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My biggest issue with Carrara right now is getting Daz content to load a change of texturing or shading. Example: Daz Dragon 3 (one of my most recent purchases was the pro bundle and the Asain Dragon add-on, not the only content I have this issue with, too many examples in clothing to list). The models themselves look incredible, but I cannot change the color of the dragons. An error occurs whenever I try to drag and drop any of the textures. I can of course use the shader options to change the textures of the dragons, except, when the entire dragon "skin" is in one image file. Then I get the entire skin stretched to fit over the head, wings, etc. Needless to say it's frustrating spending $100-ish dollars on content for use in a $300-ish program and having that content not work.
My second issue is with the auto fit options with Genesis (and G2). Most of the time I have to load the item separately into the scene, then apply the "auto-fit" option to the desired figure, then parent it to the figure, but only in certain locations within the tree. Otherwise, I end up with hair deeply embedded into heads, or clothes that fit every morph I have hidden within the body. (Edit: More often than not, dragging and dropping items onto a figure just loads the item "over" the figure and doesn't auto-fit the item to the figure it's parented to...)
Issue three, purchased items routinely create a file location in the content menu, yet, through the content menu, the folder doesn't contain anything. Granted, this primarily happens with V4 and M4 "specific" products, but money spent on invisible items makes me feel like "The Sucker of the Day."
For the most part I truly enjoy my Carrara 8.5 Pro. When things work, they work amazingly well (for me anyway, not even a year into my C8.5 ownership and 3D art) and I have very few complaints. I do think it would be nice of Daz to make everything that works in Daz work in Carrara... After all, the majority of us Carrara users spent quite a bit of money on their program... And unless I'm mistaken, Daz Studio and Carrara are made by the same people... Shouldn't the product be fairly universal?
The crib-notes version of why there are incompatibilities between DAZ Studio and Carrara:
DAZ 3D started out making 3D models for Poser. A few years ago, Poser was in limbo, so DAZ started developing their own Poser style program, which was DAZ Studio. DAZ Studio was developed in-house so that DAZ could continue to have a market and sell the virtual dolls that constitute the lions share of their business.
Raydream Studio was started w-a-a-y back in the early nineties and went through a couple owners. It ended up with Meta-Creations which at the time also owned Bryce and Poser. All three were given the Kai interface treatment. More so to Bryce and Poser than Raydream. The dot-com bubble burst in the very late nineties and Meta-Creations pretty much folded it's tents and sold off their 3D assets. Here's where my memory gets a little fuzzy, but I think Eovia bought Raydream and also another 3D program (the name escapes me) and rolled them into one, which they called Carrara. They also either bought or developed Hexagon. I don't know if they owned Bryce or not.
Eovia developed Carrara up to version 5 I believe, then they sold Carrara and Hexagon to DAZ 3D (and Bryce if they owned it). Carrara has been developed by DAZ 3D since version 6. There's still a lot of the old code in it. Heck, there's certain UI elements that I still recognize as being nearly unchanged going back to Raydream. DAZ 3D has been working on improving their figure compatibility with Carrara over the years, but the underlying code is different.
Thank you, evilproducer! That helps me understand the issue better. However, I would still like better cross-platform compatibility in the future. I'm sure this has probably been an issue since 2007-ish (hasty Google searched the release of C6) when Daz took over production of Carrara...
I'm certainly not disagreeing with you. Just pointing out the origins of the problem.
The crib-notes version of why there are incompatibilities between DAZ Studio and Carrara:
DAZ 3D started out making 3D models for Poser. A few years ago, Poser was in limbo, so DAZ started developing their own Poser style program, which was DAZ Studio. DAZ Studio was developed in-house so that DAZ could continue to have a market and sell the virtual dolls that constitute the lions share of their business.
Raydream Studio was started w-a-a-y back in the early nineties and went through a couple owners. It ended up with Meta-Creations which at the time also owned Bryce and Poser. All three were given the Kai interface treatment. More so to Bryce and Poser than Raydream. The dot-com bubble burst in the very late nineties and Meta-Creations pretty much folded it's tents and sold off their 3D assets. Here's where my memory gets a little fuzzy, but I think Eovia bought Raydream and also another 3D program (the name escapes me) and rolled them into one, which they called Carrara. They also either bought or developed Hexagon. I don't know if they owned Bryce or not.
Eovia developed Carrara up to version 5 I believe, then they sold Carrara and Hexagon to DAZ 3D (and Bryce if they owned it). Carrara has been developed by DAZ 3D since version 6. There's still a lot of the old code in it. Heck, there's certain UI elements that I still recognize as being nearly unchanged going back to Raydream. DAZ 3D has been working on improving their figure compatibility with Carrara over the years, but the underlying code is different.
Ray Dream Studio an Specular's Infini-D were what went to Eovia and became Carrara
Bryce went to Corel before coming to DAZ 3D
Ray Dream Studio an Specular's Infini-D were what went to Eovia and became Carrara
Bryce went to Corel before coming to DAZ 3D
Thanks for clarifying that Chohole.
According to a post from Antoine Clappier, former CEO of Eovia:
"Fractal Design was in turn acquired by MetaTools
(Bryce, the KPTs). The combination of the two companies became
MetaCreations. Meanwhile MetaTools acquired Specular, the maker of
Infini-D.
MetaCreations having two similar products (Ray Dream and Infini-D)
decided to merge the two products and to create Carrara. In 1999,
MetaCreations acquired my company and I became in charge of Ray
Dream, Infini-D and Carrara (and moved from France to California)
Follows the "MetaCreations disaster". To save Carrara, I founded
Eovia in 2000 with Arnaud Berry, Charles Brissart and Alexandre
Clappier."
The entirety of his original post, which I believe was in the original DAZ forums, is lost to us since the forum archives went down. However a copy of his entire post detailing the Carrara timeline can still be found here:
http://www.polyloop.net/showthread.php/11210-Hexagon-update-news?p=126216&viewfull=1#post126216
Thanks. It's a very interesting read.
I think I may have accidentally taken this topic, well, off topic... So here is another issue I've run into with Carrara:
When loading a preset pose designed for and packaged with a figure onto said figure, (Example: "Xaio Mei" figure and "left hand hold parasol" pose) the hands are almost invariably contorted.
So De3an,
thanks for posting a link to that post from Antoine Clappier!
I just reposted the whole post Here, in Ringo's History of Carrara thread... but it's likely already been posted there... oh well. There twice now!
No worries. Not your fault. I'll accept full responsibility until I can find a way to blame Dart! ;-)
It probably IS my fault.
I babble so much I forget the topic I came in to talk about. Now... where was I? Oh yeah... Carrara grievances:
Man, The History of Carrara has reminded me of a real beef that I have with the last two versions of Carrara (8 and 8.5):
The promo page doesn't even come close to representing the absolute, amazing limitless software that is Carrara - especially Carrara Pro!
Sure, a look at the Technical Specifications gives a fairly decent list of features and functions and What is Carrara? begins to tempt us about why one might form some interest, I really wish that there were some really clever highlights that go much further into detail. If you don't want to clog up the main promo page, at least have a "What's Inside" page with some tempting screenshots and diagrams showing off, at the very least:
* The Ease of Use interface (it's like Poser and Bryce, perfected!)
* Meet the Carrara Plant Editor - with a brief illustration teasing with a peek at the various tweak rooms... truly amazing, all in its own right!
* Ocean, Fire, Fog, Volumetric Clouds and other effects
* Meet the Terrain Editor - show off the amazing Terrain Modeling page and its map editor
* Meet the Modeling Rooms! - Show off the Spline, Vertex, and Metaball modeling rooms
* Displacement painting in the Model Room and/or in the 3D Paint Tool!
* 3D Painting and UV Mapping, with UV Unfold
* Delicious assortment of modifiers and constraints
* Intuitive rigging - Add bones to anything and gain incredible control over what those bones do
* Unlimited, yet incredibly easy-to-use Texture room - Shader Nodes are already set up by selecting "Multi-channel" - just fill in the blanks from a massive list from the drop-down. Animate nearly any aspect of any shader!
* Flexible Particles System
* Two Physics engines to choose from
* (and this is a BIG one) Near perfect Poser compatibility! - Aside from some of the very latest Poser-only content, nearly everything made to work in Poser will work in Carrara. Even list the exceptions, like Lights and Cameras.
* Newly implemented DAZ Studio compatibility - Use Carrara and DAZ Studio together to create new assets for the DS Triax Rigging!
* Amazing Render Engines!
* etc., etc.,
But these things are so fun and powerful that "Seeing" some of these processes in action images should really be shown.
I have another issue. Whether this is a Carrara issue or a published artist issue, it is a DAZ support of Carrara issue. I have been trying to do a clean install of my Daz content on a new PC. The DIM, which I have left on default as much as possible, has not been putting much of the Carrara content in the correct Carrara browser folders. For example, Howie Farkes Country Lane 2 should go into the default scenes tab. Instead, the DIM created a 2nd presets/scenes tab and placed it there. I had to go back and find the folder manually and add it to my browser. I have lots of other examples. There is more at this thread.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/44820/
File structure seems like the kind of thing that should be caught by the store staff as part of the basic screening process of making content available.
I posted this a few years ago. The constraints could really be easier to manipulate.
These are just minor UI improvements to provide the user better feedback and make the elements easier to select.
1. Differentiate between the limits markers and position markers.
- Limits markers are larger and always in back, so any marker can be selected even when overlapping.
2. The marker currently selected is highlighted (yellow). So you know which marker you're typing in a position for.
3. The available range of motion is highlighted on the track:
- If locked, nothing is highlighted
- If limited, segment between limits is highlighted
- If free, entire track is highlighted
The following are new features:
1. Lock Limits:
- Once the limits are set, lock them to avoid accidentally moving them.
- When limits are locked, only the smaller position marker can be moved.
2. Animate Limits:
- In some cases, you want the limits to change over time, but in many cases you want the limits to remain constant. This would allow that and would function similar to the "Animate visibility" feature.
Switching constraint mode should preserve settings if at all possible. For example, going from slider to custom should preserve the position values and going from ball joint to custom should preserve the rotation values.
I installed C8.5, Daz Studio, etc. on a new windows 8.1 machine. I have yet another problem. Carrara is not remembering changes. For examples, I added an object and a shader folder to the browser (by the way, these are folders that the DIM created instead of putting the content in the correct place, aaargh). I closed Carrara. The next time I started a Carrara session, I had to add the folders again. And again. And again. Along the same lines, Carrara is not remembering my Architools password. I have to enter it every time.
Carrara was installed via the DIM, which was nstructed to install to my D: drive, rather tan my C: drive, to avoid this very problem.
dioemede, try right clicking on carrara's desktop symbol and running as an admin. That's what worked for me to make changes stick. But on top of that, also after adding the folders immediately close and re-open Carrara, see if the added folders are still there.
Thanks Jon, that did it.
Searchable content in the browsers, by name, content, figure etc. It's laughable that the easiest way to find something in Carrara is to log on to the Daz store and search there, find out what it's called, check you actually own it, then go back and hunt for the search results.
Content thumbnails come in two sizes: minuscule and tiny. In an age of large screens and high pixel densities, we need much bigger images. I have 15 items in a row just labelled "pants" with no indication of what set they come from, and a picture so small it's hard even to guess. All products in the store come with a nice little cover image and description. Let's have access to that from within the program.
I have many other thumbnails that are little more than squiggles, with names so cryptic I'm not even going to guess what they are, yet alone the set they come from.
I get around this problem by manually installing the content. I continued the system I used in Poser for years for the newer Genesis content. That is, under the main categories (character, materials, etc. I make directories and sub-directories (i.e. folders) for the Genesis and Genesis 2 Male and Female just as I already had for Michael 2-4 and Victoria 1-4. Clothing, accessories, etc. have their own sub-directories labeled for the different figures they belong to. It takes some time, but I always know what figure an item belongs to and can find what I want directly, in a few clicks. My Carrara 8.5 Pro sometimes has trouble with getting content from the DIM database and DIM doesn't install anything properly in Carrara, if at all. I put content in Carrara manually also. Carrara normally reads the Poser content with no problem, and since I can find things there that is the runtime that I normally use. (Years ago, I sent an email to Antoine Clappier asking him to continue Poser compatibility with Carrara and received a nice reply that many people had requested that. They had been "sibling" programs at Metacreations, and he continued our use of Poser in Carrara.) The only problem now days is that Carrara doesn't pick up the "Materials" directory correctly and most of it is usually empty. Materials have to be copied to the Poses directory, where they were located years ago. This system takes some time to set up now that we don't have the ".exe" files to install content, but it will save you a lot of time and headaches. Remember to include the Genesis data files, since they don't have the Poser geometry files.
Because I installed my content using the DIM, it remains a searchable database of the content that I installed from Daz, anyway. On the other hand, my frustrations with DIM installation are documented above.
I would like the "morph in modeling animation mode" feature to be functional for Genesis and Genesis 2 figures and their content. It is extremely helpful in fixing poke through, adjusting the bending of joints, and making other minor fixes. It is one of the biggest reasons I still generally use the V4/M4 category of figures.
Edit: I submitted this Request #177201
If the above post isn't clear, I'd like to be able to use modeling in the animation mode for triax figures the way I can for vertex models attached to the skeleton as shown in the following thread. I think this is one of Carrara's strongest features.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/45455/
I "third" this request. And it would also be at the top of my list.
I would also wish to add some other issues that have been problematic for my use of Carrara (some of them - for years!):
- Better communication about current Carrara development. Is anybody working on it at all? if not, we should know about it!
- Better support for Genesis 1 & 2 all around.
- Maps in the SSS (with, preferably, some improvement in SSS-rendering speed)
- Micro-displacement similar to the way it's handled in DS, Poser and other apps.
- Better compatibility with DS formats for a smoother transition between these 2 apps: Carrara and DAZ Studio. A bridge like there was for Brice and like there is for Zbrush - if necessary, but native support for DAZ Studio formats would be ideal. In fact, I believe that implementing something like this well and correctly can make improving Carrara better integrated into DS development pipeline, thus saving DAZ money on Carrara development over all by allowing near simultaneous introduction of improvements to both apps. As a programmer I can see a number of ways to do it, though I realize that there might be limitations for the most straight-forward ways of doing it. Still, I am surprised noone at DAZ has come up with some form of this inter-app Carrara-DAZ/DAZ-Carrara communication yet.
- Ability to turn OFF base image rendering for multi-pass rendering. So that the render would compute faster when only rendering, say the post effect or one of the other passes. This would make working on tweaks to things like GI and dynamic hair so much easier and faster!
- On/OFF SSS rendering checkbox in the Rendering room to have an option for not rendering SSS without needing to manually check it off in all shaders. We have On/Off checkboxes for practivally everything else.
- Excluding items(or, even better - shaders!) from GI computation while still rendering them at a simpler setting - to save render time.
- This is one of the less critical issues, but more in the "wishful thinking" department: Simplified GI/Indirect Lighting simulations for faster rendering using GI + smoothing of the simplified simulations to reduce artefacts. I believe the field has progressed quite a bit since those algorithms were implemented in Carrara.
The list can go on, but these are the things that I wish for the most.
I "third" this request. And it would also be at the top of my list.
I would also wish to add some other issues that have been problematic for my use of Carrara (some of them - for years!):
- Better communication about current Carrara development. Is anybody working on it at all? if not, we should know about it!
- Better support for Genesis 1 & 2 all around.
- Maps in the SSS (with, preferably, some improvement in SSS-rendering speed)
- Micro-displacement similar to the way it's handled in DS, Poser and other apps.
- Better compatibility with DS formats for a smoother transition between these 2 apps: Carrara and DAZ Studio. A bridge like there was for Brice and like there is for Zbrush - if necessary, but native support for DAZ Studio formats would be ideal. In fact, I believe that implementing something like this well and correctly can make improving Carrara better integrated into DS development pipeline, thus saving DAZ money on Carrara development over all by allowing near simultaneous introduction of improvements to both apps. As a programmer I can see a number of ways to do it, though I realize that there might be limitations for the most straight-forward ways of doing it. Still, I am surprised noone at DAZ has come up with some form of this inter-app Carrara-DAZ/DAZ-Carrara communication yet.
- Ability to turn OFF base image rendering for multi-pass rendering. So that the render would compute faster when only rendering, say the post effect or one of the other passes. This would make working on tweaks to things like GI and dynamic hair so much easier and faster!
- On/OFF SSS rendering checkbox in the Rendering room to have an option for not rendering SSS without needing to manually check it off in all shaders. We have On/Off checkboxes for practivally everything else.
- Excluding items(or, even better - shaders!) from GI computation while still rendering them at a simpler setting - to save render time.
- This is one of the less critical issues, but more in the "wishful thinking" department: Simplified GI/Indirect Lighting simulations for faster rendering using GI + smoothing of the simplified simulations to reduce artefacts. I believe the field has progressed quite a bit since those algorithms were implemented in Carrara.
The list can go on, but these are the things that I wish for the most.
I Fifth this request...
PLUS an announcement or update on whether we will actually get a Carrara 9.
Cheers,
S.K.
Seeing as real life has kept me away from any art related work, and no desire to do anything art related I have stayed away, but there is a flicker of interest in me atm, so has there, is there, or ever going to be anything from Daz on the issues it's customers have raised in this thread?
My Magic Eight Ball says, Meh. ;-)
DAZ 3D keeps sponsoring Carrara challenges, such as dustrider's current challenge. If you feel an artistic itch, take a look:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/45561/
For some reason, I got file load errors and other compatibility problems when I tried to load a scene exported from Daz Studio to Carrara, but not when I loaded each element of the same scene exported as wearable a preset. The problem figures were Genesis. In the problem load, the error said it cold not find M5 dsf files. The details are here.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/45361/P15/
The thread also includes my work-around.
Edit: I submitted this Request #177202
I got a strange error when conforming a product made for V4 to V4. The product (Heaven Sent clothing) is sold in the Daz store. The product loads fine, but I get an error when conforming to V4.
More strange. I loaded the same product in Studio, used "fit to" for genesis, and saved it as a wearable preset. The product conforms to Genesis in Carrara fine.