Questions about Carrara?
natclarke
Posts: 79
I am considering purchasing Carrarra to use in the apps I develop. Can it do the following:
1. I have a indie developer licence for Daz, Are the models in Carrara included that create the 2d images
2. Can I create my own hair for my models and load back to Daz?
3. Can I make my own outfits in Carrara? I also use photoshop?
4. Can I alter the materials?
5. Will it work on Mac Osx 10.10.2
6. If it is suitable for my needs as app developer. I am not sure what to purchase:
Carrara 8.5 Po $65
Carrara 8.5 $104
I believe there is a free upgrade from pro 8.5 . Not sure why it is cheaper than Carrara 8.5
7. If it can't do what I am looking for, what does, simply and Cheaply?
8. Can Carrara import a 2d image For example I have an image of orangutan that I would like to put on a model drawn in Photoshop. I would the. Draw back and sides of model to complete
Thanks Natalie
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Comments
4 yes
3 yes, but you will need to use them in carrara unless you export them as obj and re rig them in another program eg studio
6 go pro , it's 64 bit , it's cheaper tha n 8.5 plain because daz hasn't bothered to look at their pricing structure. ....
7 hexagon is cheap and reputedly models better than carrara , but you need another program to rig what you make
Buy carrar pro. It's cheap as chips and as good as the artworks in the Louvre ;)
#2 - hair - Carrara supports its own strand-based hair, and it supports the prop and figure based transmapped hair often used in Daz Studio. As far as I know, Daz Studio does not support Carrara's strand-based hair, but would support a Carrara-modeled hair that was designed as a prop or figure with transmapped textures. In other words, if you check content available in the Daz store, I can use figure/prop hair by SWAM, etc. in Carrara (and can use Carrara's tools to make such hair myself), but Daz Studio cannot use strand hair by PhilW.
1. While I'm not a lawyer, I thought the commercial license was to use Daz content (stuff purchased in the store) commercially. I don't think it matters what application you're using them in, whether you're rendering in Studio, Poser, Carrara, 3DS Max, Maya, Modo, whatever.
2. You can certainly model a prop hair in Carrara for your characters and then use that in Studio. Carrara has its own Dynamic hair system which is much much better than any prop hair (check the link in my signature below to see a quick clip off Carrara dynamic hair in animation with natural scene forces) however the Carrara dynamic hair can't be rendered in any other program except Carrara at this time (though it's easy enough to do a hair render pass and composite it into an animation, as I have done in Octane previously). I'm not certain why you would want to take stuff from Carrara and put it in Studio though; Carrara can handle more content and better, we have other forum posters that routinely take Studio scenes and pull them into Carrara to refine and render, sort of the other way around.
3. You can model clothing in Carrara (you can model anything, clothing included). Carrara has the ability to model in the assembly room, so you can actually model clothing on top of a character that's in a specific pose if you want Carrara also has 3d paint, which means that if it helps your workflow you can actually paint textures on your 3d objects right inside carrara in 3d form, and it will turn that into a texture map for the item. Of course, using photoshop to texture is good too, and you can use them both together.
4. Carrara has the best texture room I've encountered, I quite enjoy playing in the texture room, altering and refining shaders.
5. I use Windows, so not the best to answer, but there are many Mac users here so one of them will hopefully give a better answer. As far as I know, yes.
6. Well, what are your specific needs? Carrara can do almost everything; Landscape modelers, realistic sky editor, plant/tree modeler, has tons of animation tools, particles, 2 different physics engines, Dynamic hair, Vertex modeler, Spline modeler, meta ball modeler, ocean, text modeler, fog, fire, fountain, cloud modelers, etc etc... not much it can't do already, actually.
Due to weirdness of Daz sales, the Pro version is actually less expensive than the standard, of course you want the Pro version, it is much better, so take advantage of the current lower price is my opinion. Not a bad thing :)
I have no idea what you mean by (I have a commercial licence for Daz ? .
There are no images in Carrara.
When you create an image, using products you've either Created yourself, or Purchased,. then that image is YOUR creation,. It's Yours to do with as you please., You alone own any rights to that image which you created.
This is different from the OWNERSHIP of the Purchased models or textures used to create your image.
When you purchase a 3D model from the Daz3D store, then you're buying a licence to USE that Model you've purchased.
You don't own the rights to sell that model, or claim to have created that model.
Daz3D made the Model and they OWN the rights to sell that 3D model.
For example,.
If you make an image using photoshop,. You can sell that image, It's Your creation.
If you use someone else's image and
That would depend on what it is that you want to do,.
if you just want to make textures in photoshop,. Daz3D Studio is free,
.
If you want to model and learn more advanced features of 3D and Modelling / Texturing / Animating / Lighting / Rendering, then Carrara is a good application
Hope it helps
I have a indie developer licence. I develop apps in which I want to use the models in daz and Carrara l. may use items that I purchase an put into my games or create my own clothes or backgrounds. I believe that Carrara has models in it. Is that true?
Yes.
Carrara comes with a bunch of low poly models as a starting point and example,. they were originally created some time ago, I don't think they would be much use in a modern game, but i'm not a gamer,. so you'd be a better judge of what's useful to you.
Some models are spline based, some are vector models, most use simple Carrara shaders rather than high res texture maps.
but you should be able to export any of them as OBJ, or use them as the basis for building your own models.
I believe those models were originally made by Eovia, ..before Daz3D purchased it,
but I would assume that they also purchased the rights to those models when they purchased Carrara.
you can check whether your developer licence covers those models with Daz3D Customer Support.
In addition to the low res models that come with Carrara, Daz currently includes a number of bundled items from their store. This includes Genesis and related characters, prop/figure hair, conforming clothing, and similar. The Pro version currently comes with all of that, plus items designed for genesis 2 figures.
Regarding the question about importing 2D images, the only question is how do you want to use it?
You can use an image as a backdrop and place a model in front of it. You could use an image in a shader and apply it to a shape, you can use an image as a light gel and make it look like you're projecting it. By the way, not only can you do all those things with a still image, you can do them with video and image sequences as well.
Carrara also has tools to help you with compositing images within the program and out side the program. Carrara can render an alpha channel, both straight and Pre-Multiplied. Carrara also has an Alpha channel in the Texture room. There's also a shadow catcher lighting model in the Texture room, catches only shadows. It operates like a shader on that you can apply it to any object in the scene. It also asks as a mask, in that if an object is behind a shadow catcher object and partially obscured, the obscured part will be masked out in the final render. Carrara Pro also has render passes for numerous things such as reflections, depth, object index, etc. the list is very long.
I should mention that the 64 bit version of Carrara and Quicktime do not play well together. This is a known issue and probably goes back to Quicktime and its CODECs being stuck at 32 bits.
I have no problems rendering image sequences and using QT Pro to compile them into a movie. If you render an image sequence that uses an alpha channel, and as long as the image format supports alpha channels, such as .png, .tif, etc. etc. then when QT compiles the image sequence, it respects the alpha channel, as long as you save the movie in a format that can handle alphas, such as the Animation CODEC.
5. Yes it works in 10.10.2 and the current 10.10.3.
Somebody mentioned Hexagon as being a "better" modeller. Hexagon does NOT run on any modern Mac.
6. Pro is 64 bit, does more things, comes with more stuff, and is considerably cheaper. What's not to like?
7. Most other full-featured modeller-renderers come with an extra 0 (or two) on the price tag. You could always go for something like Blender, which is free, but quirky. And you'd have to make all your own stuff. Or Daz Studio, which is also free and has lots of stuff, but is only a renderer for pre-made stuff..
Thank you. I have a lot of Morps and poses in daz. Do they transfer into Carrara
Yes, morphs and poses of Genesis characters do transfer to Carrara.
I'm also a former Daz Studio user that recently "migrated" to Carrara. I feel at home here.
Sounds to me what you're seeking is game specific models with flat 2D style toon shader effect.
Yes Carrara is more than capable for game developer modeling needs. Lots of Unity users use Carrara to build game characters and props.
Modeling in Carrara is very easy and has plenty of options. You can do simple box style modeling (buildings and furniture) and sculpt organic stuff too (simple trees rocks animals and terrains).
If the goal is using 3D characters in game, you also need much lower resolution than typical Daz Studio characters. Carrara has basic decimating tools to lower mesh density, important for game app devs.
If you need to make your own characters from scratch, Carrara rigging is also very easy to learn and exports well to most game engines.
Hair - don't think you're looking for fibermesh hair. If you're talking about Daz hair, yes, you will still get to use your Daz hair in Carrara and fit them to your Daz characters. If you want to make your own polygon mesh hair, totally possible and fun to do in Carrara.
Texture workflow, Carrara works fine with Photoshop, good support for many popular texture formats. You also get to 3D or 2D paint bump and specular maps that will be useful for basic game app dev use.
Carrara's UV unwrapping capability is also very important for game app devs. Better than SketchUp free version.
The only "all in one" tool out there that can do more than Carrara for the same price is Blender. But Blender is many times harder to learn for 3D beginners.
Carrara also has one of the most helpful community in the 3D world :)