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Would it be safe to say that a 3D software eng. yearly salary is around 100K and if we say that we need 4 developers for rock solid amazing Carrara 9 to be develop. It means DAZ 3D needs 400K just to pay the developers salary not counting on other expenses. How many users do they need to have to purchase an upgrade to cover the cost of development?
I've only recently started to try the NLA feature, having relied on purchased mocaps previously (mostly in Poser format). NLA seems to have nice advantages, and I've been importing Aniblocks and saving them as clips. Looks promising.
Yup, that's what I do with AniBlocks. Plus you can easily make your own clips for future re-use.
I wonder how you can make your animation such as you imagined it with "clips in a box"… the one who doesn't learn animation from scratch is extremely limited in its creativity !
DUDU - I agree, but NLA Clips can save a lot of time in animating things that will happen again. One of the first I created was a Blink clip, so rather than having to re-keyframe a blink each time you need one, you can just drop in the clip.
There is an old saying... You don't miss something you haven't had.
The IClone 6 animation tools and timeline are amazing.
Carrara animation and timeline isn't even close to IClone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAFrMYqLpx4
Don't take this wrong.. The terrain editor, the modeler rooms in Carrara are not available with Iclone.
Anyone seriously interested in video production or animation should review Iclone video tutorials.
Carrara has become inexpensive enough to use as an acnillary tool for more efficient Iclone video production.
I also use Sony Vegas Pro, Fusion, Hitfilm, NewBlueFx as well. I am not knocking Carrara just saying it is really not state of the art for animation work.
There are sales at Reallusion just like on Daz3d. If you must buy an assortment of Ani Mate tools to do your work, you should think seriously about IClone 6.
Having looked at the linked tutorial, I think the main thing that iClone has over Carrara (for me) is the real time preview, that is a huge help. And the dynamics. (I almost feel that I could be getting into a spoof of Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch here!).
I'm of agreement with you Phil, but I think that it doesn't take more time to create a few keyframes for a blink than to haggle with NLA than you cannot modify as you want ( No undo possible).
But I use them sometime...
Clips are very easy to move, stretch, etc and you can open them up and edit them if you want. A blink is a simple example, but one that can be re-used again and again.
Could you explain a little more? I'm pretty happy with C8+ Pro preview in the 3D Assembly window. OpenGL I think, and it runs pretty close to real time on my Core i7 machine with a good video card, even using "Play Every Frame" ... okay, its closer with that turned off, but still a good indicator of what the animation looks like. I remember thinking when I first saw this (a few versions back?), "very nice".
Yeah, I think that would be very safe...
In fact I think I made that very analysis a couple years ago here, when we were talking about how many people would have to buy Carrara just to support its development. It's a lot.
By the way, didn't someone start another "animation" thread just for the purpose of moving the animation discussion out of this thread?
Maybe I need a more powerful machine, but get 2-3 figures in there and I am not getting anywhere near real time, so I have to render a low-res version to test the timings. But Joe is right, we should move the discussion elsewhere.
The profit maximizing question is not, "if Carrara is like it is right now, are Daz content sales enough to pay for the developers?" The profit maximizing question is, "if Carrara got some additional developer time, would it keep enough people, and attract some more, in the Daz store to pay for that developer time." Maybe, maybe not. But this thread shows that there are Carrara users who currently buy other Daz content that is designed for use in Poser and Studio. If I understood the original post, demonstrating that was the purpose of the thread.
From a profit maximizing perspective, people who don't buy Daz content, and use Blender and Fusion or whatever for most of their artistic workflow, are not worth any Daz time. I think all of the back of the envelope calculations reported so far agree on that.
Joe,
Do you think that a staff of 4 (as Ringo outlined) dedicated solely to the development of a "Rock solid amazing Carrara 9" could accomplish this task within 12 months?
I'm not a software developer, I just have a lot of experience over the years with a lot of 3D apps.
And it depends upon how you define a "rock solid amazing Carrara 9". But my guess is, in the view of most here, 12 months isn't even in the ballpark of how long it would take for an "amazing" Carrara 9. Heck, DAZ has had recent C8 or C8.5 betas that last longer than that.
I'm also guessing that there are no Carrara developers left at DAZ, so anyone who works on it would need a long time to sift thru the existing code, in whatever shape it's in, and figure it out. And that's especially difficult if the existing documentation is poor. So you need a long time to research what's there, then figure out what features you want to add (eg, fluids, smoke, new renderers, etc.), then read technical papers to figure out the equations you want to write code for, and so on.
So if you want it to be in the same category feature-wise with, say, Blender, I'm guessing a whole team of guys would take 10 years or more, once it's all beta'd and finalized and documented. And when you're done, Blender (and the state of the art) has already advanced by 10 years, so you're still 10 years behind the times.
But if you have your sights set low, and only want G3 compatibility and a few more minor features or something fairly easy, maybe you can do it in 12 months.
From a business perspective, with all due respect, I don't think that either of those are the questions DAZ or any other company would ask itself in order to maximize profits.
Just like it's not the questions that YOU ask yourself when determining how to spend your money and maximize YOUR income.
The basic question is:
"I have X amount of resources (money, people, etc.). What's the BEST way to spend/invest those resources in order to maximize my profits (also known as "return on investment")?"
You do the same thing. You have $X in the bank, and you try to figure the best way to spend those $$ to maximize what you get from those $$.
And if DAZ decides, "hey, it looks like if we invest $X in developing gaming stuff rather than content stuff for the Poser/D|S/Carrara crowd", then they might decide to do that. You look at your resources, SPECULATE (guess) about what your options are and what the markets are, and make your decisions based upon often imperfect data.
Human beings and companies are imperfect creatures.
A lot of spending is based on perceived value, gut instinct, perceived loyalty, and an illogical feeling of a need for a certain commodity.
Hence lobbying has its place in this scenario.
You might not call this thread 'lobbying.'
But I do.
Well, I suppose illogical, emotion-based decisions can win, even if the sales projections tell you the opposite....and maybe that will even be a good choice for DAZ's future, in spite of the data.
Maybe developing for Carrara really will bring far more revenue than D|S or their other gaming/content-related ventures. And maybe DAZ is just unaware of it. Maybe they just don't know about the in-depth sales projections and market analysis that this forum has developed. Maybe you guys really do know what's best for DAZ and its future.
And maybe a pig will fly in your window right now and deliver a winning lottery ticket.
Sure, call it "lobbying". Like that matters.
By the way, after looking at the Morph3D/DAZ venture website, where it says:
"We are taking our years of experience and putting it towards creating a new, versatile, and powerful figure platform, along with its own library of compatible content that retains the high quality of DAZ 3D and will work in realtime engines like Unity and Unreal as well as professional software like 3DS Max and Maya. Our aim is to make our platform compatible with as many creation pipelines and software suites as possible."
They make a very good case for what I mentioned a while back. Making their content usable on a wider range of platforms (like Blender), which opens their content market. To me, that sounds far more intelligent than focusing on a fairly dead product like Carrara. But that's just me I suppose. And DAZ.
from Aus. Gov. site. Here the government being Daz. ;)
I'm not sure about the flying pig comment Joe.
Please be civil in this thread.
thanks.
Please understand and accept that different cultures are, well, different. What some might think is rude, others might consider just good natured, forthright discussion, with no bad intent. So it's best not to criticize or characterize others as being "uncivll" unless you're certain that was their intent. Many people in my culture tend to talk straight and forthright, with no bad intent.
The flying pig reference was merely a lighthearted way of describing a highly unlikely event, again with no bad intent.
I'm fully aware of what lobbying is, and I'm a strong supporter of lobbying. I was merely suggesting that if you spend time lobbying things that are unreasonable or highly unlikely, then you might be wasting your time. Not sure how you can characterize that as uncivil.
You know Joe, maybe you are right and most folks around here (including me - it is a Carrara forum after all) just don't want to hear it.
Or maybe, if we set our sights at a realistic level - Genesis 3 compatibility plus a few easy to implement usability improvements - that DAZ will hear us, recognise that there is revenue potential in making a modest investment, and we get a new version of Carrara. Maybe they are working on it right now but don't want to make promises in advance.
Who knows.
(comments erased cuz I was misinterpreting...move along)
With all due respect, I think you have misinterpreted my comment.
Sorry, not my intent to misinterpret. I'll erase.
Thank you.
People make decisions at the margin. Econ 101. On the production side, how much marginal improvement to Carrara comes from a.marginal dollar spent on development. People have identified four revenue side considerations. 1). For that marginal improvement in Carrara, how much marginal increase in direct Carrara sales revenue will there be. Note, for Studio and other free apps, this factor is zero. 2). For that marginal improvement in Carrara, how much revenue from current Carrara users do we prevent from switching to another program. The original post intended to show that if Carrara users switched to other programs Daz would lose content sales. The thread has demonstrated that. Enough? No, but this is a sample, not the population (in a stat sense) 3). For that marginal improvement in Carrara, how much revenue from Studio does Daz preserve when Studio users want additional features and might migrate to other programs and thus other stores. Not considered much at all in the thread. 4) for that marginal improvement, how much additional revenue comes from people who might switch from non-daz products to Carrara and thus be drawn to the content store.
OK, that is the profit maximizing question, as I said. It is making decisions at the margin. Jargon? Continue expanding until marginal factor cost equals marginal revenue product. Focusing on totals is often misleading. The question is not how much would it cost Daz to improve one of its programs so that it has all of the features that anyone could want. It is how much does it cost to make marginal changes compared to marginal revenues.
Keeping blender users who don't buy Daz products from lowering their purchases of Daz products is not an issue. Revenues remain zero either way. No marginal change. Having a product that allows more customization than Studio yet still uses Daz content natively? See four questions above. But there are other considerations. For example, could similar effects as the marginal improvement in Carrara be had moe cheaply by giving a little development time to Bryce and Hexagon and to the bridge to Studio? Or, could similar effects be had by purchasing the rights to another non-daz program?
the original intent of this thread was to show Daz that Carrara users buy content that is labeled for studio and poser. Presumably, they knew that, but I have seen PAs make comments in the other Daz forums suggesting that Carrara users don't buy content. But whether daz already tracked by user or not (not just owner - some people own Carrara but don't use it) the thread did what it set out to do. Since daz marketing surveys often don't mention using Carrara, it is hard to see how they would be tracking by Carrara user instead of Carrara owner.
the back of the envelope calculations have been interesting, but no, they have not been definitive.
Diomede, with all due respect...I've read your post 3 times and I've concluded there isn't one sentence in there I can make sense of.
So I'll just assume you're WAY smarter than me.
thanks diomede
all perfect sense here, well put!