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Hi Joe, I'm not going to argue with most of what you have said, but just to pick up on a couple of points. Carrara isn't "decades" behind on features, in fact it is ahead of many 3D softwares in some areas, such as replication and dynamic hair. (I will accept that Poser had dynamic cloth more than 10 years ago, and Carrara still doesn't have a good solution for this.)
Also, in asking for G3F compatibility, we are not asking for the Moon. I do not know exactly why it won't work, but it could be something quite simple to fix. If they could say spend one developer week of time to make it work, and that would allow hundreds of Carrara users to access hundreds of Genesis 3 products that will be released over the coming years, then that sounds to me that it has the potential to make a good return for DAZ. If it would require a complete overhaul of the program, then I can see why they may not be interested.
But if DAZ can more clearly see the numbers of Carrara users asking for G3F compatibility, it will add weight to that equation in favour of getting it done. Sure it does not guarantee it, as we don't know the scope of the work required to make it happen, but it certainly won't do any harm.
Well said.
Edit:
I just want to say that I support the Carrara community as well as the Bryce community very much even though I rarely post to the forums anymore.
I am always a strong proponent of making your voice heard. That's how stuff happens.
But I also think it's obvious that DAZ knows exactly what direction they want to take the company, and they have far more information to base that decision on than we do. They are betting the future of their company on content and DAZ Studio. That's obvious. And they don't see that Carrara will be a strong player (ie, revenue generator) in that future.
I respect that decision. I'm sure they put a great deal of money and effort and worry into that decision. But they're probably right, and that's probably the best future for DAZ as a company.
So while it's good to make your voice heard, at some point you need to recognize you ain't gonna win.
I like Carrara, it's good for some stuff, and I use it for that stuff, but ultimately I'm not expecting it to improve or be developed in any meaningful way. So I've accepted that reality and won't waste time in stuff that won't be fruitful. But that's just me.
I think you could be right, Joe. Not 100% sure but it certainly seems to be heading that way. I will still use Carrara a lot in the months and years to come, I know it better than any other software and Octane Render has given it a new lease of life for me. But part of me still wants to be proved wrong...
You might 'like' this then .... A quote from an interview ....
Quote
We also bought other software packages, such as Bryce, Carrara, and Hexagon. I kid you not that in every conversation we had before purchasing one of these software packages, someone would say "Do you want these to end up in the hands of Curious Labs?" So a portion of the benefit to the purchase was to not let Curious Labs (or whoever owned Poser at the time) get an advantage. Again, I get it. That's how business works; gain an advantage and try to keep it. But it also means keeping those packages developing, and putting money and resources into them to keep them viable. It was a big, big challenge to grow each one of those products.
chris creek
End quote
There's a lot more that I have not read
Both Chris Creek and Dan Farr whom I had a pleasure to meet and had long conversation about Carrara are no longer with DAZ 3D.
Frankly everyone that was supporting Carrara including the original Eovia developers that moved to DAZ 3D are no longer at DAZ. They haven't been in 5 years.
I don't know any of the new owners nor what are the plans for Carrara if any.
Can't say I am surprised that Genesis 3 doesn't work, the other 2 do not work that great, so why we should have expected daz to care enough to get it to work in Carrara???
Rashad, Carrara, Silo , Vue and Lightwave are just tools in my shed for me and I treat them as such...
If I realize that it frustrates me to no end to use scissors to cut a wire, well, I'm just gonna get me the wire cutter, it is as simple as that, the thing is, if DAZ is not providing such a tool, well, I'm willing to purchase it somewhere else, sorry.
Speed and efficient workflow are very important to me.
DAZ is a grown company and they know EXACTLY what are shortcomings of any software they are involved with.
"Problem" here is a majority of their user base. Most of the DAZ users are willing to deal with frustrations and shortcomings because their software can handle a lot of premade content. I make pretty much everything I need, so there is no thing like, oh hell, what I'm gonna do with all this content if I switch to another software which does not even import it correctly ...
I used Bryce and Carrara for a very long time, and they are not in the same category as Blender is development wise, apples and oranges.
One of the "hot" concerns (I know I'm generalizing a lot here) of Carrara users here, at the moment, is that Victoria 7 (or whatever her current version is) is not loading up, lol, seriously ??? :lol:
Rashad, Carrara, Silo , Vue and Lightwave are just tools in my shed for me and I treat them as such...
If I realize that it frustrates me to no end to use scissors to cut a wire, well, I'm just gonna get me the wire cutter, it is as simple as that, the thing is, if DAZ is not providing such a tool, well, I'm willing to purchase it somewhere else, sorry.
Speed and efficient workflow are very important to me.
DAZ is a grown company and they know EXACTLY what are shortcomings of any software they are involved with.
"Problem" here is a majority of their user base. Most of the DAZ users are willing to deal with frustrations and shortcomings because their software can handle a lot of premade content. I make pretty much everything I need, so there is no thing like, oh hell, what I'm gonna do with all this content if I switch to another software which does not even import it correctly ...
I used Bryce and Carrara for a very long time, and they are not in the same category as Blender is development wise, apples and oranges.
One of the "hot" concerns (I know I'm generalizing a lot here) of Carrara users here, at the moment, is that Victoria 7 (or whatever her current version is) is not loading up, lol, seriously ??? :lol:
It's just about where Daz places Carrara in its weapons arsenal. Increasingly in life I'm finding that people's interests lie more in understanding intent behind actions rather than in the actual facts of a case. People really don't care what you did they really just want to know why you did it. People think they understand a certain party and how this party will likely behave. When said party behaves otherwise it give people pause. I think people expect that at a bare minimum Victoria 7 should work in Carrara before she is released to the public. And if she doesn't, that there is a soon to be released update to address the issue and that said update would have been openly and proudly announced to all Carrara users. It's troubling to learn that no such plan for a patch seems to be in the works at all at this point. Intent.
Clamoring for V7 is simple. People gave up long ago requesting actual professional workflow oriented features in Carrara. It wasn't for lack of want. Contrary. It began to sink in several years ago what the game was here but it was assumed that even if Carrara received nothing more than content related upgrades for a few cycles it would still be updated regularly enough to remain competitive within the Poserverse. But that niche is threatened now that Genesis compatibility seems to be slipping more with each new generation.
I've far exceeded my forum usage for the week, I'll check you guys out later and best of luck with all of this. I;m hoping for an update soon to finally address this issue.
there's a forum usage quota?
(looks at post count, blushes :red: )
LOL It's not what you do it's the way that you do it.
V7 is Daz's hot potato de jour. Sure it's not one of the things most Carrara users realistically care much about or are desperate to see fixed/improved/implemented, but those we've already flogged to death and got nowhere. We fight the battles we think we can win, or at least haven't already lost yet.
I think that is someone were to do an objective, feature by feature comparison of Carrara with what's available today, even in a free app like Blender, there is absolutely no question that Carrara is decades behind the times. Especially when you consider what it would take (ie, many years) to bring Carrara up to date.
Off the top of my head, here are some major features:
Flames
Smoke
Fluids
Dynamic Paint (eg., waves)
Node based compositor
Unbiased rendering
Physically accurate materials
Animation/rigging tools (expressions, etc.)
Modelling/scuplting tools
Camera tracking
Video editing
And those are just off the top of my head. And for the most part, those features DO NOT EXIST in Carrara, while they not only exist, but are fully functional and, IMO, very well done in a free app like Blender. What Blender and other actively developed apps have are, by definition, state of the art.
Now I'm sure there are those who will say "Oh, that's not an important feature FOR ME, so it doesn't count", or, "I've never heard of that feature, and I don't understand it, so it doesn't count". But that's not an objective analysis.
The fact is, Carrara has almost NOTHING in terms of cool new, state of the art features that its marketing department can advertise to draw new customers.
Yes, Carrara does have some benefits like I've already mentioned. But taken as a whole, in an objective analysis, it is decades behind the times. It is mind boggling to even consider what it would take to add these state-of-the-art features to Carrara.
Especially considering that DAZ couldn't even implement a fully functional Bullet physics simulator, when all they had to do is make "hooks" into Carrara. Imagine making all of those other features from scratch.
We're talking decades.
Had to laugh when you called it "Blander", it didn't look intentional!
The one thing that sets Carrara apart from many programs like Blender, Cinema etc. is the integration of Poser and Daz assets into a full 3D environment, and as far as I know, that is unique. Maybe if Blender gets an importer to use such figures/assets natively then we will all happily go over to using that. Until that happens, I believe that Carrara will have a place in the market.
I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I'm kinda scratching my head trying to understand what you mean by that.
Yeah, one of the reasons I started using Carrara was that it seemed to be the most full-featured (way back then, at least) app that natively used pre-made, morphable, rigged characters that you could buy real cheap. At the time, there really wasn't a source for reasonably priced and fully featured characters anywhere. And I hated Poser because of constant software problems (like it wouldn't even start, and there was no help available to fix the problem). And D|S was for me totally counter-intuitive, and, as i recall, had a dog-slow renderer. And Carrara had some decent environmental lighting, and some stuff like Realistic Sky and some pre-made terrains and vegetation (which I rarely used because it was so poorly made).
But now, even Blender has a much nicer environmental lighting feature that is far superior IMO to Carrara's. So really the only thing that keeps me using Carrara now is the fact that I have so many existing .car scenes and textures that, unfortunately, won't export to any other app. So I'm kinda stuck. And yeah, I pretty much vowed to never use Poser again, and D|S gives me a headache every time I open it, so for simple character stuff it's pretty much Carrara for the near future. Everything else, for me at least, is compositing with stuff generated in other apps.
But mainly based on the cloth issue, I'm actually considering breaking my anti-Poser vow and moving my character stuff back there, and just dropping Carrara completely. But like I say, it's tough with so many existing .car scenes. But once I have the basic characters moved over, it's pretty easy to get all of the environmental/background stuff merely via compositing. I just need to get off my butt and dust off Poser and see what it's like nowadays.
Oh, and I forgot to add to my list of non-existent Carrara features...
Soft body dynamics
I just saw a kinda recent Poser demo video showing the REAL soft body dynamics that Poser has (like you use for jiggling flesh and stuff). Carrara only calls it's physics as "soft body", but in fact it's only a crippled cloth sim. And I think that Poser's soft body/cloth is the same Bullet public domain software that DAZ was unable to fully implement in Carrara.
I recall someone from DAZ, years ago, blaming its customers because the surveyed customers said they wanted Bullet as the physics sim used in Carrara. Presumably, since it was already developed and relatively quick and easy to integrate into Carrara. Or at least you would think...And they said that once they tried to integrate Bullet into Carrara they realized it didn't work very well on objects with more than 100k polygons (or something like that).
The same objects that Bullet works fine on in Poser....hmmmm...... :) :)
I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I'm kinda scratching my head trying to understand what you mean by that.
Yeah, one of the reasons I started using Carrara was that it seemed to be the most full-featured (way back then, at least) app that natively used pre-made, morphable, rigged characters that you could buy real cheap. At the time, there really wasn't a source for reasonably priced and fully featured characters anywhere. And I hated Poser because of constant software problems (like it wouldn't even start, and there was no help available to fix the problem). And D|S was for me totally counter-intuitive, and, as i recall, had a dog-slow renderer. And Carrara had some decent environmental lighting, and some stuff like Realistic Sky and some pre-made terrains and vegetation (which I rarely used because it was so poorly made).
But now, even Blender has a much nicer environmental lighting feature that is far superior IMO to Carrara's. So really the only thing that keeps me using Carrara now is the fact that I have so many existing .car scenes and textures that, unfortunately, won't export to any other app. So I'm kinda stuck. And yeah, I pretty much vowed to never use Poser again, and D|S gives me a headache every time I open it, so for simple character stuff it's pretty much Carrara for the near future. Everything else, for me at least, is compositing with stuff generated in other apps.
But mainly based on the cloth issue, I'm actually considering breaking my anti-Poser vow and moving my character stuff back there, and just dropping Carrara completely. But like I say, it's tough with so many existing .car scenes. But once I have the basic characters moved over, it's pretty easy to get all of the environmental/background stuff merely via compositing. I just need to get off my butt and dust off Poser and see what it's like nowadays.
Good luck with Poser. I have PoserPro 2014 (actually every version of Poser since 2), and for me, Poser lighting is still just as frustrating as ever (I keep thinking it will get better). When I use Poser I have to use Reality/Lux, because FireFly and I just don't get along. Dynamic Hair in Poser still isn't up to snuff, but the Dynamic Cloth has always been fairly good (one of the big reasons I have kept up with it). I greatly prefer DS to Poser, especially now that DS has Iray.
My choice for which application to use with content is Carrara first, DS second, and Poser a distant 3rd. You talk about Carrara being decades behind, then with the exception of dynamic cloth, Poser must be centuries behind. Have fun!
Oh really? Thanks much for the info. I have such a bad taste in my mouth for Poser, I'm kinda glad to hear things haven't changed since Poser 7 (I think that's the last for me...).
Looks like there's a decent sidegrade deal from P7 to PP2014 (maybe $150 or so), but I'm even having a tough time finding my old P7 serial number, so I think I'll just forget about it and stick with Carrara a bit longer, and hope someone makes a content import to Blender.
Oh really? Thanks much for the info. I have such a bad taste in my mouth for Poser, I'm kinda glad to hear things haven't changed since Poser 7 (I think that's the last for me...).
Looks like there's a decent sidegrade deal from P7 to PP2014 (maybe $150 or so), but I'm even having a tough time finding my old P7 serial number, so I think I'll just forget about it and stick with Carrara a bit longer, and hope someone makes a content import to Blender.
Well, there are a lot of people who absolutely love Poser and find it very easy to use, so I might just be wired wrong in the head :gulp:
IBL and indirect lighting has improved a lot since P7 (does P7 even have IBL and indirect lighting?), but the implementation isn't as good or easy to use as GI and HDRI's in Carrara. SSS in Poser is better than Carrara, but Poser still doesn't have caustics, and IOR is implemented wrong. It has a feature similar to AutoFit with DS and Carrara, which in some ways is better than DS/Carrara, and in others isn't quite as good, but it can be used pretty easily with most figures (no need for "clones" to make it work). The soft body physics can be fun to play with, but can also be a pain to fine tune and control. The Library is better (easier to see) than in P7, and Poser now has true weight mapping for rigging (not compatible with DS or Carrara).
PoserPro is also a lot more stable than the 32 bit versions of Poser, and comes with a lot of content (1.3Gb? - some of it is really good quality, and some of it is about Poser 4/5 level, so the price might be worth it just for the content). It would definitely give you another tool in your tool box. So it might be worth the price to give it a try again, you may find the changes to your liking. The recent improvements in DS definitely seem to have put the pressure on SM to add more modern features to Poser.
You can find a really good pdf with feature comparisons all the way back to P7 here: http://my.smithmicro.com/docs/poser/PPGameDev-P10-PP2014-P10-Debut-Feature-Comparison-Matrix.pdf
if you visit the rendo forums you'll find that a poser user is making a poser plugin/ stand alone that will be a cloth room game changer if it gets incoorporated into poser - a link was posted here but the thread was magically vanished ;) I think a particular plugin might let carrara users bring the results in to carrara
unfortunately this thread has become 'my software is better than yours' since someone bought blander up
as opposed to 'what reasons could daz have for not making gen 3 usable in carrara'
IMHO - which may not be worth much - I fail to see why some people are actually posting in this forum about what Carrara is lacking and what other programs can do that Carrara doesn't, after all this is a Carrara Forum which I would have thought is for Carrara users and in my mind it is a big issue that new DAZ figures won't work in a DAZ product.
If those that think Carrara is behind the times then simply don't use it - no one has a gun to your head making you fire up Carrara....
I'd like to see this thread get back on track
IMHO - which may not be worth much - I fail to see why some people are actually posting in this forum about what Carrara is lacking and what other programs can do that Carrara doesn't, after all this is a Carrara Forum which I would have thought is for Carrara users and in my mind it is a big issue that new DAZ figures won't work in a DAZ product.
If those that think Carrara is behind the times then simply don't use it - no one has a gun to your head making you fire up Carrara....
I'd like to see this thread get back on track
you are to new - this is the way it always goes :lol:
Daz does what it does like it been doing forever .
We been bitching for years for this and that - Daz doesn't CARE .
They say they are going to do this and that - then we get zip ( or not what we wanted ).
I have learned today that Daz3D is afflicted with Investors.
We're doomed.
Investors is incurable and often fatal, although symptoms may not show for some considerable time. Trying to get anything past Investors is like relying on the benign charity of the Borg or Cybermen or Daleks. They'll promise you the earth with a cheery smile and a dagger / sink plunger at your back, right put until the point where they exterminate everyone and launch the invasion fleet. Joe is right, we should just give up right now and resign ourselves to servitude and the quagmire of the Blander UI...
;)
:lol:
Yeah, it's really pretty strange...
In one thread people are promoting the benefits of complaining and filing tickets to get a big tidal wave (or was it ground swell..) of opinion to force DAZ's hand to make changes to Carrara. And then in the next breath they are complaining when someone voices an opinion on what Carrara is lacking. And then others intentionally mis-read what people are posting for whatever reason, and "use Carrara for what it's good for" becomes "don't use Carrara if you don't like it - nobody has put a gun to your head".
And then some people are super strict about thread contents matching the topic title, while others feel free to talk about everything BUT the thread title. And often it's the same people.
I dunno. Hard to understand the logic going on in peoples heads sometimes...
Geez, Mr. Wax, you're a tough customer. :) :)
If you're looking for reasons why DAZ wouldn't make gen3 usable in Carrara, why not start by reading my long discussion of the probable business reasons? I thought it was pretty rational and complete, didn't you? Did you not like it or agree with it for some reason?
It takes resources to do software stuff. It costs money. And time. And if Carrara doesn't give them as good a return on investment as, say, D|S and associated content, then what possible reason would they have for investing time and money and resources into Carrara? You do high priority stuff which makes you the most return first, and other stuff waits. Or doesn't get done at all.
It's pretty simple and basic don't you think? Maybe Carrara compatibility will come when they get time, or maybe they'll never get time cuz they figure it's just not worth it, or their software developers could be doing more productive work.
As someone just said, if you don't like Carrara then nobody is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to use it. :) :)
I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I'm kinda scratching my head trying to understand what you mean by that.
Yeah, one of the reasons I started using Carrara was that it seemed to be the most full-featured (way back then, at least) app that natively used pre-made, morphable, rigged characters that you could buy real cheap. At the time, there really wasn't a source for reasonably priced and fully featured characters anywhere. And I hated Poser because of constant software problems (like it wouldn't even start, and there was no help available to fix the problem). And D|S was for me totally counter-intuitive, and, as i recall, had a dog-slow renderer. And Carrara had some decent environmental lighting, and some stuff like Realistic Sky and some pre-made terrains and vegetation (which I rarely used because it was so poorly made).
But now, even Blender has a much nicer environmental lighting feature that is far superior IMO to Carrara's. So really the only thing that keeps me using Carrara now is the fact that I have so many existing .car scenes and textures that, unfortunately, won't export to any other app. So I'm kinda stuck. And yeah, I pretty much vowed to never use Poser again, and D|S gives me a headache every time I open it, so for simple character stuff it's pretty much Carrara for the near future. Everything else, for me at least, is compositing with stuff generated in other apps.
But mainly based on the cloth issue, I'm actually considering breaking my anti-Poser vow and moving my character stuff back there, and just dropping Carrara completely. But like I say, it's tough with so many existing .car scenes. But once I have the basic characters moved over, it's pretty easy to get all of the environmental/background stuff merely via compositing. I just need to get off my butt and dust off Poser and see what it's like nowadays.
And I'm scratching MY head - you say you don't understand what I mean, and then proceed to say that is exactly why you stay with using Carrara.
Can we please keep this thread On Topic and remember the Forum TOS
Huh?? What I said was "I pretty much vowed to never use Poser again, and D|S gives me a headache every time I open it, so for simple character stuff it’s pretty much Carrara for the near future." Absolutely nothing to do with the 3D environments you mentioned.
Again, I'm not sure what you mean by that. IMO, Carrara doesn't have an edge whatsoever with environmental lighting. The only thing I can imagine you're referencing is the pre-made terrains and vegetation? Is that what you're referring to?
sorry Joe, I was under the impression that you had started comparing Carrara to something called 'blander'.
Of course we all understand why Daz may or may not continue to develop Carrara
Daz will continue to develop Carrara if it makes financial sense to Daz' ( investors? Co. directors?)
I can't really see what that has to do with 'blander'
personally Daz has saved me a lot of money by not keeping carrara "up to date"
That said, Carrara does what I want very well. Gen 3 or not.
EDIt: sorry Pam, just saw your post. :(
Huh?? What I said was "I pretty much vowed to never use Poser again, and D|S gives me a headache every time I open it, so for simple character stuff it’s pretty much Carrara for the near future." Absolutely nothing to do with the 3D environments you mentioned.
Again, I'm not sure what you mean by that. IMO, Carrara doesn't have an edge whatsoever with environmental lighting. The only thing I can imagine you're referencing is the pre-made terrains and vegetation? Is that what you're referring to?
No, I meant a program environment. Let's agree to differ, shake hands and move on.
Am I too slow, or is DAZ pumping out upgraded figures faster than I can acquaint myself with?? Is every figure REALLY an improvement in terms of functionality and compatibility, or is this becoming a moneymaking scheme?