Digital Art Zone

DAZ has a story of abandoning products users would have liked to be able to use on a Mac: e.g.: Bryce, Hexagon…

Hexagon was basically unusable on a Mac.
Bryce can’t even be properly installed on a modern Mac anymore.

Is Carrara next in line? In other terms, is Carrara EOL just like Hexagon and Bryce were?

You need to hire and RETAIN developers, if you realistically intend to sell software:
You can’t possibly think of offering software you outsourced on a hire and fire basis and just drop support after product introduction.
If you persist, you are upsetting your users, and I humbly suggest that’s not a viable business strategy.

Poll removed.  Please review the DAZ 3D Froum TOS for advice on using polls #19

Uhm, I think that the results of that poll could have been an interesting read for DAZ management.

However, the core of the question still stands:
Is Carrara dead, or there still is faint hope?

I have been patiently waiting for about two years or so.
I bet I am not the only Carrara customer who is not happy and considers Carrara 8 a botched product.
This is bad as Carrara was a product with lots of promise, which I loved to use.

There are a handful of Mac users who post here, the rest of us are Windows users (even though I have a Mac Mini for older programs, I don’t use it much and never for Carrara). Maybe Holly or one of the Mac users will post what she’s seen in improvements in the 8.5 beta. There reportedly have been fixes if I recall correctly. They have been spending most of the past couple years on Genesis, the redo and repair of the website and store and on documentation. Maybe we will start seeing the benfits of all that work soon as the website and store seem to be working much better as of late. Maybe the Galleries will be back soon, too. They are very busy!

I get ...  reactions whenever I say this - but apple are just as much to blame as DAZ!

Carrara runs flawlessly on my mac, but I’m on OSX 10.5.2.

Problems began with the changes introduced in 10.6!  I heard the reports and chose not to upgrade.

Not coincidentally, these reports increase with every update apple puts out.

By sacrificing backwards compatibility apple put many software companies in a corner.  Daz should have been able to keep up, and are equally at fault in this - but I refuse to exonerate apple for this!  The blame must be shared. 

I believe backwards compatibility for 10 years to be a reasonable demand to place on every OS out there.  Emulators are out there and should be part of every OS release.

But my opinions are not usually popular ...  I still believe ALL problems, everywhere, can be resolved by DAZ releasing The Millennium Cow.

Did I mention that I am made entirely out of wood?

Sockratease - 25 November 2012 09:28 AM

I get ...  reactions whenever I say this - but apple are just as much to blame as DAZ!

Carrara runs flawlessly on my mac, but I’m on OSX 10.5.2.

Problems began with the changes introduced in 10.6!  I heard the reports and chose not to upgrade.

Not coincidentally, these reports increase with every update apple puts out.

By sacrificing backwards compatibility apple put many software companies in a corner.  Daz should have been able to keep up, and are equally at fault in this - but I refuse to exonerate apple for this!  The blame must be shared. 

I believe backwards compatibility for 10 years to be a reasonable demand to place on every OS out there.  Emulators are out there and should be part of every OS release.

But my opinions are not usually popular ...  I still believe ALL problems, everywhere, can be resolved by DAZ releasing The Millennium Cow.

Did I mention that I am made entirely out of wood?

I agree with you somewhat. The transition to OS X 10.6 seems to have caught a lot of developers out cold. I think it was stripping the Carbon code that did it. Many 3rd party devs used it as a lazy way to keep legacy code running. Apple made no secret of their OS road map, but still, they could have done better at encouraging and aiding 3rd party and smaller devs. as the time approached.

I am on an older pre-Intel Mac and find it frustrating as I don’t have the money at the moment to upgrade, but I also realize that things must move forward. The transition to OS X was equally hard and frustrating for devs. and users alike. I was hoping Apple would learn from it’s past mistakes (Not that OSX was a mistake, it could have been handled with more transparency).

Oh yeah, I don’t think it’s dead at all.

I don’t think it’s quite dead…yet…

But I think DAZ has made it very clear that it is no longer a software development company. In other words they no longer rely on revenue from the software they sell, but only from the content they sell. By giving away almost all of their software for free, that’s what they are saying.

And that’s not good.

And let’s face it, Carrara is so far behind the times in terms of features that people will pay money for that it’s kind of embarrassing. And trying to compete with Blender is almost impossible.

Now, if Carrara had some awesome features and was on the cutting edge, then maybe you could carve out a real, sustainable market of higher-end hobbyists who would pay for it. But the way it stands now, who is going to pay for Carrara? If someone asked you “Why should I spend all that money on Carrara?”, what would you say? Which is probably why you see such deep discounts on Carrara lately.

Pick just about any feature of Carrara, and you can find free software that does it better.

I think that the bottom line for all of DAZ’s software is that any future development (if there is any) is going to be directed at attracting content sales, so you’ll see “features” in Carrara and the rest of DAZ’s software whose main purpose is to implement new content developments. Stuff like Genesis (a new type of content) and other new content developments. Future development will be in content features, not software features. Because they don’t make money on software, they make money on content.

Which begs the question: “If DAZ makes their money on content sales, then why would they hire developers to work on software, instead of directing them to work on developing new content?”. 

Personally, my guess is that in 2013 Carrara will be offered for free (or close to it), and it will wither away. And when (or if) Blender gets the ability to natively handle content, Carrara will become irrelevant.

JoeMamma2000 - 25 November 2012 01:39 PM

But I think DAZ has made it very clear that it is no longer a software development company. In other words they no longer rely on revenue from the software they sell, but only from the content they sell. By giving away almost all of their software for free, that’s what they are saying.

You and I have been at loggerheads before on this issue. But I freely admit that am leaning toward your side of this argument these days.

It really would not take much effort from Daz at all to assure us all that Carrara is alive and well, etc. But instead, they’ve clammed up completely and that is really bad for business. How many threads have discussed/bemoaned Carrara’s future over the past few months?

Even if they are delaying to make everything as perfect as possible, at least do us the courtesy of telling us that.

JoeMamma2000 - 25 November 2012 01:39 PM

Personally, my guess is that in 2013 Carrara will be offered for free (or close to it), and it will wither away. And when (or if) Blender gets the ability to natively handle content, Carrara will become irrelevant.

It’ll be interesting to see if plays out this way. I promise that I won’t diss you for making an “I told you so” post some time in the next 12 months.

Garstor - 25 November 2012 01:53 PM

It’ll be interesting to see if plays out this way. I promise that I won’t diss you for making an “I told you so” post some time in the next 12 months.

I wouldn’t be dissed at all. In fact I’d be kinda happy if someone could tell me this time next year “I told you so”, and Carrara was humming along with some awesome new energy.

Heck, maybe there really is a Ninja-assassin team of software commandos hard at work at Draper, as well as contractors around the world working feverishly, night and day, developing fire and smoke and softbody and cloth and all that cool stuff hobbyists really want. And maybe they really can cram 15 years worth of work into one year. And maybe somehow DAZ found millions of $$ to pay these guys.

And maybe they’re planning for a Carrara 9, to be introduced this time next year, that will knock your socks off AND blow the shorts off of all the competition.

But the chances of anything even remotely close to that are, IMO, virtually zero. It just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

JoeMamma2000 - 25 November 2012 02:14 PM

Heck, maybe there really is a Ninja-assassin team of software commandos hard at work at Draper

The ninjas aren’t on fire though… LOL

for what I can see out of there, if we have to start a low budget production where time and numbers matter, carrara and daz contents may play a big role yet, . that said, daz must quickly implement carrara and above all create a more direct line with professional users in particular: where are the developers? if during a production I need a feedback for a script or a routine I can hope for some help? if I need to improve the hair department with whom I may speak? without these possibilities we can not talk about its death but sort of induced coma, hoping for a sudden wake up

Not dead they are planning to do stuff with it.  At the Comic Con in January they were promoting Carrara heavily and I got to ask questions and got told some stuff about development.

The next Comic Con in New Orleans is going to be November 30th til December 2nd of this year, so I’ll be sure and go if DAZ is going to be at to see what is in the works and ask questions.

With Bryce one problem is the code used in it, is a hindrance with further development.

Jay_NOLA - 25 November 2012 04:53 PM

Not dead they are planning to do stuff with it.  At the Comic Con in January they were promoting Carrara heavily and I got to ask questions and got told some stuff about development.

The next Comic Con in New Orleans is going to be November 30th til December 2nd of this year, so I’ll be sure and go if DAZ is going to be at to see what is in the works and ask questions.

With Bryce one problem is the code used in it, is a hindrance with further development.

Intriguing. I hope you can update us in early December. I’m not too far from New Orleans (Dallas area actually)...but I’d love to visit. Never been to any sort of Con before either. Alas, I have no available vacation time left this year.

At first I had a hard time linking Daz and 3D work with comics—but I was being too literal in my mind. Actually, there is a very nice fit there…

Jay_NOLA - 25 November 2012 04:53 PM

Not dead they are planning to do stuff with it.  At the Comic Con in January they were promoting Carrara heavily and I got to ask questions and got told some stuff about development.

As in, “toss it in the trash” stuff, or “hire a team of Ninja-assassins to turn it into an awesome, butt-kicking CG super app”, or “limp along making it a content delivery system” stuff?

The bottom line as it appears to me is that most people using Carrara LOVE it despite its weaknesses and would just be a lot happier if Daz communicated its intentions as other software companies do - oops we already acknowledged they are not a software developer but a content company.

But wait - haven’t they been putting all that effort into developing Daz Studio ??? Its a vastly different package to what DS 2 was a few years back. And then they give it away - oh they did put a price tag on version 4 then dropped it - marketing strategy or simply no one buying?

We cant say they have done nothing for Carrara in that same period but they just dont seem interested in selling it !

Should I start learming Blender ?