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There isn't a Reality plugin for Carrara so it can't be included.... And while there are plugins I like *better* than the ones I listed, I tried to list ones that would actually be a good feature in Carrara as a standard, either as a much needed function or something that would appeal to semi-professional users like video editors and game makers..., Aniblocks are only useful for GoFigure animations which are only sold at DAZ, so it's a pretty limited use and not likely to draw new customers.... You can't even create new Aniblocks without Daz Studio. I feel the same way about Optitex, too limited, but there may be D|S users who are holding back because of Aniblocks and Optitex.
GoFigure will probably be in the PA sale at 50% off (they were last year).
Many great wish items here.
I am another of those glad to have Genesis support - even though Genesis, itself, isn't quite good enough to belong as one of my "Main" actors - it seems to be just what the doctor ordered for making a lot of variety folks - if only it didn't make save and load time so much higher. A bit more tweaking, I guess.
I'd LOVE to be able to select the hip of a character and drag it down - and have the feet stop at the floor (or other surface) and begin the bending of the joints - or even a way to be able to lock (pin) the foot, and have it hold.
I'd also love to see an option to deselect what parts will be effected with an NLA Clip.
Would be great to be able to manipulate the individual box corners of Fire and Vol Cloud primitives along the timeline (or even at all). Still think they're great... but I could do much better if I had independent control over the overall shape of the thing. I really need a way to make the bottom of the fire to 'not appear flat'.
More wave movement/shaping features for the Ocean Prim would be welcome as well.
I second the wish from page one (Holly, I think?) regarding selecting GPU assist for renders! What ever you do, please don't change Carrara's great interface!
Even more, I'd really just be happy to see Carrara stick around. After trying many other options in the 3d CGI Software realm, I am more than pleased with what Carrara has been enabling me to do (total cgi filming - with little-to-no need for post work, besides splicing and cutting) with animation.
You can. Today. Right now. And you don't even need permission. Or a license. As a matter of fact I just did something like that last week. And I think I posted a video of it. It works. Really. I'm not kidding.
Regarding pinning feet to the floor, you can use target helpers for that. Did it tonight for a figure. If you're going to use it in an NLA clip it can be troublesome. It would be nice to have a pin feature, but since you can already pin feet with a minute or two extra set-up time, I would prefer a walk designer.
When you set up your NLA clip, you have the option of what to include. If you're doing a walk, you can exclude the arms (for instance) and create different arm swings which can be layered with the walk clip.
Volumetric clouds and fire can be scaled in the timeline. What I would like to see is an approximation of the area that the cloud takes up in the bounding box, plus an explanation of what the Animate button does in the set-up screen. I have never been able to animate settings in the volumetric clouds that transition smoothly.
I agree, It would be nice if you had a little more control of the fire. I would like to be able to set a wind direction and speed for the fire, plus a few other tweaks.
Here's a repost of my post regarding the subject to which we are referring, ie, the movement of the hips re: the legs and stickage...
"Okay, I may have given Carrara a bit of a bad rap that isn’t really deserved when I used an example of knee bending when you lower the hips. Turns out that’s pretty easy to do, as well as maintaining the feet/toes planted flat on the ground throughout the motion.
Below is an animation of H4 (the first time I’ve ever used the guy…anyone else think he’s really weird looking?) doing a simple squat, then balancing on each leg. What’s normally done automatically using expressions had to be done with FK (counter-rotating the spine to maintain balance), so since Carrara doesn’t have expressions the other examples I gave are still legit. But knee bends and foot planting are do-able.
The way I did it is to add an IK modifier to each shin and each toe, and then add three IK goals for each leg, and assign one each to the shin IK, the toe IK, and the foot IK. Took a bit of tweaking to figure out the best location for the goals, but once you’ve got that it works okay. Though I did have to remove rotation limits for the foot as I recall to keep the feet flat on the ground.
http://youtu.be/IQNnuT02WPE"
Once the target helper objects have done their job and you've got the movements you want, you can disengage and delete them, so they won't be troublesome in an NLA. In fact, you can engage and disengage along the timeline for interesting actions.
Once the target helper objects have done their job and you've got the movements you want, you can disengage and delete them, so they won't be troublesome in an NLA. In fact, you can engage and disengage along the timeline for interesting actions.
Tried that. My animations usually get screwy after I get rid of them. I'm not sure why. I suppose it could be that there are parts of the model that don't move and don't get keyframes generated by moving a target helper and don't translate correctly throughout the animation. I just know I haven't had much luck. I keep plugging away at ti though, because in theory it should work beautifully.
Carrara is built upon plugins, just look at the extension folder.
In the past, some of these plugins were included as part of the software.
IE: RAYflects four elements & Blubble, Metastreams OBJ importer & 3DS importer.
The ideal solution would be for DAZ to approach the plugin developers who no longer wish to continue to update their product, and ask permission to update and include their plugin as part of Carrara.
There are/were some great plugins. either being developed, or no longer updated, that would really be helpful as an integral part of Carrara.
My suggestion is to upgrade the business model, to add a higher spec Carrara that includes externally developed plugins to upgrade Carrara to a higher level that can compete with the more expensive render packages out there. Today there is an "advance pack" in the store that adds fire and smoke, that should be added to Carrara 9 Ultimate along with the previously mentioned functions for water, explosions, physically correct renderers and so on.
Carrara 9 - $199 -Same cut down version as today
Carrara 9 Pro - $549 - Same as today with one or 2 news from the Ultimate version
Carrara 9 Ultimate - $749 - Added 200 bucks to spread between: 50 bucks for Reality/Luxrender like integration, 50 bucks for fire/smoke/explosions, 50 bucks for dynamic clothes/water, 50 for something else important I forgot.
The usual 30% off for PC members, once or twice a year at 50% off, but the rebate should not affect the added 200$ on Ultimate since all of those money go the external developers.
But what do I know, I am just another noob...
3drendero, just because you're a "noob" doesn't mean you're not allowed to think and figure stuff out. I just got done explaining why what you're asking for is virtually impossible. But in spite of that, you suggest DAZ should include "externally developed" plugins for all the whiz bang features, and charge $50 each. Yes, externally developed plugins, if you can find someone willing to do it (which you probably can't), and who is willing to work for almost no pay (not likely), and has the time and resources to do it in time for C9 (virtually impossible), are probably a reasonable alternative.
But unless you know of someone out there who wants and is skilled enough to develop plugins for Carrara that handle fire, smoke, rendering, fluids, etc., and can do it within our lifetimes, and is going to do it for almost no money at all, it ain't gonna happen. But of course you're free to believe what you want to believe.
Sorry, missed your explanation.
Googled that both Blender and Carrara both use the bullet physics libraries, since blender has fluid simulation (bullet or not) the source code is available.
Guessing at least 100 Carrara Ultimates would get about 5000$ for porting an existing fluid sim, blender is just one example.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Manual/Physics/Fluid
Fire and smoke maybe could work by integrating Inagonis plugin and improving it, or take a look at the source code from blender and integrating that function for 5000$:
http://www.miikahweb.com/en/articles/blenderfire
Rendering plugins or exporters should be easier, since there are several engines already supporting several different rendering packages, there has to be an efficient work method behind it, either cheap programmers from India or something else.
I agree, it would be nice to have some of the stuff that already exists out there brought into Carrara. Some of the Blender stuff is wonderful.
But I think you are very, very much underestimating what that would take. Using your examples, $5,000 won't get you doodly. First of all, $5,000 isn't $5,000 when you're in a company. Some goes to pay for marketing, and lights, and lawyers, and maintenance, and a whole bunch of stuff. So if you get $5,000 in revenues only a fraction is available to pay developers.
So let's say it costs a company $50,000 per year just for a developer's salary. That's about $4,000 per month. Which means that $5,000 is about the cost of one programmer for a month. As any programmer will tell you, porting a fluids or other fancy code to Carrara will take a whole lot longer than a month. We're talking many, many, many months. And you have to understand it all. How many programmers out there understand fluids code, or Carrara code? Same story if you find some guy in India.
And that's not the whole problem. Who says you can take code from Blender and use it for commercial purposes? And do you think it's easy to look at code you didn't write and figure out what it does, especially if you don't understand the equations it's trying to reproduce? You've gotta understand the physics to understand what the code is doing.
My point is, once again, this stuff isn't easy. It's very difficult. Very, very difficult. And time consuming. And expensive. No matter how you do it. Paola had a plugin all set to go. He'd developed the same thing for DAZ Studio. He'd worked with DAZ. He knew the code for Reality and how to connect it to other software. Piece of cake, right? But it didn't happen because he wasn't convinced he'd make money in the long run, and didn't want to risk it. Very smart move, IMO. And you can be guaranteed that just about any intelligent plugin programmer will see the same situation, have the same questions, and likely make the same decisions.
But people here tend to believe what they want to believe, and think he should have gone ahead anyway, solely because they want the plugin for Carrara. But the facts are contrary to what they want to believe. Just because you want it doesn't make it reasonable.
Definitely wouldn't be cheap and not easy.
Looking at the Blender link for fire, it's really doing some short particle emissions for smoke using a color gradient. Bet something could be done similarly in Carrara with some work using lights and some of the existing stuff like clouds. maybe not as elegant yet but I know Cripeman got clouds emitted by the particle generator. Maybe the existing fire could be tweaked a little more in a container and combined with the clouds from the particle emitter. Not one stop shopping but nobody said this would be easy. And Age of Armour/William Hurt has a bunch of examples he did, including a gun toting Aiko shooting up stuff here... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFxGFPoyXXc That's from 3 years ago.
There's your gun toting "babe," Joe. I like the one you did earlier in the thread. ;)
Here's a neat looking pouring water effect which is in reality a rotating torus with a water shader and some other tweaks done by mCasual in DS... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ito7Xnxve4 easily able to be done in Carrara.
I came across a link for a guy working on a Poser to Blender plugin that's being paid for by a private investor. He's been working on it for over a year a with a little success, but not everything goes over easily yet and one of his big problems is Blender is a moving target and he's always having to make revisions for it. At least Carrara revisions are slow in coming and much of it hasn't changed for several versions!
here's my wishlist, most of which are features that already exist in other 3d apps such as DS or Poser, so if they haven't been implemented in Carrara by the time it's reached v8, then they probably never will be. (p.s. i'm no Carrara expert, having only just returned to it after a long hiatus during which i was mainly using DS, so if there are ways to do any of these things, then please let me know):
> a shader selector, similar to DS's Surface Selection tool. in a large scene with dozens, maybe scores, of different shaders, currently a user has to scroll through a long list and guess which is the one they're interested in just from its name. as an aside, why doesn't the existing eye-dropper thingee do that?
> the ability to edit one parameter (usually mad "glossiness" values) in multiple shaders at the same time
> the ability to keep the object manipulation tools (mainly the Move Tool) on screen all the time, so that it doesn't move with the object. that would be far more useful than the current ability to simply move the object's hotspot manually
> the app should remember settings (such as window sizes, things like "Show Production Frame", and render settings), between sessions
> the Poser content browser should not try and slavishly copy the Poser directory structure, it should display any folder in the Poser runtime that isn't set to "Hidden". at present it doesn't show the very useful new "Scene" directory because it doesn't think it's a "proper" Poser directory, and it does show a load of useless folders that vendors often set up for their own purposes or to store .pmd files
> allow the user to manage their browser objects a little more, i.e. being able to rename saved objects, shaders, etc, and allowing the user to actually ADD folders to My Objects or whatever, rather than having to do it manually in File Explorer. (i know there's an "add folder" fuction, but it doesn't actually add a folder, it just lets the user point to an already created one)
> allow the user to create their own thumbnails for saved files rather than the useless teeny little ones that get generated when you drag something into the browser window. shouldn't be too difficult to use .png files for the thumbnails, same as everyone else does. (i know you can generate thumbnails if you do "save as", but sometimes you just want to save part of a scene rather than the whole thing)
> the ability to look through lights as if they were cameras
> dynamic clothing would be nice
> more realistic skies, like vue's or bryce's
> um, some more stuff that i can't think of right now, but i'm not holding out any great hopes for either
most importantly i hope that Carrara 9 is actually a proper new version of the app. when the main selling point of a new version of an app is "God Rays" you know that you're not really getting a new version at all
Imagine if we could go back a few years.
Imagine if Daz had listened and came up with the great idea of rewriting Carrara as a modular 3d suite.
Taking the best of Bryce, Hexagon, and Carrara and created a true contender (even Daz studio in this context).
Every thing would be under the same hood. each module unlocked by a serial number. Dreaming again!
I have always been frustrated with what appears to be a lack of vision when it comes to Carrara. I know that Daz has added some features.
What gets me is when I came on board and bought C5 pro right before it sold to Daz - It was rated with the other 3d offerings.
Neglect mis-management has stripped Carrara of its potential. Sad.
That being said, we have watched cheetah, modo, and blender, implement bullet Physics - the right way. Over this time period, these 3d packages have undergone major transformation - All the while, the brunt of Carrara's develope is for compliance and use with Dazstudio. Carrrara has not been able to develope naturely . Instead of being the flagship software, Carrara has stepped to the background, while da studio has been font and center. for this reason I will never use daz studio - it's entire development and focus have been at the expense of Carrara. IMO - this has been a dis-service to the Carrara community and to the package itself.
For Christmas I would like:
(1) New native content. Why not? Watch Bremmer's tutorial on creating realistic foliage - wow, who knew?
(2) stability - I am extremely tired of having to manually turn off my mac - because Carrara has stopped responding.
(3) More love for Carrara - It's so obvious that Daz studio is enamored with their name sake.
There are other things...most already cited.
but to me the biggest is the thought of what Carrara could have been. We will never know.
I've been getting serious about learning blender. It's hard to step away from Carrara - I love Carrara - and would throw down $300.00 - $400.00 without hesitation, if I thought that I was investing in the development of Carrara and not Daz studio.
While, I don't mean negative. I just wish Daz3d loved Carrara as much as I do. Geeze - look at how far Shade (now at v 13) has come in just the last few years.
Shade certainly is looking like the model of progress, particularly as it seems to have spent some time in the wilderness. I'll certainly be considering it in the future. Buy it now and get the free upgrade to 10 - sounds pretty sweet to me. Learning the outrageously complex Blender does seem to offer a good future and a lot of possibilities. I wonder if Carrara would fare better if it was sold off or split into a new company along with Bryce and Hexagon. Though I couldn't imagine a new company carrying those products would have much money to throw around, at least untill they had the shine put back on. I wouldn't think it was too late to revive the Carrara name.
Thank goodness they didn't rewrite it! Can you imagine the bug ridden mess we would have had? And thank goodness I'm on a Windows PC since Carrara is usually pretty stable unless I do something dumb. DAZ does content well, but they don't have the size of the team needed to do what you and others want.
I think it's a lack of sales that causes the lack of progress not a lack of vision. The actual sales DAZ gets for Carrara are probably very little - that was Eovia's problem, remember. Their sales had dropped. Users had been leaving for other programs for quite some time. Carrara had a good reputation, but with caveats. I had Carrara since v2 or 3 and the complaints when 5 came out from many were it hadn't progressed enough and had problems. I remember the other problems I had then of even getting my order confirmed and a serial number. It took a long time to get it worked out which made me think then that they had problems we weren't privy to. I had to fax them my receipt and waited days for the serial number even after phone calls and e-mails. There were definite problems with Eovia. They left for Europe and DAZ bought and saved Carrara and Hexagon.
We are fortunate that DAZ has kept it alive and we can usually upgrade for very little compared to other programs. I remember that folks from DAZ have stated before that if Carrara sold better, they could develop it more as the money is alotted for development based on sales. But we have had a contentious lot here who are very negative and whine and kill sales on their own. Some are ignorant and some are downright dumb. And DAZ doesn't make much when the new versions come out as most are bought on sale and most are just users upgrading at low DAZ prices - which is good for us but bad for Carrara development in the long run. If DAZ actually got the normal asking price and sold a lot of downloads, they would be able to afford to add more developers, and you know it doesn't work that way. Most people with any sense wait for a DAZ discount to happen. I really do not think there are many who have actually bought the program at full price since Eovia owned it.
What Carrara can do (which most users never even exploit) is good to great. I'm hoping for a little free time soon where I can dig into more of the lesser used features. I spent a couple hours recently on the particle generator and was amazed at just what it can do. There are some other things I think might be better than what some say. I'm learning now to not trust what some folks post here problem wise or feature wise as they aren't smart enough to figure some things out. There is much good information here, but there is often as much bad information.
The problem with Blender is that it's ever evolving. What works in one version is broken or taken away in another - at least if something is broken in Cararra, it usually stays until it's fixed. There's a guy who has been working well over a year now on making a plugin to import Poser/DAZ stuff into Blender. He's being paid by a private investor to work on it. But it's been slowed time and time again by the constant changes. Maybe Blender will be ready in a couple years, but to me, too many changes and too much relearning of how to do things. It reminds me of when I got Animation:Master back in 1994... great little program that worked well. Then they had to rewrite it and killed the simple interface and the way things worked. It took a few years to get it right but they really ticked off a bunch of users in the meantime.
After watching all the changes in DAZ Studio, some for the better, some not, I wouldn't wish a re-write on Carrara at all. Nobody would be happy. Look how long it's taken to get to DS 4.5 which is much more reliable than 4. But you have to buy a ton of plugins to even come close to what Carrara can do well. DAZ Studio users, though, often say they can't get their heads around Carrara. So it's a user problem in that regard. I get so frustrated with the ignorance of many users, but that's the way it goes. I'm sure it's more frustrating for DAZ.
Importing Poser content would be an absolute, non-negotiable, must-have before I take another look at Blender. I see it in action with DreamLight's Model Master tutorials. It has a slick interface but it the number of options and tools panels are utterly overwhelming...scary even... :ahhh:
My dream is that with DS4.5 finished, that Daz lets those coder loose on C8.5/9. Hmmm...maybe I am feverish this morning... ;-)
...
*drums fingers*
Is it C9 yet?
As you can plainly see in the responses to my C9 wishlist, Kevin S. is absolutely correct in that, some of us are just too dumb/ignorant to make use of existing features to get what we want. I have been misusing Carrara since I've owned it - yet it still manages to turn out what I want - simply because it does have many capabilities for finding work-arounds. Carrara is very robust. Falling behind in the latest trends may be a reality - but nothing on the market today compares to the flexibility and power (and overall fun!!!) of Carrara for me.
In response to Kevin's post, above: I just hope that they release a Carrara 9 Pro so that I can buy it and help contribute to the future of Carrara.
I am very new to all of this stuff - perhaps that's why Carrara is the best option for me. As for Daz Studio... I don't like using it at all - for my scene/animation work. But it talks nicely with Hexagon and has some incredibly useful tools for preparing objects for my Carrara endeavors - so I'll enjoy keeping it in my toolkit.
Too right!
At the moment, I am watching some tutorial videos for Lightwave and am feeling a slight, seductive pull away from Carrara (and the videos from DreamLight -- Model Master and Light Master are not helping in this regard either). Yet I know that I cannot leave Carrara behind any time soon...
My skills are still too amateurish. My Daz Content library too large (yet it is tiny compared to many of you out there I am sure). The icing on this is that I don't have the time or extra money to invest in learning a new software package.
I gotta say though...Bullet Physics in Lightwave appears to be vastly more robust and easy to use than it is in Carrara. So I keep hoping that C8.5 takes some tentative steps forward here.
I am stunned,
today I just got Daz clothing on an iClone character into iClone functioning via Carrara!
the Reallusion forumites have been adament you need 3dsMax to do this.
okay there ARE issues but she talks, she walks she is wearing Daz clothes (very badly attached and weightpainted by me)
admittedly there was a patch added to 3dxchange5 pipeline which apparently enabled it but I think I was the first to discover this.
it WAS meant to enable better interchange with Blender, Carrara is a lucky side effect!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb2kTRZ56l4
New wish: The ability to "nudge" points or lines in the UV Edit screen with the cursor keys...single pixel at a time movements rather than rely on a mouse to move juuuuuust the right amount.
I think what is most frustrating is that Carrara was so much more than DAZ Studio originally --yet Daz obviously swung most of their development resources to Daz Studio and to the point now with enough plugins is getting pretty close to Carrara. ( One could only imagine what could have been if that effort was focused on Carrara. Obviously --Daz was fighting Poser and wanted a back up plan for a content delivery program and felt Carrara was not the right way to do it ? . )
But that said ---us Carrara fans have always felt like second class squatters on Daz's property begging for crumbs. Fortunately , I suppose they do throw us some here and there and that is a good thing for sure .........and so I guess we havehad that.
But one can't help but feel a little like the bryce and hexagon folks who were given tickets to move along off the property after they started feeling the same way.
The resource dollars have always been directed more at Studio because of its much larger base and what it brings in re: content and users and it already had a big user base here. Carrara didn't when it was bought from Eovia. We'd probably have more plugins if Carrara users would buy them from the folks who make them.
Problem is that Carrara seems to be too complex for the folks who like to use DAZ Studio and Poser. That's always been a problem I see in those forums... when Carrara is suggested, someone will say they can't figure it out. DAZ has already heard from some of the those folks that studio is too complex(!), even though DAZ Studio now is even easier to use for the drag, drop and render crowd. DAZ and we have to suffer the fools.
If Carrara itself and Carrara specific content could bring in more dollars, I think we'd have a better case. But DAZ Studio has to be improved for the sake of Genesis and to fight the improvements in Poser, though many of the real improvements to Poser were from tweaked settings and a couple folks showing what could be done... mainly BagginsBill and SnarlyGribbly and some of the more technically adept artists using Poser. If we had more of those folks here, it would be a great help but many have left or taken a break. Some are focused more on Studio now since making content for it makes money (DT and Mec4D for example). But we could sure use the help of tips from the likes of 3DCelebrity, for instance (how she makes Carrara hair and how she gets those beautiful promo renders - it can't be just lighting... she's doing something else). There are little things like that people are missing. Sure, there are the Poser nitwits, too, who think waxy renders are great SSS, but there are those who know what they are doing and are pulling very good renders out of Poser, even though the same or better can be done in Carrara and DAZ Studio.
DAZ has to setup better default settings for Carrara and Studio and explicit instructions on how to make DAZ and Poser content look great in Carrara and Studio. And not the old guess and by gosh method. Specifics. That would be one of THE best things they could do. I know there are the Carrara users who really don't care about DAZ content, but if they could really get it to work well in making DAZ content look great simply and easily, we might be able to get more of the content buyers to give Carrara a try and make more sales and more development dollars for Carrara.
Right now, Carrara users seem like the niche Beta tape and LaserDisc/Blu-ray crowd compared to the mass VHS/DVD/Netflix crowd. We have the better system but the ease of use of Poser and Studio are beating us.
Well... I had to stop myself from posting a reply earlier, because it just made me angry (LOL).
1) Carrara's original philosophy was DIY (bigger toolkit, general use)
2) DAZ3D's philosophy is buy our presets (smaller toolkit, very focused use)
This is in conflict. In practice it is in EXTREME conflict. There's not just a lack of support for Carrara, Carrara has been excluded from contests, feature requests that would aid content development have been ignored, meanwhile when we request 3D-Coat applink we are told to go find a plugin developer.... for a program that has sat in beta for over a year and still no release date in sight... It goes beyond a double standard. It's sabotage. Why would anyone want to develop for Carrara? Every plugin and product developer has jumped ship already.
3) Carrara + DAZ3D = best of both worlds, content + DIY
That's how it SHOULD be. That's the potential, but in practice DAZ's push to sell content is about enabling helplessness, and there are very few attempts to exploit the possibilities of what DIY + CONTENT might be. (Carrara hair is one exception, but Carrara suffers from poor physics apparently). Ensuring that Carrara is at the tail end of content compatibility, yet preventing a bug update until the content is perfected with D|S and Poser is patently ridiculous. There should have been a Carrara 8.2 a year ago, and leave Genesis for Carrara9.
What we actually have is:
3a) DAZ3D has zero interest in DIY. They are actually against it in practice and marketing...
3b) Carrara is crippled at content (we've had weight painting all along, but no V4 with Carrara weight painting. So we're waiting on Genesis whose big innovation is... weight painting (!) but a kind that is completely incompatible with Carrara's... and it just goes on and on...)
3c) There is no development because there is no content. There is no content because there is no development. ad infinitum.
There is zero chance Carrara will become MORE content friendly. We are at the tail end of that train. We will be the LAST to gain compatibility. Why? DAZ says so. Ask for more compatibility we are told to go find a developer. Ask for a final version of Carrara we are told we are waiting on compatibility.... The rules flipflop depending on whether they can sell their content. That's how it is and that's how it's been all along. It won't change.
But what if...?
4) Carrara bridges out of content into the larger 3D and small studio worlds -- and the reverse: Carrara bridges the semi-pro market to content. Better video import/export and After Effects compatibility. Better file format compatibility to modelers, and game engines. Real World uses for 3D in illustration and marketing.
In my opinion this is where Carrara should be positioned: semi-proffesion 3D with a bridge to content. Less "needlepoint for the craftsy housewife who doesn't want to learn how to model and texture". And DAZ should know the potential because they've always had a hand in that bigger market with their high end medical models.... But they are so busy selling miniskirts and werewolves to see a useful niche in the working studio world -- and I'm not dissing the skimpy clothes since I buy them too put on my large breasted wolfbabe™.... But my point is there is very much a "niche" for Carrara but it bridges the insular world of "content and crafts" to a semi-professional world of working artists and animators, and also people who want to go much deeper into their own creativity (hardcore hobbiests).
So in my opinion, since DAZ shows no love for Carrara with the content, the goal should be to seek out these outside partners where Carrara can be a unique bridge for those communities TO content, rather than the other way around.... Carrara doesn't need dumbing down, it should smarten up!
DAZ put some money towards Carrara Cafe, but that is more a hardcore hobby site, than a semi-professional showcase. Cafe bridges to nowhere and gains no new customers, and that is appropriate from a community site.... Still, where the absent potential would be is this semi-pro 3D area - partnering with other important or up and coming players that are semi-pro (Unity, 3D-Coat, Vue, C4D).... That would boost Carrara's image and also make content a possibility in their world.
Reallusion has announced they are taking Crazytalk to iOS and iPad.... Exporters that target app creation could be a whole new market for Carrara also, since Carrara is already strong on Macs.... There are a lot of outside markets that Carrara could bridge to, but will always be at the caboose of content development.
Holly, I'm glad you waited! :) I often wait these days because I read more idiot posts than I'd like here in general between the different forums I visit and over at Renderosity.
You have some good ideas to bridge the worlds and get into more semi-pro use. But one of my main gripes is the way renders that are posted look and that's why I think that is important to fix. Most look like crap. I refuse to post mine because they look like crap - maybe I will someday soon if I can get a couple more things figured out - but I won't until then. It wouldn't involve dumbing down Carrara at all. It would actually smarten it up because it would be useful documentation that actually gets something good accomplished with the existing toolset.
We should have pointers on how to make the content look great because it can. We've seen it look great in the right hands. If it looks great in Carrara, everyone will sit up and take notice, especially the semi-pro community because they (we) don't have time to experiment and dink around. (I'm trying to add more CG to my part-time free-lance voice over/advertising service as some customers have inquired about it. Flying logos and web graphics are not the end all be all for me, especially since WordPress themes are sucking the life out of web design. I want to move on and do more.) I really think bad renders and negative posts have hurt Carrara more than we'd like to admit over the years. Carrara experienced a resurgence of interest when Howie's scenes hit the market. Quality renders help sell it. But there hasn't been much to crow about lately.
Carrara needs the sizzle to sell to the current content buyers here so they will buy at the next upgrade putting more development dollars toward Carrara. That way we can get the great things you mentioned like improved video import/export, AE compatibility, better file format support, etc. in v9. DAZ is the kind of company that sits up and notices when money comes in. Quality renders with Carrara hair (and more styles than we have) posted in the Commons would help. Look how excited folks got when Cath (Mec4D) posted her Z-Brush hair in the commons. I think Carrara hair looks better and would steer more wallets this way.
I believe we'd be further along with Carrara if Genesis hadn't caused such a negative uproar in the Poser community. That probably hurt DAZ's business to some degree as the Poser folks over at Renderosity were making such a huge stink. That would explain why they are so focused on Genesis and content is the main business, and fixing the problems of Studio, which was also rushed would put their other work on the back burner.
Carrara's DIY idea is still relevant and it could/should work in the DAZ way of thinking. After all, the idea for all the tools in Studio Pro was stated right here on this site - so more content could be made. They need content to sell content. Unfortunately, Carrara specific content sales since Howie and some hair sets probably don't set the DAZ world on fire. I try to buy most Carrara content when I can afford to. But that comes to the other problem. The economy. It's been stinking. Thankfully it's coming around but not fast enough. I still can't buy at the level I was doing for new software and content 4 years ago. I'm making around $10,000+ less a year than I was then.
That's why we need the DAZ content people to buy and get excited about Carrara, even if they never use it to its fullest... hell, most of us don't. Get the people who are still spending money to spend it here for Carrara. Until then, DAZ has us pegged as the software that doesn't sell as well as they'd probably like and some users (a small handful - and most of the bad ones are gone) who have a real bad attitude to the DAZ support personnel. I don't blame them for not caring as much because of that, but thankfully they still do care, otherwise Carrara would be free and not worked on at all anymore.
DAZ is much more interested in selling content than software. Almost all of their development is aimed at Genesis. That's where their business model is oriented. I suspect gen 4 sales are getting soft, so they roll out gen 5. I for one am not interested in buying a bunch of new stuff so I can pose a skimpy dressed perfect body figure. I will leave that to the 14 year olds.
I do not expect DAZ to ever fix the crashes and other bugs buried deep in Carrara. All I have to do is look at Studio, which they have spent a lot more time developing. Almost all of the things that drive me insane with Studio are still there. So, I know they are not going to fix Carrara. I suspect no one at DAZ really knows what is in Carrara. I bet the original programmers are long gone.
I got into the 3D world a few years ago so I could do SFX and plates for photographs and film. This has led into producing a full length independent animated film that with any luck will be ready for release next spring. This has been under production for about 2 years, counting story development and script writing.
When I first got into 3D I looked at Poser and Studio. I rejected Poser's incredibly weird GUI right away. Studio is fine for posing characters and positioning models, but real production work is problematic. When I found Carrara, I got really excited... wow, all of these features at this price. The promise is nothing short of fantastic. But...the reality is maddening, in short CRASH, CRASH, CRASH...and that thing with the production frame not rigidly attached to the camera...what is up with that? (as a long time photographer and videographer I find just about everything about Carrara's cameras strange)
I use Carrara only when I am forced to. It remains a great tool for landscapes and scenery...but I have to grit my teeth and put up with the crap when I want to use it. I know I push Carrara really, really hard, but I would be willing to pay quite a bit to get a bug free and stable Carrara. Forget about making Carrara work with Genesis and make it work very well for its own strengths.
I believe DAZ's software development suffers from one major flaw...the lack of thorough debugging before releasing or what used to be called 'Software Engineering'. I suspect they contract out pieces of the development and then hope it works when they patch it together. They don't seem to have, on staff, in house, a group whose only task is to try to break and crash their programs...find its limitations.
BTW: My primary tools (when I am not cussing at Carrara) are: 3ds Max, Sony Vegas, Photoshop, After Effects and HitFilm Ultimate running on a Vista 64bit dual Xeon 8 core, 24 GB memory with a GeForce GTX 570 and a Windows 7 64bit Core 2 quad, 8 GB mem with a GeForce 9800 GT.
Like Kevin is saying (part of it, anyways), some great, ingeniously crafted content in the realms of scenes, hair and characters shaders (threw that one in myself) specifically for Carrara, who's promo images really make the consumer stop and go: "Whoa... that's f@kin' awesome!" could really help to kick-start Carrara sales alone - if there's enough of it, and it really has to be top-notch stuff. I'd also love to see some particle systems preset packs and even physics scenes that work in the Carrara market as well. I have yet to have any luck getting the Carrara hair to animate well, though I haven't had enough real time to continue the effort, and it appears that none of the Carrara hair products seem to support dynamic use - but rather, stills only. Bummer. I have made some incredible awesome-looking hair for one of my characters. I agree that Carrara hair has the ability to look vastly superior to other types of hair. But when it comes to Carrara physics in general... I haven't even played around with it yet.
It really would be great if Holly's dreams came true. I got into 3d originally via the game industry. There was a freebie max called G-Max and that got me started into 3d modelling and manipulation. My friend (that got me into it) had 3ds max 5, then 6 and 7 on his machine and would let me use that to do things that I couldn't export via G-Max. What was great is that the same folks that made our plugin for 3ds also made them for G-Max. Blender was still a turd. Having the ability to use Carrara as a content manipulator/creator for game engines would be outstanding, and could have the potential to draw in several thousand new customers looking for a less expensive route - without having to wade through Blender. (not dissing Blender )
More interested in creating a cgi movie or even short films, that same friend turned me on to Poser 5, the latest and greatest version at the time. I thought that was a great program. He then sent me a link to Daz3d, who was giving V2 away for free - shortly after release Daz|Studio beta v.7
Going from either of the Max's to Poser and/or D|S was weird. P and DS offer a simplicity that was refreshing. Daz3d offered a great place to buy stuff that one didn't have the time to create one's self. Neither P nor DS had the ability, however, to actually model or even accurately modify the mesh. That's where Carrara came in for me.
Using it as a superior version of Poser or D|S, I began may Carrara endeavors as a content purchaser. I still do. My job leaves little left of me after hefting around stones and concrete all day. And they're long days, too! Even though I buy in most of the elements in the scenes, I still have a lot to do. At least with Carrara I have the ability to do whatever I want - even if I end up having to make it myself! So when I run across something that doesn't work well with Carrara, I simply don't use it. Carrara is what allows me to continue my path along my 3d animation endeavors. Through Daz3d I have a huge team of modellers and texture creators who draw a surprisingly low salary (from me), yet they just keep cranking out content that I may or may not use.
I say all of this to help illustrate where I come from as a Daz customer. Perhaps a bit odd... but I can't be the only one who ends up buying Carrara simply because it's the only damned application that does what it does without a single plugin purchase!
For an all new version of Carrara, I'd like to see the software remain Carrara as far as interface and general workings. Hell I even love the render engine. A supremely detailed User's Guide, complete with lots of the "How-to's" as Kevin mentions above, would be a must. An all new content library would be great as well - even if legacy content remained. The exception, of course, would be to remove anything that doesn't work in the new version.
I'd buy the new version even if it didn't include a single new bell, whistle or feature - but was simply an improvement on what's already here. Also, as a Daz content consumer, I might feel somewhat alone, here... but I'm not afraid to say that I give the dev team a huge Bravo! for the work they've been doing to get Genesis into Carrara. Whether it works in Poser or not, Genesis is an invaluable leap in technology in this field - especially for the type of consumer that Daz attracts - and it simply becomes another great selling point for Carrara.
I think Holly brings forth many valid points. In my opinion Daz , who only focus is content has never pushed the Carrara content band wagon in any sort of way. In fact I submit to you the current PA sale going on ......Carrara content has almost been a side show -- let along promoted. And looking for carrara stuff on the new web site is way too much work. Seriously Daz ....you don't water your garden and then you wonder why you can't grow anything.
So here you have a bunch of folks who might be saying --hey we just do not sell much carrara content ..why bother developing it a lot ....and leave it at that.
So, to me , its pretty much a mishandling the whole program and content use from the get go. Some of the bad things happening is no doubt coming from action inside Utah not so much outside of it. I would suggest that It might be hard at this point to guage the Carrara market for DIY or content users given how its been handled. I mean isn't there a stature of limitations on the length of a beta..............smiles