Is Carrara Still A Good Option
cismic
Posts: 629
Hi All,
I'm so new to the 3d world and environments thought I'd post this here as I see a sale on Carrara Pro 8.5 in the store.
As I've read on many forums and links that Carrara is behind other development efforts. That being said, just starting with Daz3d at end of
December, my content and models are of the Genesis 3, Victoria 7 model types. Sounds to me that a newbiew might get frustrated with export\import issues with newer models and functions. But, the price seems worth it. I just don't know with all the new models if it is something I want to spend time learning.
Heck, I'm not even sure of a good workflow yet. Daz to Carrara(sceens and all) ? etc. and back.
The question is it a good option at this time. In the short timespan I've made a lot of progress.
Thank you,
Joseph
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Comments
I am a HUGE fan of Carrara. It's my favorite reason to turn on a computer - ever.
However, if you're currently looking to work with Genesis 3, posing, rendering, adding clothing, etc., there's only one software I'd suggest for you: Daz Studio, and always keep it updated to the latest. Some folks might not agree with that last bit, but as Daz Studio advances, so does Genesis. As Genesis advances, so does Daz Studio.
On the other hand, Carrara (especially being as inexpensive as it is right now) is amazing at being able to create huge scenes (Computer Specs Required) with atmosphere and so on, and creating High end spherical backdrops for use in Daz Studio's Iray Dome.
These are examples I've done making kind of low to mid-grade tests - the surroundings in the background are 360 degree spherical backgrounds rendered in Carrara and dropped into the Iray Dome in Daz Studio
This one has no additional lighting, and the spherical render is a jpg, not hdr - Mil Dragon 2 and Stonemason's Urban Ruins. Background is spherical render
Not a great result - I was very new to Daz Studio and was just trying it out
This is the original scene for the above dome image. For the dome render, these central building were hidden and I didn't use any lighting effects
(lighting effects baked into a dome image look horrible usually)
The buildings are all very low rez I got from mmoir's BMF Landscapes for Carrara product - they work excellent for this stuff!
Again, spherical jpg, but with three lights in DS - Michael is all by himself - the rest is in the background dome
These next two use the same dome image rendered in Carrara from one of my Carrara EnvironKits products
But the ONLY reason I'm suggesting Daz Studio over Carrara is because you said you want to use Genesis 3, which is not compatible with Carrara at this point.
After doing these tests (above) in Daz Studio, I decided to do the same sort of thing inside Carrara instead of going into Daz Studio. I normally don't work this way, so was pleased to see how well it works - and was a LOT faster than Iray since I don't have an nVidia card
Here I'm using a spherical render of a small interior as a spherical background for the render of just these two figures (M4 and V4)
With practice I'd get a lot better (and brighter) result. I think this one (Background sphere) I actually rendered out to an HDRI
Ooops... I think that scene with the dragon above is actually one of ART_Collab's cool sets with one of stonemason's city ruins buildings behind it.
Either way,,, it was a simple scene with only a few elements and a spherical background - a background rendered in Carrara using a spherical camera
Depends on your projects in mind and your hardware.
If you're looking to make content for Poser or DS,
you could model and uvmap.
as far as i know, Carrara's rigging only works in Carrara.
Carrara has some high end feature,
like particle physics, environment creation; trees, terrains, ocean, sky and clouds.
I just like to play in carrara for fun, between playing Zoo Tycoon and Witcher3
To help explain what I was just talking about a bit further,
This scene is a Carrara render. Everything in this image is either a 3d element or volumetric - no background images used at all.
If all we had in the scene is what we see here, we would insert a new Target Helper to have something at the zero position.
Select all of the terrain pieces with their plants and drag them into that new target helper
Duplicate the target helper and rotate it about 15 - 20 degrees
Continue to duplicate (auto rotate now being applied during each duplication) until the entire scene is surrounded.
Give some of the dulicates a little nudge here or there if desired
Drop in a Spherical Camera, set the resolution to at least 8,000 x 4,000 (2 x 1 for a spherical map) and hit Render
Now we have an image we can use in Iray or any other render engine that accepts a spherical background, like Carrara too.
Dartanback: "But the ONLY reason I'm suggesting Daz Studio over Carrara is because you said you want to use Genesis 3, which is not compatible with Carrara"
I agree, and that is why I have stuck with Carrara and the Gen4 products, e.g. Michael 4, Victoria 4, the Kids 4, etc. I have a very large collection of such products and am not eager to start replacing them, plus I had a poor experience with an early version of Daz Studio. (From what I've read, the animation features of DAZ Studio are still not up to Carrara's.) There are a LOT of Gen 4 products out there, e.g. just here at DAZ are 4,000 V4, 1500 M4 and 312 K4 products, and plenty more at other sites including lots of new products (not much new Gen4 here at DAZ). I realize many call Gen4 "old" technology, but I still enjoy creating short animations like this, done in Carrara:
Right. It's not really that old. Yes, Genesis 3 is immensely more realistic overall. I'm lucky to not truly need that level - as it does come at a cost! ;)
...and I love your films! Always!
I don't really do animation, so that bit of either program is not of much interest to me. But in terms of figures, if I've got em I'll use em. At least so far as is technically possible. I don't think that a new figure coming along in any way invalidates other/earlier figures. The render that's chugging along next to me (admittedly this is DS Iray) is using 3x Genesis 3, 2x Genesis 2 and 1 x Genesis. When I come to render the reverse angle tomorrow (also a wider shot), I'm planning on adding some M4/V4 figures and a bunch of Loretta/Lorenzo Lores in the background.
Point being, just because it's "old" doesn't mean it's obsolete.
I agree. The huge difference is on the nude models anyway. But with M4 and V4, etc., I find it easier (for myself) to morph the clothes to not cling tightly to the body, whereas the whole Genesis system seems to try and oppose such things - like an open jacket perfectly following the shape of a breast... kind of a bummer there unless one wants the plastic wrapped look. I have the No Poke morphs for Genesis 2 Female, which help a great deal. Still not to the point of making custom clothing morphs for Genesis clothing yet. We'll see.
These things are different for stills than for animation, since mesh edits for stills don't really even need to be saved. For animation, they have to carry through and be adjustable.
I always giggle (inwardly) when the butt crack in some new outfit inadvertantly make the character look like they've been given a wedgie! I did see some clothing loosener products for Genesis 3 in the store recently, which should help in that arena.
Wow, thanks for all the detailed info! :-) The main reason for genesis 3 and above was due to being new and that was the starting place. During this same time I've read some and watched some youtube vids on Carrara. But, in the store at least for me today it's under 30.00. And, with the backgounds you've showen and created, I don't think I could go wrong with this as a tool.
I actually don't know what I want to make yet. I really needed a creative outlet and found that 3d stills and animation pretty exciting. Right now I've been practicing scene setups, lighting, props, just figuring things out. I just jumped in and I'm trying to figure what the next steps are.
In 6 weeks of deep dive and trying many, many things. :-) This is what I've done thus far. http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/users/1298796. I will be adding this tool as I could really use some jungle, forest, spooky types of hdris for some images I have some ideas for.
I'll be following your guys work.
Joseph
I have to admit some of the renders on DAZ's opening page are truly stunning. So if that's what I was after, I'd probably be into the figures after Gen4. But as I've mentioned "Time is of the Essence" in the 48 Hour Film Contest (4 minutes minimum animation in two days), and I think that level of realism is not gonna render at my typical 5 frames a minute or so.
Very cool Gallery going on! That Drone Eye is Sooo Coool! I'm a big Petipet fan, he's the artist who made the Drone Eye and all of his products (that I have, at least - and I have a LOT!!!) work beautifully in Carrara! I use the Poser version from the products.
Carrara is a bit different than Daz Studio, but I like it so much better that I almost never touch Daz Studio. Kind of unfortunate really... it's a fine render tool and had a lot of tools that can help us in Carrara too.
Wow... thirty bucks? That's amazing! It comes with an awful lot of free Genesis content too! So even if you end up not liking Carrara, you get your money back five-fold right when you buy it! LOL
Come on into the forum and have a look around, ask some questions... always glad to help ;)
Feel free to join in the Carrara challenges.
We use them to try to improve what we know and are able to do with the program.
In this one I have kept the rules simple. post any questions you have and everyone helps out with suggestions on how to accomplish the task.
Side bonus if you are top 3 or Honourable mention then you get DAZ pproducts.
Just as a side note. :-) Even though Carrara pro 8.5 was 29.00 I decided not to buy it. I did more revue and with saw that it was 19.00 I bouoght it.
Now, I'll learn a few things about it as I have the chance.
Wow. Good score!
Just FYI, I paid over 200 for it and feel that even if I paid twice that I got a screeming deal! But I love Carrara... what can I say! LOL
Congratulations and:
Welcome to the Wonderful World of Carraraism!
I purchased Carrara 8.5 Pro some time ago and never really used it. I like DAZ Studio much Better!
Each to their own. I never really use Daz Studio and like Carrara much better!
I agree. Use what you like and be happy!
I'd never try to force anyone into using Carrara just because it's the best thing that ever got installed on any computer anywhere... but I'm Super Glad that I've found it and got used to using it. To me it's the best thing that ever got installed on any computer anywhere! And I love using it! ;)
I'd also like to add that I really like your avatar!!!
I went the long path..
got Carrara 5 for free from a magazine
bought Carrara Express to see if I liked it
liked it so upgraded to Carrara 6 then upgraded to 7 Pro when it came out and being upgrading till 2013 when it stopped.
For memory I think it was $20 for Express... then $100 or so for 6 upgrade then another $100 or so for 7 Pro upgrade then about $80 for V8 and around $40 for 8.5
it's cheap now if it's only $19 for 8.5 Pro!
I don't use Daz Studio or Poser... eeeeek!
Same here, except for the rare Poser item that requires Poser itself, e.g. a Steampunk Segway from Vanishing Point with ERC for the drive mechanism. I can't get it to work in Carrara even with Fenric's ERC plugin. But beyond that, Carrara is way more powerful than Poser, especially for large scenes.
Not hard to imagine, since Carrara is better than everything else there ever was or will be!!! :D
Alright Dart... we've heard from you already!
Well, as I've been trying to create terrain and such Carrara crashes once in a while. Got these out of my event log after a crash:
The program Carrara.exe version 8.5.1.19 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Action Center control panel.
Process ID: 4858
Start Time: 01d28bcb2b06304e
Termination Time: 4294967295
Application Path: C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\Carrara8.5\Carrara.exe
Report Id: f5780942-f7c0-11e6-82b3-c86000cb7715
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:
Faulting application name: Carrara.exe, version: 8.5.1.19, time stamp: 0x553781d4
Faulting module name: CR2Importer.mcx, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x553782fa
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000000000039e675
Faulting process id: 0x4330
Faulting application start time: 0x01d28bc2f0bcd42a
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\Carrara8.5\Carrara.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\Carrara8.5\Extensions\CR2Importer.mcx
Report Id: 5d15e419-f7b6-11e6-82b3-c86000cb7715
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:
Oh... sorry I missed this.
Not sure why that's happening, and I'm no good at trying to understang computer log greek. But are you still having troubles?
I see you were messing with terrains, have you seen this thread?
► Building Carrara Terrains Intro
So sorry that this has gone unanswered. If you get in a scrape and need quick help, maybe make a new thread for the issue at hand so we can see you're in trouble
No problemo. :-) The goal for now is to build terrain that I can use in DS. Once I get that down then learn more features of Carrara.
Thank you,
for the link. :-)
Joseph
I think you can export a terrain as an OBJ, but you have to watch mesh sizes - a 1000 x 1000 terrain is going to have 1m vertices! It can be handled efficiently in Carrara because only the z position of each point is changing, the x and y are effectively in a grid and the positioning of lines and polygons are all determined by it being a terrain. But exporting to a general purpose obj means that each point, line and poly needs to be spelled out, resulting in a huge object. You could potentially take that into something like Zbrush to reduce the mesh size to something more reasonable while still preserving most of the detail.
Right. Also, just know that exporting stuff to use in DS has more of a learning curve than making stuff to render in Carrara... at least in my opinion. It might be opposite for someone used to using DS! LOL
Still... if you have questions... give a shout! ;)
Convert the terrain to a vertex object. That'll give you a poly count. The conversion will produce triangle polygons, but you can select all (cmd/ctrl - A) and untriangulate. Then export as obj. I never include mats in my exports since I find it simpler to build new materials from scratch within DS.