The new weapon of DAZ3D, is it good or not for the future of Carrara ?
DUDU
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I just discover this and I wonder if Carrara will be forgotten or beneficiary of this technology, what do you think ?
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Fascinating. Reminds me of www.mixamo.com
not sure of it's direct relevance for carrara. But maybe if they are successful with it they will have a development budget for carrara
Okay now, so, this is a very very long time ago in internet years, so bear with me. It also kind of parallels (and occasionally dovetails into) the development of Carrara, so it's kind of relevant.
And I mean this was long ago. It was about the time that Fractal Design (the company famous for unleashing the ultra-glossy piece of familiarity that was Kai's Power Tools, among others) and MetaTools, the company that produced the original Ray Dream Studio.
Anyway, one of the last tools that came from that mealy-mouthed wedding was, of course, Carrara. Then they decided to throw caution (and most common sense) to the wind and developed a plug-in that would allow people to view 3D content on their computers ...over the internet! Seriously, if you look back over the dot-com boom and bust in the very late 1990s, most of the business plans were just ordinary everyday stuff, with the words "over the internet!" tacked onto the end. Somehow, this was viewed as a radical shift in business practices. (That would be found instead in accounting, but that's another tale of horror.)
Very shortly after Metacreations released this plug-in, well, they tanked. Metacreations went toes-up so hard its spine left an indentation in the pavement. (Note: I have another metaphor for occasions like this that would be considered ...distasteful. Will share on request.) And Carrara began its dance between various partners that tried to do right by it—Eovia, Curious Labs, and finally Daz, which at the time was interested in developing it, but with management changes ultimately treated it at best like a cash cow, and at worst like a red-headed stepchild shuttered in the attic, acknowledged if anyone from child services came by but otherwise best neither heard nor seen.
...
And now Daz has a shiny new site set up to morph its various figures... for game engines!
In a perverse way, this development fills me with hope. And by that, I mean when Daz finally flounders in the general business space, I have hope that whoever buys Daz's assets will realize the value of Carrara and resume serious development.
Territan, good post, sounds right to me.
As you read the following, please remember that I know nothing!
But it looks to me that DAZ wants to sit at the top table of the 3d world selling figures and clothing to new markets. I'm not arguing with the views in preceding posts but I don't see how it should be such a bad idea that it's doomed to failure?
I suppose there must be a good market to tap into. Both Iclone and Poser cater to games developers.
Unfortunately, I don't see it helping Bryce, Hexagon or Carrara.
Yes, very good post Territan !
I'm accustomed of the casinos "online" and “live”, but I'm always astonished by the quality of these video games.
Here, DAZ3D targets also the professional platforms like 3DSMax, all that I hope for (like you), it is that Carrara will have the possibility of communicating with this program. Perhaps we will need a plugin, but it will be a beautiful opportunity so that Carrara remains in the race, at least in this area.
It seems that their goal is to make their quality accessible to all the platforms, not only for DS. Will this be the end of Genesis ?
Personally, I'm just the opposite. I think this is definitely just one more nail in the coffin. I think Marcus had it right.
The general public doesn't buy software anymore. They get it for free. We all do. Even super complicated professional software like Fusion, a compositing app are free. And the most widely used professional compositing app in the industry, Nuke, will be released for free this year. DAZ already released almost all of its software for free. And we can each come up with a list a mile long of free software we use every day. That's what people expect. They DON'T expect to pay big bucks for software like Carrara.
The problem is that most software like Carrara requires a TON of money and resources and time to develop. So how do you make money if you spend $5 million to develop the software, then turn around and give it away for free?
Well, DAZ's answer is that you use the software as bait, to get a lot of users of your free software, and then offer them a slick, shiny website where they can buy cheap but super cool content. Because they are a content company. Google offers free internet search, and pays for it by enticing its zillions of users to buy other stuff. Windows provides free operating system, but users buy other MS stuff. Facebook does the same thing. And on and on.
Now, how does Carrara fit into that? Well, I don't see how it can. People expect free software, but Carrara requires expensive development. And Carrara doesn't lead to content sales like D|S because D|S has a huge user base established, and Carrara has a relatively tiny one. Because it's not free. So what benefit can Carrara provide for DAZ?
Like I explained before, where is the best investment for DAZ? Where will their investment $$ go the furthest? With Carrara or D|S? Clearly, with D|S.
And like I also mentioned before, many times, being a content company, DAZ is interested in selling content. So they place their resources towards making that content usable in MANY applications, so they can sell to a much larger user base. And that's the obvious reason why this new Morph3D venture started. And that's why it is teaming with Reallusion to make its content usable in iClone.
Personally, I think it's just a matter of time before DAZ becomes the universal content company, and its content is almost an industry standard. At least I'm sure that's their goal. It's obvious. It's the Wal Mart business model. Well, not exactly, but you get the point. Make your name known everywhere, provide a cheap product that everyone can use.
And as we all know, gaming is one of the largest hobbies for the general public. It is a HUGE market. Far larger than anything that Carrara can offer. So DAZ wants a part of that market. Which is why it bought Gizmoz years ago, in their failed effort to get into the gaming/avatar market. BTW, I say "failed" because I believe that venture with Gizmoz never amounted to anything.
And where is Carrara? Yeah, it's users buy content. A relatively small part of the total content revenues, but it does generate revenues. So DAZ plays the balancing act of putting enough investment into Carrara to justify the small revenues. Just enough. And so it spends some resources on making its new content compatible with Carrara. When it gets time from all its other high revenue-producing work with D|S and iClone and Morph3D, that is...
So unless DAZ can figure some way that Carrara can suddenly generate huge revenues, rather than just being a resource-sucking black hole of development $$ that generates little revenues, I think Carrara will just wither and die. Like it has been doing for the last 5 years.
Sorry to say that, but it seems fairly obvious. And past history in the last 5 years has supported all of that.
By the way, i recently saw a statistic that said that Facebook now has over 1.4 BILLION users. That's right, BILLION.
Now, can you imagine if somehow they got each user to buy something for, say, 1 US cent? How much revenue would that generate?
Answer: Over $10 million.
That's why it's free to use Facebook. Free software is the bait, buying other stuff is the reward (or the price, depending on who you are...)
And by the way, you can be absolutely guaranteed that EVERY software/internet company on the planet is VERY aware of the Facebook business model. And all the other similar models. You get a zillion-person user base by giving away free stuff, and entice that huge user base to buy cheap stuff.
And simple math tells you: A zillion items purchased x small price per item = BIG BUCKS
And one more example that came to mind...
Anyone hear of "Candy Crush"? A friend of mine is addicted. Apparently a lot of people are. It's a free game, one of many free games out there.
And I recently checked the stats for the company who developed Candy Crush, King Digital. It has revenues of something like $500 million. From free games.
Go figure.
But anyone who's played knows the "hook". It's free, but it relies on the user's impatience. People can't wait to get to the next level so they pay a nominal fee to King.
Also by the way...
There are, obviously, other software business models out there that are, presumably, very successful.
For example, for the relatively small market of professional 3D graphics folks, where the software alone is the market and there are no opportunities for the "free software/other sales" model, there is the high priced software model. You spend big $$ developing the software, then charge users for that development cost, plus a profit. It's the Maya or Newtek or similar models. That's because there are enough "high end" and high priced users out there who will pay the software fee and other support license fees just for the software.
Now, is Carrara in that market? I don't think so. Carrara's market is not the professional community, it's the hobbyist community. It's people who generally won't pay big bucks for software. Yeah, there are clearly those who would pay, say, $200-300 to buy Carrara, but that group of people is very small compared to what I believe DAZ's market is: a HUGE base of users who value free and low priced software and content.
And those are two completely different companies: content development and sales and marketing, vs. software development and sales and marketing. And DAZ is the former.
Anybody knows if these figures can be imported in Carrara?
I wish the best for Carrara. I also understand the priority of any business is to survive, profit, attract VC, so I don't feel any company is morally obligated to develop all the softwares they own. Autodesk buy Softimage just to kill it. Record cos/ sports leagues buy upstarts to elevate or cold-bench them as business strategy.
IMO Carrara is being treated okay, just not getting Taylor Swift treatment.
As to the OP 'if Morph3D is good for the future of Carrara?' my take is: neutral, and no change. I'm actually surprise it took this long to get a STANDARDIZED Daz3D character PLATFORM for game dev!
This news come as a neutral for me...
I only buy into Daz3D's ecology not for DS, but for Carrara and its useful-enough ANIMATION compatibility with Genesis 1 - a CHARACTER PLATFORM.
Game dev needs and CG animatior needs (mine) for characters are quite similar - we are looking for outfit+prop+morph+anim auto-conform and compatibility and scale-ability. We also want light vertex density and pixel density efficiency and as little UV fuss as possible.
I'm curious about the (unfortunately named) Darwin platform. I suspect Genesis 3's UVmap + Bone Weight portability + Autofit mechanism are made to be fully compatible with Darwin. Perhaps, Darwin = Genesis3?
If that's the case, then morph3D/ Darwin will only become relevant to Carrara if and when Genesis 3 works fully and seamlessly within Carrara. Which, logically, will likely happen only after Genesis 3 become seamlessly integrated with new Daz Studio's new and shinier Transfer Utility. Still WIP, last I check...
There are plenty of canned dolls for game dev in the market, Mixamo Makehuman iClone's G6, Morph3D.com offering needs to have an edge over others beyond cross-compatibility morphs and autofit clothing props.
Personally, it doesn't matter if it's TriAx or Dual Quaternion, I hope Darwin/ Morph3D characters has Genesis 1/2 proper joint bending which port seamlessly in DS Carrara or iClone. Otherwise it's just another run of the mill canned low-res doll for the gaming gen users like me.
I'm also curious about how they're going to approach the expansion of this new-ish Darwin/ Morph3D ecology system. Just don't expect game dev types to put up with manual-deficit hyper-self-referencing Daz Store mazes. New policies will also have to be artist-friendlier and dev-attracting.
Example - when Carrara plugin developers feel good about setting up shop locally, it will be symptom of a healthy thriving ecology. Until then...
We hope, this program must be launched end of 2015 !
If you turn all the dials in the Morph3D demo version to 100%, the results are a bit scary.
I downloaded it into Unity but got no further, the FBX does not import intact into Carrara either.