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come on guys you know not all the G1 and G2 stuff works correct in C8.5
Could you provide a list of things you've come across? That could be very helpful.
I've actually had more issue with Genesis 1 stuff with Genesis 1. A lot of that was due to DAZ changing from .dsf format to .duf, and the vendors not updating their products (this can be fixed by the user by opening the offending product in DS, and re saving it as .duf) and figures with extreme morphs. There are also problems with poke through, since Carrara doesn't have the smoothing and push controls that DS does (as noted by my post in the issues thread). But there are ways to fix these issues as well. Stan uses displacement maps to fix this - which is a brilliant idea!
But, all of the content I have purchased in the last 6 months has worked perfectly (though I don't buy tons of content)) - and I stand by that statement!
Agreed.
Hopefully, you will agree that the phrase "not all the G1 and G2 stuff works" has a very different meaning than "cannot load any of the newer content."
I would not push anyone to use Carrara. If you are going to pose and render pre-made and pre-mapped content, either Poser or Daz Studio would be better. If you are just going to do landscapes, then Bryce or Vue would be better. If you are just going to create vertex models, then Hexagon or Blender might be preferred.
Carrara is a one-stop shop at entry level prices. As such, it is a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. If people have better command of moving back and forth between the other programs, then do so.
Well I actually found my old Carrara 5 CDs - in a big box of CDs from before a move. In little paper jackets. With no serial number, box, or book anywhere in sight. Oh well... Was hoping that if I could get all my old apps installed windows side - I could compare them better.
For me at least - my usage plan is to do outdoor renders where I can supply a wider variety of plants and custom skies, atmospheric effects, make objects people are holding glow (if I can already do that in Daz3d, I still nee to track it down), and use combined landscape and props.
For still imagery rather than animation.
Vue might be the best option - but it seems to have gotten absurd in price over the years.
But this is something I need to talk myself back from - because I at least should master Daz / Poser more first before jumping further.
But it is still interesting to size up how each of these compares.
Sounds like a good plan. as for making objects glow in DS, this thread may help:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/11277/
Good luck on your journey back to 3D!
For Genesis, the only thing I've run into that doesn't work is the V5 genitals don't transmap right and are basically unusable. This isn't a big deal for me, and I would probably never have known if someone else hadn't mentioned it in the forums, but it still sucks daz hasn't corrected this, since Genesis is supposed to be fully compatible with 8.5 Carrara. I imagine if all I did was hardcore sex scenes, this would be a huge drawback preventing me from being able to use Genesis.
On the other hand, everything else about Genesis works fine, from everything I've been able to discover, with the exception that conforming shoes that are for other models like V4 and M4 don't seem to autofit right (but as I understand that's a problem with autofit everywhere)
I don't use Genesis 2, so I can't really comment. From what others have said, I thought that Genesis 2 worked alright as long as you only used it with Genesis 2 clothing/hair/etc, but that it couldn't autofit other model's clothing for use. But that's hearsay, as I've never really used Genesis 2.
I still prefer to use V4/M4. Mostly because I've got huge organized pose libraries for those figures and since I do nearly 100% still images (and because I use the Perfect V4 morph packages that I think bend better than any of the genesis bends) I don't have a great need for Genesis. If I were doing lots of animations, I would no doubt switch to Genesis, but as is V4/M4 is the way to go for me currently. I did buy a ton of Genesis stuff thought, before figuring out I preferred V4/M4 for my workflow, and never ran into any problems experimenting with any of it.
Each to his own, but I really do think (even if Daz has let it stagnate) Carrara is the far superior option of the 3 mentioned (Vue, Bryce, Carrara). Lots of people talk about a learning curve, but for me it's the easiest and most natural work interface of any digital app I've tried, and currently I do nearly everything in Carrara, with the exception that if I want to do an unbiased render I export to Thea Render (I have Luxus for Carrara too, but I get better/faster unbiased results from Thea. No doubt when the Octane plugin is released I'll be giving that a whirl too).
You can do everything you want to do within Carrara. In addition to a vertex-type modeler like Hexagon and a terrain editor like Bryce, Carrara has a dedicated plant modeler for you to make a wide variety of custom plants - to which you can also add your own custom leaves and fruit if you want. Carrara has a replicator so you could easily transform your plants to a forest or a garden. You can create a fanciful landscape, or you can use Carrara with ground control to load a real world heightmap from the USGS. You can load Daz figures directly into Carrara, set them in the forest/garden and pose them. You can model objects directly in their posed hands. You can add a glow to the object's texture. Carrara has a realistic sky with volumetric clouds, a sun and a moon light, including the ability to set the sun and moon to a specific time and date. You can do all of that in a single program.
Or, you can make the props in Hexagon or Blender or..., pose human figures with the aforementioned props in Daz Studio or Poser, and use Bryce or Vue to add the landscape.
I find it easier and more intuitive to do it all in Carrara. Plus, Carrara has additional features. For example, if you model in Hexagon, you are limited to vertex modeling. Carrara also has a spline modeler, a metaball modeler, and a formula modeler. See Dustrider's list above for other examples of Carrara features.
Not pushing you one way or the other. Just saying that the reports of incompatibility of Carrara with newer Daz content such as Genesis, Genesis 2, the new dragon, etc. are exaggerated.
Good luck with whatever you choose. Hope you share your progress.
" Not pushing you one way or the other. Just saying that the reports of incompatibility of Carrara with newer Daz content such as Genesis, Genesis 2, the new dragon, etc. are exaggerated. "
they are not !
how long we been waiting for the C8.5 bugs to be fixed ?
didn't Daz say they were going to be working on C9 - what was it a version last year some time .
I like Carrara - but some things don't work right .
Thanks for explanation, dustrider.
If possible, could you please elaborate more about usage of the Sky dome for lighting the scene.
In the mean time, I have rendered http://www.daz3d.com/urban-sprawl-2-the-big-city
in Carrara, using your tips about the Real sky preset and importing the Daz Studio scene.
I guess, I need this "Shader Doctor" at some point, wishlisted it for now.
Could you provide a list of things you've come across? That could be very helpful.
Here is a thread dedicated to issues and problems related to Carrara.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/43623/
Most of us provided specifics. There are also some generalizations claiming that you can't use Genesis or Genesis 2 in Carrara, or if you have to make any adjustments then it is the same as not working. To me, art by Ringo, PhilW, and others demonstrates that such generalizations are exaggerated. People can and do use Genesis and Genesis 2 in Carrara along with a lot of other new content from Daz. Their usage of Daz's newest content in Carrara is an observable fact. It is not opinion. Thus, anyone who claims that you can't use any of Daz's newer content in Carrara is exaggerating. But there are problems. See the above thread for some specifics. If you know of other problems, please add them to the thread.
So it seems like the Carrara argument boils down to:
There are issues - they should not be either exaggerated as 'show stoppers' or ignored as 'if not there'. Just that - some stuff will need to be worked on when you use the newer content, but it is a hurdle people can get over, just not as easily as it should be.
By contrast, to even get a Daz 4.6 scene into Bryce 7 Pro, do I need to pass it through Poser on the way over? Or save it in obj and start over? (I see that it takes Daz 3 directly...)
And likewise with Vue - I really need to fire up my old Vue 6 infinite and look around because I thought it had direct import from either the Daz of that era or the Poser of that era.
I kind of like the genesis 2 figures - and it sounds like NONE of these things likes them... O.o
On getting the scene into Bryce question. There is a bridge from DS into Bryce. it is an either or situation, either use DS and take it into Bryce or use Poser and take it into Bryce by exporting an obj and importing that.
Some people do find that exporting an obj from DS is preferable in some instances however, but the recommended way is to use the Bridge.
You can send objects directly from DAZ Studio to Bryce through the bridge, or you can export/import them as .obj . There are reasons to do both. Although I have not tried sending G2, there is no reason I can think of why that would not work like anything else. You do not need Poser.
However, note that the two applications are not 100% compatible. For example, procedural materials from one application will not work in the other, although image-based materials will work fine. You can't pose in Bryce, so your objects will "Freeze" in position once transferred. (you can of course save your figure in DS to adjust poses and just send the updated figure to Bryce, but you will then have to reposition anything that interacted with the changes.) Some things cannot be sent from Bryce to DAZ Studio, or not cleanly, I would consider the bridge more of a one-way from DAZ Studio to Bryce rather than the other way around, although that is not entirely true. Let me know if you want specifics, it's a big area. Some transparency-type stuff can be lost when sending from DAZ Studio to Bryce (although you can simply fix it in Bryce to work as intended.) While Bryce skies cannot be sent to DAZ Studio directly, you can of course save your render as an image and use it as a backdrop, and there is also a product that allows you to render your Bryce scene and save it as an image that can be applied to a skydome (or you can do it manually if you know how and don't want the convince of using that product.) Bryce's memory limitations may also limit what you can transfer over, therefore if I have anything significant in my scene, I will typically shrink the image textures where appropriate prior to sending them to avoid problems, which adds an extra step. However, with all that said, I generally have no significant problems sending whatever objects I need from DAZ Studio into Bryce to use there.
Yeah I should fire up Bryce tonight and see where I get with it.
I put all my Daz content libraries on an external disc precisely so I could work them into Bryce Windows side... It is the one of these options that I do already have the current version of (for some random reason I logged in here in 2012 and grabbed Bryce 7 Pro, so it was sitting there waiting in my product library when I dropped back here).
Thanks for explanation, dustrider.
If possible, could you please elaborate more about usage of the Sky dome for lighting the scene.
In the mean time, I have rendered http://www.daz3d.com/urban-sprawl-2-the-big-city
in Carrara, using your tips about the Real sky preset and importing the Daz Studio scene.
I guess, I need this "Shader Doctor" at some point, wishlisted it for now.
Hopefully this will make sense. Select your sky-dome from the list in the Instance tab, then click the Edit button and the shader for the sky-dome will open in the Materials Room (see first image below). Now right click on the texture map in the color channel and select copy (second image). Next right click on the Glow channel and select paste (third image). In the render room, change the settings as shown in the forth image (you only need to select "Light Through Transparency" if you have trans maps on any objects in the scene) Depending on the sky-dome texture map you may have to change the indirect light intensity. You might also want to add another light source to get better shadows. You can't use a distant light because it won't come through the sky-dome. I typically use a spot light with a very long fall-off.
Hope this helps.
Ok, here are a few examples of Carrara renders using Genesis, Genesis2.
For the first one I used Genesis with some rather extreme morphs ( some V5, V4, G4 and a whole host of others). All of the clothing is V4 clothing auto-fitted to Genesis. The second image uses one Genesis figure (the main figure) and one V4. The Genesis figure is wearing Enamore Mage for Genesis. On both of these first two images, the Genesis figure has V4 dynamic hair.
The third image (nothing special here - just a test render comparing the speed of Octane to Carrara) is Genesis 2 (V6) with the Ranger outfit for G2F, and V5 Elite Ponytail.
The fourth render is a G2F character from here, Karma, using both the Karma morphs and skin (release date 2014-03-17), wearing Prehistoric Princess and Hawthorn Hair.
Here is one more. It's just a test render for some skin shaders I'm working on, so pardon the T pose. This is a Genesis figure wearing Nata's bikini (for Genesis). There was an "issue" with the fit of the bikini, the displacement map caused the bikini to render inside the figure (negative displacement). Once I adjusted the displacement, the Bikini was on top of the figure as it should be. The hair is Orianne Hair for Genesis.
Those are really inspirational renders Dustrider (^_^)d... I think I'll dust off my Carrara this weekend and take a look again.
Was there much fiddling with surface settings, displacement strength, specular maps, deformers to reduce pokethrough, etc involved in creating them? (what, if a newbie might ask, do you spend most of your time on when preparing renders like those?).
(I seem to recall there are special "per skin" carrara shader products sold here - does that imply you can't easily switch skin textures as you might in DS? )
+1 :-)
Thanks :red:
The first two images have a quite a bit of shader work, but the majority of it was just adjusting highlight and shininess.
Specifically on the first image, the wizards staff in the first one I created a custom procedural shader for the ball, for the silver and black portions of the staff I used shaders that come with Carrara (probably had very minor adjustments). The cloths were pretty much as is, with the exception of the metal parts, as I recall I used one of the sample shaders that come with Carrara for them as well (brushed aluminum?). The bottles needed to have the highlight and shininess adjusted (this is pretty common, at first it seems difficult, but soon it's very intuitive). The skin was a custom shader using slight SSS and some cellular noise to break up the highlights so it didn't look so much like plastic (at this scale, it works better than bump maps). No manual fitting adjustments were done on any of the cloths. Basic 3 point lighting.
The second image used the same skin shaders with some minor variations on the Genesis figure, the V4/G4 figure in the crystal had no shader modifications. The crystal was all procedural shaders I created (as well as the model). The outfit on the genesis figure required some adjustments to the highlight and shininess, but that was all. Again, no manual fitting adjustments were done on the genesis outfit. Basic 3 point lighting.
The third image is "straight out of the box" so to speak. No adjustments on shaders or cloths. The lighting was just an HDRI.
The fourth image is also pretty much straight out of the box, but it is using a product that I can't talk about yet, I did need to do some shader adjustments for the transmaps on the hair (because of the third party product, would not have been needed otherwise), and change the texture filtering from fast mipmap to sampling (this is something that quite often needs to be done - Fenric has a plugin that makes it quick and easy). Shader prep time for this image was less than 2 min. Lit with and HDRI and one mesh light to bring out the eyes. This was just a quick test image.
The last image is using custom SSS shaders on the Bree texture for V5, lit with an HDRI. Other than the custom shader set, and the quick fix for the bikini, no other adjustments were made. Lit with an HDRI.
Fenric has some outstanding plugins for using content in Carrara. Some of them help with shaders, some give you functionality found in DS or Poser, and some give you functionality you wish DS or Poser had (there are also other plugin provider that have outstanding producta as well - and most are very affordable). His Shader Power Tools bundle sold here (http://www.daz3d.com/shader-power-tools-for-carrara) has three great tools for fixing shaders on content quickly and easily. Shader Doctor, Skin Doctor, and Mutishader Editor. One of the great things about his plugins is you can try before you buy! Just do a google search for "fenric carrara" and you'll find his website where you can download the trial versions (and purchase) his plugins. Most of them give you full functionality for 10 min. after starting Carrara (every time you start Carrara ;-) )
Hope all this makes sense and helps!
May I ask where you got that crystal from?
EDIT: Just read your last post - do you care to explain how you created the shaders for the crystal?
May I ask where you got that crystal from?
EDIT: Just read your last post - do you care to explain how you created the shaders for the crystal?
Sure, I think this should give you all the required settings.
Edit: I should add that full ray tracing, Indirect Lighting, Light Through Trans., and Caustics are all enabled. The crystal was done in Carrara, it was a six sided "cylinder" vertex object, with several edge extrusions for the top end, and slightly distorted geometry to look a bit more natural.
Well, I found some materials for G2F clothing that "don't work" in Carrara. The material presets for the XBikini for G2F don't work and color the bikini blask. In this case, it's not a big deal, because it takes about 20-30 seconds to fix (if that long). The top and bottom use the same texture maps, so you can set the diffuse and bump textures, then add a little bit of highlight and shininess on either the top or the bottom, then copy and paste the shader to the other item.
But the fit is flawless. Here is a quick render with the "fixed" textures, lit with an HDRI and one rim (spot) light. I also had to change the texture filtering from fast mip mapping to sampling on the hair, as it gives better results on fine textures like hair. Used the same custom skin textures/shaders as the previous image. Total time for texture setup maybe 2 minutes. Render time was less than 10 min.
Thanks a lot, dustrider. Your explanations and images are very helpful.
The renders you posted are great and makes me want to further experiment with Carrara.
Just rendered in Carrara, Genesis 2 Female based on http://www.daz3d.com/catrina
She is wearing top and shorts from http://www.daz3d.com/hot-mess-outfit-for-genesis-2-female-s
and shoes from http://www.daz3d.com/casual-denim
Hair is from http://www.daz3d.com/udane-hair
Lighting setup provided by http://www.daz3d.com/carrara-portrait-studio
Rendering time: 47 minutes 22 seconds
Rendering time: 23 minutes 27 seconds
Carrara just went on sale for 50% off if you buy a welcome august thingy in the next 3 days...
That sealed it for me on that one...
I've used it in the past (I've used all 3 in the past), so I can handle the weird UI. UI wise it was kind of a 'branch' off of Poser 4's UI.
(Yeah, this is what I remember about being around here years ago: everything is like a sudden sale, and nobody buys at full price for anything... hard to plan when/what... Going to have to start planning in terms of 'do not need anymore no matter how good in that category, time for the next category').
Sure, I think this should give you all the required settings.
Edit: I should add that full ray tracing, Indirect Lighting, Light Through Trans., and Caustics are all enabled. The crystal was done in Carrara, it was a six sided "cylinder" vertex object, with several edge extrusions for the top end, and slightly distorted geometry to look a bit more natural.
Thanks very much! :) Here's a quick experiment I did, still needs some adjustment but I think I'm getting close...
--
lol sorry that's funny. I got Vue complete and at first yes the price tag was high even on sale (best time to buy is right before release of a new version) I got it for about 4 or 5 hundred $. Thing is I'm on a plan that Vue offers and I pay about $11 a month to get a yearly upgrade to the next version (so it hits me less I wish Daz and Poser had this for its programs). I also have Bryce (but haven't used it since the 80's (kidding), and Carrara (same as Bryce). I'm not made of money either but I can say I've only used Vue for one render in about 2 years. Only because I got hooked on character creation inside Daz Studio, I tend to use Reality (which right now has to go through Poser until version 3 is released for Daz)
Sorry I'm so complex, lets just say I haven't found the right Pipeline just yet for me. I like How Vue looks and it compares to Reality but without all the trees and Veg. But Its a pain to me to get everything over to it from Daz due to the limited time I have.
I have to add though also that Carrara was the very first program I rendered anything in and is easy to use, that's why I keep upgrading it.
Hi dustrider,
Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean the "displacement map caused the bikini to render inside the figure"? I just had a similar sound problem with Hongyu's Bikini 2 for V5 in Carrara. I ended up spending around an hour tweaking the fit using the built-in parameters for the bikini. Your post makes it sound like there is an easier way to do this, but using negative displacement? Would you kindly share the "how" of this technique? Thanks!
Rich S.