Digital Art Zone

I really hate when the polls get taken down.
They can be useful and the original poster put it up for a reason.
.
Anyway, I don’t think Carrara is dead. Daz just needs to get behind it more.
They’re working on getting Genesis into Carrara (see C8.5).
.
I think a lot of artists, especially small independent ones, can make good use of it.
Before anyone lobs a grenade my way, I’m a professional and I use Carrara and know a few other pros who do.
.
It’s good software, but it needs greater visibility and documentation to help users get the most out of it.

Garstor - 25 November 2012 05:09 PM

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…

Yeah, I suspect that young males who like fantasy-world type stuff is DAZ’s primary market.

tsarist - 25 November 2012 05:22 PM

Anyway, I don’t think Carrara is dead.

I’m curious, what makes you think that?

This isn’t an attack, I’m just trying to find out if people have reasons that I’m missing.

tsarist - 25 November 2012 05:22 PM

Before anyone lobs a grenade my way, I’m a professional and I use Carrara and know a few other pros who do.
.
It’s good software, but it needs greater visibility and documentation to help users get the most out of it.

I have started reading 3D Artist and 3D World magazines—I recall seeing exactly one Daz advert for the Victoria/Michael models. Not a peep about Carrara or DS. It appears that the industry only talks about LightWave, Maya, Modo, ZBrush and sometimes Blender…

JoeMamma2000 - 25 November 2012 05:22 PM

Yeah, I suspect that young males who like fantasy-world type stuff is DAZ’s primary market.

Tight-fitting leather and big breasts FTW!

I am male but I sure ain’t young anymore…

Garstor - 25 November 2012 05:48 PM

tsarist - 25 November 2012 05:22 PM

Before anyone lobs a grenade my way, I’m a professional and I use Carrara and know a few other pros who do.
.
It’s good software, but it needs greater visibility and documentation to help users get the most out of it.

I have started reading 3D Artist and 3D World magazines—I recall seeing exactly one Daz advert for the Victoria/Michael models. Not a peep about Carrara or DS. It appears that the industry only talks about LightWave, Maya, Modo, ZBrush and sometimes Blender…

If you’ve just started, you’ve missed all the DAZ freebies (Victoria and Michael), free software, etc., and yes full page ads. They also promoted Carrara for v7 with big ads that showed one of Howie’s scenes with V4 walking down the road. The last big deal was Genesis winning an award in 3D World… that’s why they rushed Genesis out - to try for the award that year.

JoeMamma2000 - 25 November 2012 05:40 PM

tsarist - 25 November 2012 05:22 PM

Anyway, I don’t think Carrara is dead.

I’m curious, what makes you think that?

This isn’t an attack, I’m just trying to find out if people have reasons that I’m missing.

.
Well Joe,

I think it is still alive because they are working on Carrara8.5, trying to get Genesis into it.
If it were dead, I wouldn’t think they would go through so much to put Genesis, a system that Daz has pretty much bet the farm on, into Carrara.
.
That shows me they are hoping to keep Carrara alive, at least for the forseable future.
.
I could be wrong.
I Hope not.

Garstor - 25 November 2012 05:48 PM

I have started reading 3D Artist and 3D World magazines—I recall seeing exactly one Daz advert for the Victoria/Michael models. Not a peep about Carrara or DS. It appears that the industry only talks about LightWave, Maya, Modo, ZBrush and sometimes Blender…

.
You’re right. In the press, Carrara and D|S don’t get much love.
The industry at large does seem to focus on 3DSMax, Maya, ZBrush, etc.
.
I’m just talking about people I know professionally, on the local level.

And there are reasons why you don’t see it in the press very much…

First of all, it costs money for a company to buy space in a publication for an advertisement. And if you’re a small company like DAZ with limited budget, they can’t afford expensive advertising costs.

Secondly, few people use it. VERY few people use it, and that’s why there’s relatively little interest. And yes, it’s a bit of a vicious cycle. Few people use it, therefore there’s little interest, therefore you don’t see much interest in the press, therefore nobody knows about it, therefore nobody uses it.

Thirdly, in the scheme of things, compared to other offerings out there, Carrara honestly isn’t all that hot. Like I’ve said before, it’s not easy to market a product that doesn’t have stuff that people are interested in. How would YOU market Carrara? Especially in light of all the free stuff out there that does so much stuff better. It’s not easy. It’s a whole lot easier to develop and market cool new content then it is to spend years of development to bring Carrara up to where other apps have already been for years. 

But to make Carrara better takes a lot of investment. But if investors don’t know about Carrara, and there’s no history of sales, and no clear indication there can be sales, then they aren’t willing to invest in a product with little potential for a return on their investment.

And like we’ve discussed before, people here WANT for DAZ to invest in Carrara, but it’s actually a very difficult proposition. It’s like saying to a guy who makes $40,000 a year “hey, you really need to invest in a $10 million house”. Yeah, that would be nice, but it’s easier said than done.

But, like I say, we’ve discussed this all before, but that doesn’t change people’s belief that it’s just a matter of DAZ showing some love for Carrara and things will be all better.

JoeMamma2000 - 25 November 2012 08:58 PM

snip

Secondly, few people use it. VERY few people use it, and that’s why there’s relatively little interest. And yes, it’s a bit of a vicious cycle. Few people use it, therefore there’s little interest, therefore you don’t see much interest in the press, therefore nobody knows about it, therefore nobody uses it.

I use it
a lot
I know VERY few people into computer graphics but the few I have come across in my very backwater Adelaide existence HAVE heard of it!
and not any of those very few I have met use Daz dollies either
you move in different circles, maybe your peers do not use it
does not stop you posting a lot about how negative it all apparently is though!

I haven’t been using carrara as long as some, but longer then DAZ. I’ve watch the number of not only casual but experienced artiest using carrara steadily drop since DAZ bought it. Why?

Because carrarests want an industrial standard app and DAZ wants to sell content. So rather then try to keep up with the rest of the CG apps DAZ has used it’s carrara developmental time to make carrara use more content and use it better. What this means is carrara has fallen behind even free CG apps.

So are carrara developers working on soft body physics? Dynamic clothing? Realistic water effects? Better atmospherics? So it can actually compete in the market with similar apps. No they are working on getting DAZ’s latest money pit and their new file format to work in carrara.

With each new build of carrara I see more and more carrarists going to other apps. Why? Because DAZ is steadily trying to turn carrara in to yet another content marketing tool rather then a competitive CG app.

ManStan - 26 November 2012 07:22 AM

So rather then try to keep up with the rest of the CG apps DAZ has used it’s carrara developmental time to make carrara use more content and use it better.

This begs the question, “Why did DAZ buy Carrara to begin with?” The sequence of events really doesn’t make any sense if DAZ’s only focus on Carrara is to make it use their “latest money pit.”

Why sink all that effort into this endeavour if it only means the hastened irrelevance of the application and further deterioration of the user base? A better course of action would be to work with the Blender community to get that application using DAZ content. (I hope I didn’t give them any ideas there…I doubt it since it appears that nobody at DAZ actually reads our Carrara rant threads).

Oh jeez…I’m starting to sound like JoeMamma… (kidding buddy! )

Garstor - 26 November 2012 07:47 AM

This begs the question, “Why did DAZ buy Carrara to begin with?” The sequence of events really doesn’t make any sense if DAZ’s only focus on Carrara is to make it use their “latest money pit.”

To get the Poser SDKs that poser wouldn’t sell out right to DAZ. They came with carrara when DAZ bought it. Carrara used to work quite well with poser, in fact transposer could import fully functioning dynamic clothing animations from poser. Well we can’t have that, Poser is the competition, so no more transposer.

Of the new noncontent features in carrara none of them were developed by DAZ.  Dynamic hair was done for DAZ by the last of the old carrara developers. DAZ has since broke it and appears quite unable to fix it.
Bullet physics is from another company and shoe horned in to carrara, not developed by DAZ.
What other new features has carrara gotten since DAZ has had it? I mean that aren’t directly content related?

ManStan - 26 November 2012 08:05 AM

Of the new noncontent features in carrara none of them were developed by DAZ.  Dynamic hair was done for DAZ by the last of the old carrara developers. DAZ has since broke it and appears quite unable to fix it.
Bullet physics is from another company and shoe horned in to carrara, not developed by DAZ.

It almost sounds like you are part of the dev team…   That’s some pretty deep insight there.

General knowledge. It’s just a matter of being here since DAZ bought carrara. As I have said I was conscripted by DAZ when they bought carrara   Of coarse that SDK thing is an opinion, but I’ll stand by it. As is the termination of transposer. I’ve been told other wise, but I just don’t buy it. Transposer work excellent for me, the replacement for it was to make a bunch of movement/draping morphs in poser but I never could get it to work for an animation.

And as I have said repeatedly my ultimate goal is to have a model walk down a runway with dynamic hair blowing, dynamic clothes draped and moving, and soft body jiggles.