Is Carrara Pro worth it?
DisabledAmericanVeteran
Posts: 55
Hello, I am a year new with Daz3d. I've been watching and learning Daz3d, Poser, Blender and other programs to determine which would be the most user-friendly (aka idiot-proof) program for me.,
I am old and disabled; so if I do accidentally learn anyting i won't have much longer to enjoy it (Iol) . With that said, I noticed an incredible deal on a product called Carrara Pro ($32.50, less my $6 coupon)
The obvious is YES! it's worth it because you get both Michael 5 Pro AND Victoria 5 Pro bundles, but when I say "worth it" I mean to learn and use. I'm not that far along with my Daz3d knowledge. Heck, I' barely figuring out how to move the characters and now I want to what? Yes, do have some nerve to ask if this program is "worth" the time now (and in the future) to learn. I'm deciding which other program will be around to compliment Daz3D in the future. So this question is directed to those of you already familiar and comfortable using Carrara Pro. Has it made a noticeable improvement as compared to how you used Daz3D before you learned Carrara? Thank you in advance.
Yes, it is truly a "bargain" because you get those two pro bundles as well as the basic program for just a little more than the MSRP of the Digital Painter Shaders program included. So as a frugal, old disabled person on a fixed income that is a Daz3d fanboy for life, I can surely say "yes" it's worth it economically without a doubt. But even $26.50 ($32.50 minus $6 coupon) is quite a bite out of my monthly allowance. At my learning pace, by the time I get around to installing it, the return policy will have expired. Thank you for your inputs.
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Comments
It's very difficult to make judgments on whether a program is 'worth it', as that depends very much on how you will use it, and what you'd like to do in 3D.
My personal opinion is that Carrara is an excellent program in many ways. I find it enjoyable to work with, fairly stable, and very powerful. I know that I've only scratched the surface of what can be done with Carrara. I personally prefer Carrara's user interface to the interfaces of some competing programs, such as Blender.
Carrara gives you much more than DAZ Studio in some respects: it has a variety of tools for modeling new objects, the atmospherics and terrain engine mean that it can be used as a landscape modeler/renderer (like Bryce). Like Studio, Carrara can be used to pose and render figures, but only older generations -- V4/M4, Genesis, and Genesis 2. Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 are not supported in Carrara, although I believe some users have found workarounds.
One drawback is that unless you want to spend gigantic amounts of money on the third-party Octane system, you'll be limited to Carrara's built-in renderer. I happen to like the look of Carrara's renders, but it's harder to get the kind of photorealistic results you see from the Iray renderer in DAZ Studio.
The big gotcha with Carrara is that its future is uncertain. DAZ have not given a definite statement about their plans, except to say that it is "not currently in active development". That might mean "We're not working on it now, but we may come back to it in future". Or it might mean "It's dead as mutton, but we don't want to say so yet." If Carrara is not updated, then there is a chance that a future release of an operating system will kill it (this is what happened to Bryce on Mac). Currently, Carrara works fine with the latest versions of both MacOS X and Windows, but that might change.
What would you like to do with Carrara? If you're already using DAZ Studio, then Carrara's main value to you might be as a modeler to build your own scene content (but for that you might consider Hexagon, which is free), or as a landscape renderer (but if you're on Windows, where Bryce still works, you might try Bryce, which is also on sale at a good price right now). On the other hand, if you want an all-in-one program that you can use for multiple different tasks, then Carrara might be just right for you.
Two final points: one is that the bargain price comes around quite often. If you miss it this time, it'll probably be back before too long. So you have time to get a better idea of what Carrara does, and to ask more people for their opinion.
The second is that although there's no trial version of the software available, there is DAZ's 30-day money back guarantee. You could set aside a couple of weekends to really explore the software, make up your mind whether it does something you can use, and then either keep it or request a refund.
Thank you Bytescapes, your input has convinced me to "test drive" it for 30 days. I did submit a trouble ticket because after I read your reply and visited your website, I purchased it and attempted to register it. Only to find out that most of the links within Carrara have been terminated. That could only mean the enevitble; they are scrapping this software. I can say I now have 29 more days to see what I accomplish. As you can see from my big picture renders, that amongst other issues, I do have a problem with backgrounds or lack thereof. (https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/users/2525391).
Well, I am currently allowing the pdf to speech program read the test manual as I poke around Carrara. Again, I thank you for your input and I love what you do with Carrara. Some day I hope to make such beautiful renders as yours.
Sincerely,
Arthur
Even if you decide that you want to stay with DAZ Studio, you could certainly get some mileage out of Carrara for creating backgrounds. Because the Carrara renderer and the DAZ Studio renderer typically yield a slightly different 'look', you might want to use Depth of Field effects in DAZ Studio to blur the backgrounds (using Depth of Field, you can also get away with using quite simple objects in your background; they don't have to be highly detailed and flawless, they just need to suggest the general look of whatever you want as a background.
Although DAZ haven't done much with Carrara lately, there is a very active community of Carrara users over in the Carrara discussion area of these forums. The community includes some people who know the software very well, and they're generally very friendly and helpful. If you have questions or run into problems, you should be able to find someone there to help you out. Documentation for the software (in case you haven't found it yet) is linked here.
Good luck with Carrara -- I hope you'll like it and find that it repays the time and money spent.
Thank you Bytescapes. You've helped me more than the help center. In fact, they actually closed out my ticket (i'm guessing they knew someone in the forum would help me out, lol) Yes, those are quite a few persons interested in Carrara and use it. There is a noticeable difference in depth as well. So far, I'm leaning towards worth it and that't not counting the two pro bundles included. But now I have something else to help in my 3d Art pursuit. Some day, I do look forward to making my own characters and props and such. But in the meantime, I will continue to have fun learning this avenue of Daz3d. I hope you you the very best in your ventures as well.
Sincerely,
Arthur
Look also here http://carraracafe.com
Carrara is brilliant, rendering time is seconds rather than minutes or hours, I wouldn't make animated films with anything else.
Yes, it probably is a dead program and for good reason - it works like a dream just as it is. I would actually be afraid of a new version.
However! it is mainly of use for the v4 generation figures. The Genesis (+2+3) stuff is iffy and maybe no work at all. G8 is a complete no go. But who cares. Some of the best artists at Rendo are still making v4s, in fact I am buying one in a few minutes. I do love the Carrara mesh building room.
I bought Carrara for the same price awhile ago. I only ran it once or twice, and quit again. I've owned various versions of Carrara since DAZ took it over. I've always been confused and frustrated. There is no recent documentation for current versions of Carrara. Out of desperation I bought a Carrara book on Amazon. It was out of date, by several years. The book didn't help. When I bought the latest version, I went to the forums and asked for help. I received links to old threads in which people argued about whatever advice was given.
I read this thread out of curiosity and decided to visit Carrara Cafe. The site looked abandoned. News articles on the front page were dated 2017. Most of the forum posts appeared to be years old. I don't see any signs of life there. And I don't see myself learning Carrara, given the lack of meaningful resources.
I actually do think Carrara is worth it. I don't get to use it much as I am usually very busy with promos but I think its worth keeping and worth figuring out. I found the modelling to be far more intuitive in Carrara than in Blender, although the little bit of modelling I learned to do in Carrara, actually made it easier to figure out Blender. It renders very fast and has a beautiful terrain maker (although Bryce also makes stunning terrains and yes, I have that as well). Its a tool just like everything else. For me it was and still is worth it.
Thank you Everyone!!! Yes, I am highly motivated to begin to learn and use Carrara all the more. I do prefer the V4 characters over the more realistic newer stuff as I am not comfortable with art looking too realistic.
Just my opinion mind you, but yes as you can see I just back to doing daz3d art so I'm literally relearning what I had forgot being gone for two months. Having learning and other disabilities doesn't help either.
But I'm back and was about to post a newer question but NexySaloon has given me even more reason to learn Carrara as I am flabergasted as to how long my rendering now takes. Granted, I am using an Alienware 17r5 which I purchased specifically to use with Daz3d and 3D Art. I actually crash it attempting to update my "Dojo" scene with 36 Asian Female characters. I was going to ask does having more content load up decrease performance?
So I think instead of trying get reaffirmation that it does (1400 items installed via DIM) I will just uninstall most of them and load only the items I will need. I'm guessing that is the whole point of DIM and having the ability to uninstall and install them unlimitedly. Okay everyone again, thank you for your feedback. I hope you all have a most wonderful new year! ps, sorry about the nudie-ish looking picture, but I can't put on their clothes nor load the teagarden without crashing. I'm guessing this is possible in Carrara AND once I learn to animate them, I'll be happy. This is quite time consuming and I really don't know how a now crowd can be pulled off.
Having lots of content in your library should have no effect on performance, unless you load them into a scene and try to render. The more content, particularly human figures, that you have loaded into a scene, the more system resources, and time, it will take to render. The added textures in particular will consume a great deal of resources. There are workarounds, such as using instancing, reducing texture sizes and using low resolution figures for background, etc.
some things just click differently with people
I started with Carrara 5 on a cover disc of a magazine coming from iClone 3 in 2009 and found it quite intuitive.
I actually only came to the DAZ forum after I had issues with DAZ studio 3 which never really worked on my old Dell laptop well, I simply ended up buying Poser 7 in the end because DS was practically unusable on that machine.
DS 4 ironically when I tested it before abandoning the laptop altogether actually ran ok, by then I had a decent desktop though.
I still mostly use Carrara.
Carrara Pro is a great program, definitely worth the price if your using Genesis 2 or earlier (plus you get some great freebies if you don't have the V5 or M5 Pro buldles). You might be interested in this new thread in the Commons:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/308111/carrara-for-aspiring-3d-artists-and-animators#latest