Why did DAZ abandon Carrara?

Mistara

never did figure out the sphere to dust workflow

Dartanbeck

Dartanbeck said:

Frederick Ribble has toiled away and brought to us the wonderful PyCarrara and PyCloid. With his permission, I've compiled a playlist of his brief and wonderful demo videos. Enjoy!

PyCloid Demos

Here's the first video in the list, just as a teaser

With all respect, f1oat3d, I love you man!

Have you tried PyCloid?

ScarletX1969

Here's my take.

While it is very clear that Carrara is not very important to Daz as of now, I don't think this forum would exist nor would they still sell it if it was completely abandoned.  What I don't like is the silence.  They could have or should have at the very least told the Carrara community something at this point instead of just leaving it up to speculation.

It's been years since 8.5, so if they said they were truly no longer developing it, I don't think any of us would be sad or surprised since that is what we figured.  However, if they planned to still develop it, they should at least provide some sort of update.

Maybe not taking any evidence of Carrara down is a sign of planned development, but uncertainty in this area is unnecessary at this point.

UnifiedBrain

Headwax said:

This is starting to sound like: 

"When did you stop beating your wife?"

Wherein the 'facts' are presupposed in the question (in this case the thread title).

It doesnt give anyone who is thinking of taking up Carrara a positive vibe. Lose lose situation that leads to a self fulfilling prophecy.

Well said.

 

 

ScarletX1969 said:

Here's my take.

While it is very clear that Carrara is not very important to Daz as of now, I don't think this forum would exist nor would they still sell it if it was completely abandoned.  What I don't like is the silence.  They could have or should have at the very least told the Carrara community something at this point instead of just leaving it up to speculation.

I agree with part of what you said.  But Daz is not silent.  If you ask tech support, they will tell you flat out that Carrara is not currently being developed.

What does that mean?  It simply means that Carrara development from Daz is in limbo.  For a long time, Hexagon was in limbo as well.  The fact is, we don't know if or when this state of limbo for Carrara development will end.  But that doesn't stop people from making the most negative of predictions, or the most false or misleading posts (such as "Carrara is dead").

Development may be in limbo from Daz, but "support" is not.  Daz continues to market Carrara.  They continue to host the most popular forum for Carrara worldwide.  And they continue to support the Carrara Challenge contest every month.

And in spite of the developmental limbo status from Daz, development for Carrara continues, thanks to several individuals who regularly create new plugins.  In that way, a lot of updates that you would hope that Daz would normally make to Carrara, have already occurred.

Carrara continues to work fine on the newest Windows 10 platform.  The newest Mac platform is causing it problems, but those problems are hardly unique to Carrara.

Finally, there is an old saying - It's not the tool, it is how the tool is used.  There is a lot of fool's gold in chasing upgrades, thinking that something new will make you a better artist.  Art is between the ears, not between silicon wafers.  If you want to be more of a technician rather than an artist, fine.  But for me, Carrara already has plenty of technical capability.  I enjoy upgrades, but I don't "need" them.  Instead, I need to focus on creating better art, and Carrara is uniquely set up to allow the process to unfold in a way that is easier than other programs I have tried.

Dartanbeck

ScarletX1969 said:

Here's my take.

While it is very clear that Carrara is not very important to Daz as of now, I don't think this forum would exist nor would they still sell it if it was completely abandoned.  What I don't like is the silence.  They could have or should have at the very least told the Carrara community something at this point instead of just leaving it up to speculation.

It's been years since 8.5, so if they said they were truly no longer developing it, I don't think any of us would be sad or surprised since that is what we figured.  However, if they planned to still develop it, they should at least provide some sort of update.

Maybe not taking any evidence of Carrara down is a sign of planned development, but uncertainty in this area is unnecessary at this point.

Very true - kinda.

There actually has been quite a bit of silent development done on Carrara, but it never made it as a release. We (Carrara forum) didn't find out about it on the Carrara forum, but in another section of the forums entirely. We knew nothing. It was an attempt to get Genesis 3/8 figures working in Carrara. They were successful at getting the Quaternion Skinning working, but other factors were still keeping the newer generation from working.

I guess I just remain optimistic simply because there really is no other software quite like Carrara, yet it's not some crazy off-the-wall thing. It does what a modeler should and so much more. The fact that we can get an actual plugin for Octane says something for the number of people still using the software. 

If someone does further develop Carrara officially, I truly hope that it's Daz 3D. Personally, I like being able to buy what I can't or don't have time to model, and still have the ability to model things that I can. Most of the time I'm just buying content and editing it in the modeler rather than building things from scratch. Carrara excells at that workflow. But I also really love how easily I can start from scratch and get decent UVs and Daz Studio compatibility. I think it would be really cool to have Genesis 3 and 8 compatibility as well as the next generation, whatever Genesis 9 ends up being. It would also be really cool if we could export DUF and aniBlocks!

tsarist

Headwax said:

This is starting to sound like: 

"When did you stop beating your wife?"

Wherein the 'facts' are presupposed in the question (in this case the thread title).

It doesnt give anyone who is thinking of taking up Carrara a positive vibe. Lose lose situation that leads to a self fulfilling prophecy.

Headwax I don't agree. Look at some of the posts here. Dartanbeck many post, mine and others.

There's a LOT for a prospective Carrara user to have an optimistic view of the software.

Carrara can use Poser figures and propsas well as Daz Genesis 2 or power characters and pr o ps recently made props.

Vick 4 still has new clothes, morphs, hair, poses, coming out for her

Animation system is still ahead of Daz 4.10

And on and on.

So many great things to sing Carrara's praises over.

tsarist

Dartanbeck said:

You all know my take on this subject. But just in case:

I was a very strong supporter of Daz 3d giving Genesis compatibility to Carrara. During the Carrara 8.5 beta tests, however, the forum here was a pretty dark place - complaining that they were chosing Daz Content as the drive for further development. Bad move on the community's behalf, I warned. DAZ_Spooky would make a nice, positive statement about how things are going, and he was nailed with negativity and hate. I couldn't believe half of what I was reading.

Dartanbeck

I remember the forum during those times and it was dark, even by my standards

I'm not above hurling a grenade when warranted, so when you have a situation where I'm calling for civility, things have truly gone off the deep end.

There was a LOT going on at that time and Daz didn't handle things as well as they could have done. Between the botched new website launch, changes in the PC club, and host of other missteps, it created a perfect storm. Add to that the rash of censorship and the like in the forums. Not to mention the calamities facing the arts community at the time in the real world (media consolidation, layoffs, foreclosures). Frankly, I'm surprised it wasn't a lot MORE dark, all things considered.

To Daz's credit, they really did learn how to better communicate with the community and to get ahead of problems and make good on promises and fix mistakes. They've come a long way.

Maybe something good came out of all that negativity.

I'm hoping Daz will do an update one day or at least keep Carrara compatible with Windows in future.

WendyLuvsCatz

I don't think that was the reason though

I was mixed about it and welcomed many of the improvements 

the change of ownership was the time DAZ  abandoned it with Chris Creek moving on to Hivewire3d 

Dartanbeck

I adore how well designed animation is within Carrara. I mean - through and through. So easy to open hierarchies - even on the individual parts of the hierachy and adjust just anything individually (opening all the way) or altogether  (leave the hierarchy closed) is such a small part of it in Carrara, yet it has the power to add a lot more realism to an action. I also love the visual queues we get. An example: I have the d=shoulder selected and I really need to tweak its rotation beyond the limits a bit. Go to the Motion tab and we get a whole worksheet that's ultra-simple to understand (as opposed to trying to find the right function within a drop-down list).

I also really appreciate the whole NLA system. Thank whomever it was to trick out that system as well as they did! So many things we can use to set up the NLA clip in different ways - or even just transfer it to sequencer keyframes, which I do quite a bit. Then I have full control with the sequencer tools and graph editor. If I want to use a clip, I can just make a new one with the new results. So cool!

But that's such a tiny bit of remark on such a vast software. Everywhere we turn in Carrara there's many ways that the develpoers gave us to animate whatever it is we're looking at! Just like Antoine Clapier said (paraphrasing): Keep the high end geeky stuff under the hood of an interface that's friendly to artists and very easy to use. They've pulled that off in spades!!!

UnifiedBrain

tsarist said:

Headwax said:

This is starting to sound like: 

"When did you stop beating your wife?"

Wherein the 'facts' are presupposed in the question (in this case the thread title).

It doesnt give anyone who is thinking of taking up Carrara a positive vibe. Lose lose situation that leads to a self fulfilling prophecy.

 

Headwax I don't agree.

Not sure what you are disagreeing with.

He is saying that negative or misleading post titles about Carrara tend to discourage prospective users.  We have battled misleading bias like this in the past.

Other than Dart, nobody promotes Carrara more than HeadWax.  He is also a fabulous artist.  If he wasn't here, I would probably leave.

tsarist

UnifiedBrain said:

tsarist said:

Headwax said:

This is starting to sound like: 

"When did you stop beating your wife?"

Wherein the 'facts' are presupposed in the question (in this case the thread title).

It doesnt give anyone who is thinking of taking up Carrara a positive vibe. Lose lose situation that leads to a self fulfilling prophecy.

 

Headwax I don't agree.

Not sure what you are disagreeing with.

He is saying that negative or misleading post titles about Carrara tend to discourage prospective users.  We have battled misleading bias like this in the past.

Other than Dart, nobody promotes Carrara more than HeadWax.  He is also a fabulous artist.  If he wasn't here, I would probably leave.

Oh well, that's not how I interpreted the post, but it doesn't matter.

I have always found Dartanbeck & Headwax to be very good allies in the fight to promote Carrara. Their presence in the forums is always a welcomed sight.

Headwax

Ah shucks, thankyou UB and tsarist ;)  And Dart.

Sorry Tsarist UB interpreted what I was trying to say. I was being muddy

The best thing to do with threads like this is not to comment and they quickly end up on page 9898 of the Carrara thread - but I couldnt resist this time :)

Last time we had a post like this we worked hard to get it off the front page by dragging up old threads and commenting on them !

A mass community effort - worked well.

Out of interest, you'll notice the orginal poster has only 1 post and has not returned to this thread....

UB one of your previous posts was so elegantly eloquent you should have been a writer!

tsarist

Headwax said:

Ah shucks, thankyou UB and tsarist ;)  And Dart.

The best thing to do with threads like this is not to comment and they quickly end up on page 9898 of the Carrara thread - but I coul

Last time we had a post like this we worked hard to get it off the front page by dragging up old threads and commenting on them !

A mass community effort - worked well.

Thanks Headwax, I see your point better.

I guess I was a bit muddy as well. Let me clarify...

I went to the grocer awhile ago (before this pandemic) and was looking for Cherry Coke. It wasn't where it usually was, so I wasted 10 minutes looking until I saw a lad stocking shelves and asked him.

He told me they put something else in that spot AND removed the tag so the shelves would look fully stocked. I countered that they weren't REALLY fully stocked, they created an illusion that has people wasting time looking for something that isn't there.

These threads keep popping up from time to time BECAUSE there is a problem or at least a legitimate concern.

Dartanbeck mentioned the dark times when C8.5 was being tested. They were indeed dark, but what made things worse was when someone would say something mildly critical and then people would post 2 or 3 pages of puppy dog pics and rainbows. What did that really accomplish?

So you push a thread off the front page but it doesn't actually solve anything. It just papers over an issue that just keeps coming back.

Maybe we can have a rational conversation over an issue that keeps coming up.

Maybe the Cherry Coke is out of stock.

Bunyip02

Carrara does everything I want it too, in the areas that it has not been updated I use other software as"Plugins" for Carrara.

When I was employed in engineering each of us in the office had over $6000 minimum worth of software on our computers which was updated on a very regular basis, actual use of those programs was probably only 10% of what they were capable of. I would imagine most people are not using Carrara to it's full capacity.

I also take a dim view of those who are obviously doing a drive-by-shooting of what is still a very capable program.

tsarist

Bunyip02 said:

Carrara does everything I want it too, in the areas that it has not been updated I use other software as"Plugins" for Carrara.

had over $6000 minimum worth of software on our computers which was updated on a very regular basis, actual use of those programs was probably only 10% of what they were capable of. I would imagine most people are not using Carrara to it's full capacity.

I ageee. I was having a similar conversation about Adobe products. I think most users would be amazed what they could do if they leveraged even 20% of CS2!

Bunyip02 said:

I also take a dim view of those who are obviously doing a drive-by-shooting of what is still a very capable program.

Bunyip

I agree. I don't like people attacking Carrara unnecessarily, but I guess where you lot are losing me on is I didn't see a "drive by shooting." I saw a legitimate question being raised.

Believe me, I've seen "drive by shootings" here in the forums and they take on a decidedly acidic flavour at the outset.

Bunyip02

tsarist said:

Bunyip02 said:

Carrara does everything I want it too, in the areas that it has not been updated I use other software as"Plugins" for Carrara.

had over $6000 minimum worth of software on our computers which was updated on a very regular basis, actual use of those programs was probably only 10% of what they were capable of. I would imagine most people are not using Carrara to it's full capacity.

 

I ageee. I was having a similar conversation about Adobe products. I think most users would be amazed what they could do if they leveraged even 20% of CS2!

Bunyip02 said:

I also take a dim view of those who are obviously doing a drive-by-shooting of what is still a very capable program.

 

Bunyip

 

I agree. I don't like people attacking Carrara unnecessarily, but I guess where you lot are losing me on is I didn't see a "drive by shooting." I saw a legitimate question being raised.

 

Believe me, I've seen "drive by shootings" here in the forums and they take on a decidedly acidic flavour at the outset.

This time around it was a legitimate question, but some of the previous ones have obviously been by trolls.

Steve K

We should remember our good fortune at having Carrara available.  E.g. I like to do short animations for the 48 Hour Film contests (five minute animation in two days with a random draw of genre & required elements).  I typically get about 5-10 seconds per frame (1280x720, only basic lights) render time , so a total of about 10 hours for the whole animation if the entire 5 minutes is animated (holding a still image can reduce this a lot, even using something like Particle Illusion to add overlaid animated effects which render in real time - really).  I just finished a ten second animation in Vue - it took a couple of days.  So a five minute animation would take, lessee, carry the 3 ... a couple of months.  That does not even make the "late entry" list (can receive the audience award only), more like the MIA list which is usually caused when a live action  team's crew does not show up.