect it. So blame software companies for raising our expectations.
And BTW, none of this discussion, for some at least, is about blame or anger or being upset. It's about prediction so we can make future plans. If it's not going to be developed, then fine. It would be nice to know that so we can make plans. That's all. Some people take it as personal attacks and anger and feeling bad. But it's not. It's about making plans.
BTW, as an example...
One of the big things I want from Carrara is not only human character rendering, but dynamic cloth. That's big for me. I try to never use conforming clothing if I can avoid it. I hate it.
So over the years I've wasted months of time trying to get cloth working thru the various revisions. And all of that work was pretty much a waste unfortunately.
Now If I had know years ago that it would never really work, I could have made plans and not wasted that time. But instead, DAZ dragged on with their slow attempts to integrate an already complete, open source dynamics code.
I"m not angry, or upset about it. I just wish I had known sooner so I could have made plans, that's all. It's not personal. If I had successfully predicted that they couldn't even tie in a complete, fully functional, open-source code over these years I would have done things differently and not wasted my time.
And that's why I've been doing Columbo in recent years to try and determine, in the absence of info from DAZ, whether the future is bright or dim. Am I a bad person for that? Am I spreading FUD or trying for attention or any ot the other nasty characterizations people give to anyone who doesn't predict a rosy future? No. And I don't assume that anyone else who is trying to predict the same answer is a bad person. It's all about issues, not personalities.
It's not about personalities? Then why do you keep harping on the same old same old? Let me spell it out: You don't know what is happening. I don't know what is happening. The whole forum doesn't know what is happening. Your arguments and assumptions are just as useless as anybody else's, whether you like it or not. Those are the only facts in this discussion.
You may not see these never ending and multiple threads rehashing the same old thing, time and time again as FUD, and I'm sure you don't mean then to be, but it still has a chilling effect on new users and potential new users, and all of it, 100%, is pure speculation with no real way to back any of it up. Unfortunately, the old adage that if you say it enough it is true, can in fact, become true if people researching Carrara come across a hundred threads rehashing the same thing and assume that Carrara is done for, even if it is not.
It is always difficult to have a discussion on issues that people are having with the software without it turning into a rant-fest. I understand that. A rational discussion of issues and problems can be beneficial to the software community and developers. If someone is having problems with the GI renderer producing ashing, or some bug, such as the shadow pass in C7 being broken, or a Genesis bug, those are fact based issues and discussions. These discussions are generally not that though, as the facts are made up, and the issues are based on speculation, fear, uncertainty and doubt- whether that is the intention or not.
I can point to the Shade thread as an example of a thread with many of the same arguments, or how the, what do you want Carrara to be, thread is evolving into a thread with a similar negative vibe, and all three of these threads are light on facts and heavy on useless and negative speculation. Meanwhile, a challenge meant to foster community spirit and bring new users and veteran users together to learn new Carrara stuff and produce cool Carrara renders we can show to promote Carrara to the world languishes, while these three threads do nothing.
I'm not trying to be a Pollyanna, which I've said before, but seriously, how many threads like this at the same time do we need? Carrara has some real issues, and you are quite right, DAZ could settle some or most of this with some information, but realistically, they're owned by an investment group in a highly competitive niche market. That, coupled with the way that announcements in the past have been received by the community, I can understand them playing it close to the vest (albeit, perhaps too close).
Evil,
I suppose if you really feel that strongly about it, you might do a quick survey of other forum members and present the results to DAZ.
Maybe something like "How many users support a modification to the forum TOS which bans any discussions including negative speculation regarding the future of DAZ software".
I'm serious about that. I know there are continual threads in other forums about Bryce and Hex. Maybe there's groundswell of opinion out there advocating a similar ban.
Can't hurt to try.
BTW, Evil, I guess this means that you REALLY didn't like Columbo on TV?
Evil,
Also BTW, personally I'm considering asking DAZ to implement a forum feature whereby if you put someone on ignore it blocks you from peeking at their posts. I'm serious. Being able to peek just allows posters to get upset at fellow posters who they don't want to hear from in the first place. It kind of defeats the ignore feature, which I think is a very useful feature to have.
I didn't even know Carrara existed until I came to visit Daz... (I may have, but I think I wrote it off a something like "Bryce", a 3D isolated "toy". At the time I heard about Bryce, I was using a program called "Simply 3D", which died after I did some stuff for Hallmark Cards.)
Eventually, I got addicted to Doom and Quake and Unreal-Tournament... Those "tools" became my 3D programs of choice.
Looking around, I don't think I would still have a use for Carrera, since Daz, at the moment, in the present state, does all that I need. I WANT to want to use Hexagon... But it is super crashey for me, doing simple things. Seems like a bad clone-merger of Z-Brush and Sketch-up mixed into one, with an aftertaste of Blender, which is a bad aftertaste. It tells me that 500,000 polygons is "too much and may crash the computer"... That is a standard low-poly model now! It crashes my computer with 10,000 polygons, so that is a moot warning. xD
Daz only really crashes for me when I try to make it do odd things... Real odd things... It doesn't mind the majority of abuse I throw at it.
I do wish that Daz's "Content Library" and explorer setup was more like Carrara. I see it in the videos all the time and that is what "Simply 3D" had... (Might be that the programmers went to Carrara. xD)
However, I believe, personally, that Daz is going to be the next "free-mans" version of a "Content manipulator and editor", if they organize and refine some of these things to act and operate more intuitively. Bonus for remaining free and setting-up a good 3rd-party content provider that would handle things which Daz refuses to handle, or can't handle, due to workload restrictions. (Talking about the millions of potential submissions that are "not up to Daz standards", or "not an item Daz wishes to include for sale".) They don't have to, but they can work with others to ensure the "other" content isn't conflicting, and demand a little portion of the sales as part of that "unity" for content cohesion.
When a billion people need wind-shield washers, it is stupid to bicker about the competition when there is more than enough demand for you and the competition and ten others... Because you can't manufacture a billion windshield washers, nor can anyone else. That is like bickering about the lightbulb or the telephone. Thanks to that bickering, the majority spent a greater time in the dark and without communication, out of selfish greed and inability for the greedy to produce. Now we all use spiral-bulbs and cell-phones, and the original inventors are long dead and gone, unrelated to the things we use today. The only way to survive is to adapt and give the people making you money, what they want. If you give them what you want, instead, you better be paying your own paychecks and buying your own products to make money. xD
Now I want to get Carara... Thanks... As if I didn't have enough stuff on my computers...
One day we will actually have a universal format that just works everywhere, and developers can focus on actual creation, not compatibility headaches and "fixing" oddities between formats. As if proprietary means anything other than shorter life-spans and inevitable endings. Why does no-one learn?
Since no one here really knows what the future of Carrara is, I'm going to actually post something a bit more on topic. This thread was created to demonstrate that Carrara users are also big DS/Poser content users. So with that in mind, I just want to say that I use DS/Poser content in Carrara a lot. Yes, I "play with my digital Barbies" in Carrara to relax and try to make pictures that others may also enjoy. To that end, Carrara has been a fantastic tool, and I'm very glad that DAZ3D has provided support of Genesis and Genesis 2 in Carrara. (yes, I have other uses for Carrara as well, but for these other uses I could use just about any other full featured 3D software)
I have actually found this thread quite eye opening. There has always been a bit of an anti DS/Poser content overtone here (in this forum), especially with reference to the use of digital Barbies. I've actually been quite amazed that many people have larger content libraries than I do. I mention this simply to reinforce the importance of this thread, because I know for a fact that at least some PA's here had (have) the misconception that Carrara users don't buy DS content. So that leads one to wonder if this misconception is also held by staff and management at DAZ3D? This thread goes a long way toward dispelling that misconception, which could no doubt be very important to any decisions made about giving Carrara Genesis 3 support.
Something else that would help to dispell this belief is for those who do use DS/Poser content in Carrara is to post your renders in the gallery here, and possibly at Renderosity, Runtime DNA, or in galleies any place else you buy content (or even sites like Deviant Art). We've had lots of great images posted to threads in this forum, but it seems only a small portion ever make it to a Gallery where non-Carrara users might see them. Increasing awareness of the use of DS/Poser content in Carrara couldn't hurt, and might actually help.
I have a gallery here, at Renderosity, and Runtime DNA (RDNA) where I post my Carrara renders (along with my DS renders). I don't know if it makes a difference, but hopefully it helps a bit, especially if a render actually gets recognized like Joe Ping's excellent work always does here (his work often makes it to the "Top Recent Images" scroll bar), or for example an image gets selected to the Images of the Week Gallery at RDNA (like this one was this week). But spending time detailing the demise of Carrara, a demise that may or may not be a real fact, and is purely speculation that will most likely do nothing to help move Carrara forward, and as others have noted, may well chase off potential new users.
This is just my crazy 2 cents for what might make a difference ..... or not.
Now back to occasionally lurking here and making images with my digital barbies!!
I dunno Dustrider...
If I'm a potential new user of an application, and deciding if I'm going to pay for it, personally I'd like to hear about stuff like "The VP of Marketing says the development focus is on a different application". And the company is selling competing apps in its online store. And so on...
At least that way I can make up my own mind.
I guess the alternative is for everyone to remain silent, or act like development is proceeding fine on that app. Both of which seem to me to be just as misleading.
I'd hate to spend money on something and a week later find out that it's had some features like cloth in beta for years, and it's not likely to get fixed anytime soon. To me, that kind of stuff is important to know. Wouldn't want new users to be misled.
But that's just me. I tend to hope that other users of a product, whatever it is, can give me some more information and users' input about the product that the company can't or won't say about it. Of course it may or may not be 100% factual, but at least I can decide for myself.
And honestly, it's not my company. It's DAZ. Why should I care if they get 3 new Carrara users this month? Doesn't affect me in the slightest. Thats for them to figure out and manage isn't it?
chicken egg chicken egg ...
Very funny Stezza :)
Dustrider wroteth :
Great idea. When I am on the hunt for some new software I always look at what the users produce. Usually I'm dissapointed.
On the other hand I might find a brilliant image and go on the hunt for the main software that was used as a tool in the making.
That makes me more likely to buy the software ...
Almost on topic. I spent 200 bucks at rendo last week. Normally I would have spent it at daz....
I might start using the gallery here more now that Rendo have messed up their notification system.
OT: If you use the gallery here, does Daz assume a right to use your image? That you gave consent by reason of posting it?
Actually it is not in the TOS it is in the EULA (Licensising Agreement) Part 4.0 Forum and Gallery Submissions Addendum
You can access the EULA from the bottm of each page
This may be of interest in the Documentation Centre:
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/carrara/8_5/start
I just noticed that it says there is a Private Beta in discussion in a Private Builds Forum. No indication of what that might be, but surely some evidence that some development is taking place.
Do we know if that is recent, or maybe leftover from an earlier beta? It just says "8.5.x". Not sure I'd infer "development IS taking place". Maybe more like "WAS" taking place.
Though you may be right. As Evil says, nobody knows.
Phil,
Very first time that I notice it. Good observation!
Regards