Does Carrara help your workflow?

notiusweb

Hello all, 

I am not a user of Carrara but consistently see people using it after Daz for animation production.  But what are the benefits?  It appears as though people put themselves through more work to get everything sitting nicely with Carrara, and then an animation is hacked out.  Why not just use Daz for it all?  Are there plugins that make the Carrara experience better than the Daz one for animations, or is it innately allowing you to do more, etc...

I will say in my music production, I use FL Studio to make the instrumental, but then a separate muiltitrack daw for vocals and main mastering, so I am familiar with using multiple applications as opposed to a all-in-one-workflow.  My reason is that (1) FL Studio does not let you change tempo mid song, where as the Daw I use does, and (2) some of it is a workflow hygiene thing, where I don'ty want to muff up the small micro-level stuff of an instrumental music track once I have gotten to the point where I am doing the vocals and main mastering, so I like to keep the micro-level stuff independant.  

But in the case of Carrara, it looks like you have to do everything and then some, like it was not saving any time or anything.  I know that Daz doesn't have the best UI for animation production, its UI is both overly-complicated and limited at the same time, but when I see Carrara being used, man, it looks like a lot of work, more so than if a scene had just been done in Daz.  

Am I completely wrong?  What is it that you are getting from Carrara that you don't get from Daz...I would love to hear your experience!!!  

Thanks and regards!

Roygee

First off - Daz is the name of the company which owns Daz Studio, Carrara, Hexagon and Bryce.  Secondly, Daz Studio is pretty much a humanoid posing application, with some very limited animation features, whereas Carrara is a fully-featured all-in-one 3D application with far more sophisticated animation features.

Then the borders start getting a bity blurry - there are paid-for plugins which give Studio a bit more oomph in the animation department, but then again, there are a lot of features which give Carrara more of an edge.

Basically, this is something the individual user needs to decide for themselves, but, out the box, Carrara is far more suited to animation than Daz Studio.

Steve K

Roygee said:

... Carrara is a fully-featured all-in-one 3D application with far more sophisticated animation features.

I think that's correct, although I have not used DAZ Studio since an early version that I found frustrating.  I find creating short animations in Carrara very intuitive, but I've been doing it for some time and so am biased.  

chickenman

Carrara has on top of posing and animation it own shader properties that are very versatile,it has a built in modling program, it has plugins for lux render, lux core if you like thos render engines. it has the plugin for aniblock for animation, there are a lot of other plugins available, some ware which are free and some of which are paid.

I use to use Daz studio but it is becoming to complex for those who want to do more than pose precreated items.

 

This comunity on the forums helps to address any lacking in documentation that exists and our monthly challenges assist in learning and growing with the program.

See the stickied thread for some details of what we were able to do.

Look at Sci Fi Funks youtube video's, PhilW has a animation that is making the animation festival rounds that I hear is awesome.

 

evilproducer

I guess in one sense it is more complicated because there are more tools out of the box, without the need for plugins, although there are plenty of those as well.

I've dabbled with animation in DAZ Studio, but unless you only want to use pre-canned animations, or have extremely limited keyframe and tweener options, then quite frankly, it sucks.

There are plugins that you can buy to extend the capabilities of Studio, such as a plugin that has a graph editor, or one that unlocks the ability to edit keyframes (and I assume tweeners). Both of these come with Carrara.

Then there is the fact that nearly everything can be animated in Carrara. Carrara's plant system has settings to animate leaves and branches rustling in the wind. Almost all the shader functions can be animated, there are primitives that can be animated, such as fire, fog, and ocean, etc. Modifiers and deformers are easily animated, there are physics forces, then there's the particle generator, dynamic hair that can be animated by forces in the scene or movement of the figure it is grown on, etc. etc. etc.

The true difficulty that some people have when they are coming from a Studio background is the shear amount of things that can be animated, and the methods that different effects can be achieved and animated.

The other difficulty some folks have, is that they are so used to Studio, that is what they use to create their scene, and then try importing it. The better workflow would be to create your scene in Carrara from the get-go. The most successful users, use Studio as sort of a plugin for Carrara, to do some things that haven't been properly or fully implemented in Carrara. Normally that would entail scene assets, as opposed to an entire complex scene.

Carrara is not perfect. As I mentioned above, there are some things that Studio does very well, that Carrara doesn't do as well, but then again, there are things Studio doesn't do at all, that Carrara can do.

In addition to Lux which was mentioned above, there is also an Octane plugin.

evilproducer

I have only done a couple longer animations. Mostly what I've put up one Youtube are tests or proof-of-concept type animations. Nonetheless, they can be helpful to illustrate what can be done in Carrara. I've used physics, motion paths, IK tracking and spin modifiers, etc. etc. to do all the animations on my channel. If it is animated, it is animated and rendered in Carrara 5 (older videos) or Carrara 7. I have done some in C8.5, but haven't got around to posting them yet.

My Youtube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/Evilproducer01

One of my longer videos. Rendered in "layers" and composited. This one uses the fire primitive, particle generator, a spin modifier on asteroids that I built in Carrara and replicated on an invisible spline object created in Carrara and also animated to simulate a traveling asteroid belt/cloud.

A sample of the fire primitive coupled with a particle generator and texture effects

Particle generator used to write the word, fast.

A longer form animation using a variety of animation techniques and Carrara's 'toon scene effect. It's also an example of what Carrara can do that Studio can't. Most of the furniture is prop furniture I had, but the set is built in Carrara, as well as the cat, which was also rigged and had morph targets applied. The Escher-esk stairs were also built in Carrara and I used a render pass to add the atmosphere to make it look as though they fade into the distance.

A cheesecake A3 video with a hand key-framed walk cycle, converted to an NLA clip (Non-Linear Animation) and then strung together, along with a target helper and IK tracking to keep the hand on the hip. I also used a free Jiggle deformer by Sparrowhawke on the chest and bustier to simulate the chest bouncing around. ;-)

Mistara

try watching some rara physics demos  :)