So, is there a Carrara 9 coming at all?

13

Comments

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,326
    edited July 2016

    < Waves his hands towards Utah, using the force as powerfully as he can muster >

    There will be an updated development of Carrara - and it will kick total ass ankle!!!

    Truth be told, Carrara is also my biggest reason for my perpetual shopping at Daz3D. I keep working with (in) Daz Studio to get used to it a bit more. I feel as if I owe it to Daz3D to work with their in-house designed and built masterpiece software. 

    I'm very proud of them for taking it (D|S) as far as they have, knocking on the doors of all of the latest and greatest technologies, while incorporating the finest commercially available rigged figures into its gears through and through... it's actually quite ingenious - and I applaud them. 

    When it comes to what "I" want to do with all of this, I still find everything else besides Carrara to fall very short of fulfilling my needs, where Carrara exceeds my needs, causing me to propel deeper into the industry that I had originally planned.

    I like Poser, I love 3DS Max, never tried Modo or LW (or several others), really enjoy the tools in Maya, enjoy the heck out of Daz Studio - and may have even been happy using any of those choices if I had never tried Carrara. If Carrara ever dies, I'm not sure which software choice I'd take on next. Probably start by messing around with Blender and likely leaning towards C4D, Modo, or Z-Brush. 

    I will never abandon Carrara, however, unless there was no way to run it, which I don't see happening.

    So, for me... I will mostly stick with buying products that I know are compatible with Carrara. For me, having to export something as an OBJ and import into Carrara that way is not compatibility, so I simply won't buy stuff with those requirements.

    ...so what about Genesis 3?

    Yeah... beautiful, beautiful models and some of the finest support products I've ever seen. Man, these artists are really making me drool!

    So I'm probably going to try dipping into the waters of mildly making a few small purchases of only a few things for the sole purpose of doing stills vis Daz Studio.

    Once Daz3D's awesome development team releases Genesis 3 compatibility (Yes... I am VERY optimistic that they'll make that happen), I'll be one Genesis 3 support products buying machine!!!! :)

    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,038

    if a third party product Octane can read Carrara replications and hair and also Daz studio instances then surely when Carrara 9 comes ........................wink

    and iray is added.................................enlightened

    there may be a possibility of DAZ and Carrara scenes being fully interchangeable yes

    as well as the dual Quaternion rigging and UV tiling

     

    I can dream

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,326
    edited July 2016
    Sad said:

    if a third party product Octane can read Carrara replications and hair and also Daz studio instances then surely when Carrara 9 comes ........................wink

    and iray is added.................................enlightened

    there may be a possibility of DAZ and Carrara scenes being fully interchangeable yes

    as well as the dual Quaternion rigging and UV tiling

     

    I can dream

    Oh Man!!! That's a great read! I just keep reading it over and over  and over  and over  and over  and over....

    Yeah! Carrara really rocks as it is. It really does. I can't wait to see what those marvelous devs are incorporating along with that Quaternion rigging and UV tiling. Being failry active through the C8 betas, I've seen some real magic happen. Those folks are talented and I bet there have been new recruits along the way since then - with all the work that's gone into Studio.

    I would love to see more compatibility between the two. Being able to convert scenes from Carrara into DUF, even if a list of "This will get kicked out and not included in the export" had to go along with it - as would certainly have to be in order for it to become available - it could really make for some amazing workflow functionality!

    It would be great for D|S users whom might want a quick method of creating custom morphs or fixes, painting directly onto their models, UV editing, creating spherical maps (animated even!)(can we run video files in Irays Dome?) - any number of wondrous capabilities.

    Who knows? But since they've added Iray to that, perhaps they'll find a fit for Carrara too? 'Twould be very cool!

    * Though it's Carrara's current native PR engine that makes Carrara so important to me. Averaging around 1 - 2 minutes per frame is something I've not really seen yet in any other renderer. Not even close. That and it cranks out just the look I'm after - especially after switching to Phil's linear workflow method advice, which also seems to speed up the renders just a touch.  

    I'd still love to try Octane. Perhaps one day.

    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,326
    edited July 2016

    Here's an Iray render where the Iray dome is a Carrara full 360 degree scene

    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Agree with everything except IRAY. Unless it would ever get get faster to compete with the very fast render times that Carrara has. On my system, no Nvidea IRAY card, it takes way to long to render a single frame in DS. Even if I decrease the image size to very small and change other settings it is still too slow... can't imagine an IRAY animation which would probably take weeks to finish a very short one. If/when IRAY comes to Carrara I hope that the current render engine is not replaced by it.

  • magaremotomagaremoto Posts: 1,226

    DB, I would suggest Houdini, the indie version totally compatible with DS and Carrara (if only had the fbx exporter usable for morphs), stable and powerful; with the redshift render engine could be the ultimate yet cheap solution

  • pnewhookpnewhook Posts: 70

    My day job is I work as an engineer in a space robotics company.  Right now I'm in a group that designs medical robotic solutions for medical companies that do not have the expertise to do it themselves.

    I've been using Carrara for creating concept solutions internally and for customers since version 7 (I'm now at 8.5).  It has been so useful that I've rolled out Carrara as a standard development tool across our division and teach a Carrara course to train people up on it.  The idea is to use Carrara to build a very rough model of what the customer wants and work out things like reach, size, kinematics structure, etc, then show that to the customer to get their feedback.  I can model up realisic looking concepts using Carrara in far les time than it would take for a CAD system to do it.  

    Once that is iterated, the designers get involved and we pull those models in from the CAD system to make the models more realistic.  Then we add animation and lighting, whatever is needed to keep feeding the customer our solution, or to answer any engineering unknows. With animation I can do things like see how long it would take to do a robotic tool exchange for example, and to check clearances agoinst external interfaces.  I also work out the whole operations concept which is not really possible with the big CAD packages, or would take excessively long.  

    Heres a shot our customer took of my animation to make a marketing image.  That scene is fully animated and I can simulate the entire workflow within Carrara:

    So needless to say I hope Carrara continues for a long while as it definitely makes my job a lot easier.  I'm not sure how to replace it honestly.  As far as future features, I'd be happy with continued support (company and community - you guys are great!) as well as fixing some annoying bugs and stability issues.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,326

    That is really cool, pnewhook! 

    pnewhook said:

    So needless to say I hope Carrara continues for a long while as it definitely makes my job a lot easier.  I'm not sure how to replace it honestly.  As far as future features, I'd be happy with continued support (company and community - you guys are great!) as well as fixing some annoying bugs and stability issues.

    Yeah... same here!

    DB, I would suggest Houdini, the indie version totally compatible with DS and Carrara (if only had the fbx exporter usable for morphs), stable and powerful; with the redshift render engine could be the ultimate yet cheap solution

    Cool, thanks. And there inlies the same freaking headache I was having beforer finally finding Carrara: Morphs and/or rigging (not) being transferred! Argh! Carrara is magic! Just go to the Content tab and load straight in from a Runtime library! Genius!

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    pnewhook, Cool job. I think it's great that you are creating new Carrara users as well.

  • ScarletX1969ScarletX1969 Posts: 587
    edited July 2016

    Here's the thing...yes, sometimes I have been very critical of Daz for certain types of content and the rate they are releasing this version 7 characters (still waiting on Monique and Darius, though).

    That said, Daz Studio got me to completely stop using Poser... and not because it's free.  I would pay for Daz Studio and it's one of the reasons I remain loyal to Daz.  When they included that iRay renderer, I immediately became a beta tester for iRay server at NVidia because iRay is just a simple to use, yet powerful renderer, even more so than LuxRenderer with Reality.  It only loses to Reality and Luxus because it's true power lies with Nvidia technology, which can be out of reach for most.  But, I've never had to dang near have a degree in Physics just to under how the renderer works.

    Carrara along with Daz Studio would be the perfect one-two punch to a powerful 3D interactive suite...PERFECT!  Throw Hexagon in there and wow.  Iray in Carrara?  That would be awesome.

    It is human nature to find a reason not to support software like Daz Studio and Carrara over the bigger stuff...and I don't care how much technological jargon and mumbo jumbo the elistists throw at reviews...it's all about popularity.  Production level work can be easily done with Daz Studio and Carrara in the right hands.

    I simply love Carrara from a price tag and power stand point.  I just hope they continue with it.

    Post edited by ScarletX1969 on
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,326
    wgdjohn said:

    Agree with everything except IRAY. Unless it would ever get get faster to compete with the very fast render times that Carrara has. On my system, no Nvidea IRAY card, it takes way to long to render a single frame in DS. Even if I decrease the image size to very small and change other settings it is still too slow... can't imagine an IRAY animation which would probably take weeks to finish a very short one. If/when IRAY comes to Carrara I hope that the current render engine is not replaced by it.

    Right. I NEVER want the native photo-realistic render engine to be replaced... that's my baby!

    Have you ever tried Iray with a higher-end nVidia graphics card? I guess it's amazing! I am currently using Radeon graphics, which is rare for me. I am a big nVidia fan, but decided to just try ATI. Bad timing, right? LOL

    My eight core Carrara machine can crank out Iray (CPU) renders pretty well, like the one above. As with all of the PBR engines, there are settings which tell it how long we let it 'realize' the render before calling it finished. This setting is key for the timing thing. With Iray, there are plenty others to mess with to speed up the render. The cool part, as Derry's Work mentions, is that we don't have to be physics engineers and/or rocket scientists to understand how to set it up. Iray (in D|S) has some nice configuration panels to mess around with. 

    I'd love to see the technology added for the sake of the PBR fans, but I'm totally content with Carrara's beautiful PR engine! 

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited July 2016

    Dart,

    No never tried an NVIDIA graphics card. You seem to be using my machine. :) Radeon HD 6700, 8 cores. Does state ATA NVIDIA controllers but not graphics card. I'd bought this system for someone else but they later decided not to have a computer. Didn't cost much but lucky I had it when my NT's C drive bit the dust.

    I do have Luxus, caught on sale, but need to install Luxrender which may help a bit for Carrara final rendering. Octane would be great but can't justify the price. I'm pleased with Carrara's PR engine... very quick even at best setting and Full Raytracing on. I like to check how a scene looks often... therefore quick is better.

    I've used IRAY render in DS studio on a few earlier Genesis 3 figures and was impressed with the detail... too bad DAZ still hasn't gotten them to work in Carrara which led me to quit buying G3 and instead grab nearly all G2 figures which render excellent. I've even quit using DS for the time being and am devoting all my time to Carrara where there are plenty of features I've yet to try.

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,326
    wgdjohn said:

    Carrara where there are plenty of features I've yet to try.

    ...and it's a lot more fun!!! :D

  • StezzaStezza Posts: 7,989

    did I just see a sign on the forum..... maybe.... maybe not...

    cool

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738

    Don't tease me Stezza, you've got me looking everywhere...  :)

    Honestly, not sure how much more Carrara 9 can offer now.  With VWD dynamic cloth and the Philemo plugin, the last big hurdle is overcome.  They could offer Genesis3 supporrt I guess (not my preferred figure, so meh) and maybe fix the Genesis geografting problem, but can't think what else they might be able to throw in that would be  a 'big ticket' attraction.   An outstandig fluid sim?  (Seems unlikely...)    I suppose they could throw Iray in, but we've already got Luxcore, Luxus, Octane, most of us who have a demanding PBR itch already have a satisfying method of scratching it.  Hmmm....

    Still, I'd be keen to see a Carrara 9, and probably first in line to buy  :)

  • DesertDudeDesertDude Posts: 1,235
    Jonstark said:

    Honestly, not sure how much more Carrara 9 can offer now.

    Long standing bug fixes?  wink

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,144

    If there is another release, the only, or certainly the main, thing that I would expect is Genesis 3 support, although no-one seems to have heard anything from Daz on this for months now.

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945

    G3, for what to do?
    There are enough plastic dolls on the market!
    What we want, it is a program which has more evolved functions and still more open on the modern formats (Alembic, FBX which works etc…).

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,032
    edited July 2016

    G3 would be good because the better bending makes more realistic moving animations and expressions.

    FBX is an exchange format that is a step backwards from the modern modern capabilities these business competitors have to try and woo each others customers away. I've never heard of Alembic but from the definition I read it's a competitor to FBX, which is good if it's technically sound and an improvement on FBX.

    I will finally get to try Carrara this month and will see how it does on my on laptop with Genesis 2 characters. Seems I'll hav to make very simply scenes though as my computer won't do more.

    I wonder how much the upgrade cost to Carrara will be? Well, unless the only upgrade is only support of Genesis 3 characters which should pay for itself with increased Genesis 3 product sales.

    Post edited by nonesuch00 on
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,326

    If they do add Genesis 3 compatibility I really hope that the entire DUF system within Carrara is improved. I'm sure it would be. Carrara 8.5 was supposed to just add Genesis support. We got a whole lot more along with it - including (from what I understand to be) a fixed FBX. 

    As Desert Dude hinted at, I'd love to see some of the long-standing bug fixes and wish-listed features added. 

    Aside from that, I'm really quite happy not spending every last dime on new content! I love how Carrara is working for me and there's a constant flow of really nice looking content coming out on a daily basis. Before Genesis came along, I spent a lot more money here! LOL

    I still buy... it's just that I'm no longer tantalized by all of the new stuff on the first several pages of the store. That cool new Marcoor FG star ship and its corridors are both DUF and Poser CR2, so I had to have those, petipet's cool stuff is all still offered in both formats. Stonemason and Predatron seem to have switched mostly over to the new DUF - so I've only been buying from their back catologs. Again... not complaining!

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,326
    edited July 2016

    LuxusCore Carrara is a huge step towards making Carrara incredibly formidable, giving us affordable IPR with up-to-date development.

    The new VWD dynamic cloth system with Philemo's awesome plugin really steps us up several notches as well! It's a Really Cool System!

    I haven't been trying out much in the way of using DUF content in Carrara yet - aside from my Genesis 1 Monsters and creatures. Even those are beginning to become replaced by older original CR2 figures from folks like Predatron and TheAntFarm - possibly soon some other artists. While I do agree that the Genesis system is a better option for future advancement, it doesn't work as smoothly in Carrara as I'd like it to just yet - so I'm still totally happy with the Generation 4 family, with the idea of going back and trying some of the back catalog Generation 1, 2 and 3 stuff as well.

    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
  • FifthElementFifthElement Posts: 569

    There is no feature DAZ can add to Carrara which could make it Carrara 9, being compatible with newer DAZ content is not wothy of calling it vesion 9 IMO, it will be maybe version 8.7 and thats about it smiley

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,038

    There is no feature DAZ can add to Carrara which could make it Carrara 9, being compatible with newer DAZ content is not wothy of calling it vesion 9 IMO, it will be maybe version 8.7 and thats about it smiley

    well maybe iray, thats almost 9 worthy

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,032

    Well they could add a simulated weather and sky dome to Carrara and call it version 9 or does it already have those things?

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,964

    To paraphrase a few posters Carrara works fine as it is .

    esoecially 

    now it has a cloth sim and the no poke through 

    lots of potential in these 

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675

    imagining C9 will be encryption

  • chickenmanchickenman Posts: 1,202
    MistyMist said:

    imagining C9 will be encryption

    this we do not need.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,038
    MistyMist said:

    imagining C9 will be encryption

    this we do not need.

    We just do not know we need it

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,032

    I just downloaded the VWD demo from Rendorosity and will try it in Carrara this week or next to see if it works for me on my computer.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,326

    Well they could add a simulated weather and sky dome to Carrara and call it version 9 or does it already have those things?

    Yup. Carrara already has a wonderful sky/atmosphere system. 

    There are many directions they could go to expand Carrara to a next version level. It'll be interesting to see what comes of the latest development stage. Like other newer versions of Carrara, perhaps they will make some of its current features more robust, like the vertex modeler, particles system, physics, etc.,

    With 8.5, just changing the light fixture avatars made a huge difference for me. Shape lights were so questionable before that I never used them. Now I can't stop using them... they freaking Rock!!! LOL   PhilW does point out some of their short-comings in Realistic Rendering, but for folks like me whom are a bit less concerned with needing everything to behave like real life, they do make for some excellent lighting solutions.

    As for Iray, I would be happy if that was a separate plugin for those who want it. I don't. That doesn't meant that my mind won't change in the future, however.

    Carrara already has some excellent tools in place that could really rock if they were improved upon, like 3D Paint, Modeling, Displacement modeling, UV Mapping/Unwrapping, etc.,

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