What is Poser and Carrara?
Sadnic
Posts: 65
in The Commons
I want to know
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There are better sources on the web than here that can tell you what they are. I'm not sure what you're asking. Did you not "Google it"?
Laurie
Let me explain...
No, that will take too long. Let me sum up:
Poser is a program which does the same sorts of things that DAZ Studio does. The two are not 100% compatible, and seem to be drifting further apart as time passes, but they are close enough that a lot things made for one will more or less work in the other with a bit of tweaking (YMMV). I personally was never able to get comfortable with it and switched to DAZ Studio when DS became free, but a lot of people love it. Unlike DAZ Studio it's a paid program and it is made by another company.
Carrarra is a full modeling, animating and rendering suite that is largely compatible with DAZ Studio and DAZ3D-sold products (barring the last two Genesis generations and the occasional prop/environment it is able to load the native DAZ Studio file formats right from the DS folders with just a little shader adjustment needed, keeping all the rigging and morphs) but which hasn't been updated in several years. It's owned and sold by DAZ3D and there's a whole sub-forum for it right here on this site (https://www.daz3d.com/forums/categories/carrara-discussion) filled with people like me who just can't quite give it up despite the lack of official development.
https://www.daz3d.com/carrara-8-5-pro
2 other programs that do basically the same thing as Daz Studio with one of them (Carrara) having modeling capabilities as well.
Long time ago, figures worked in all programs, but as the tech moved forward and got more complicated, the latest DAZ figures work best in DS with the older figures working best in carrara and poser. Poser also has it's own figure line.
I have all programs installed, but use DS mostly.
Not at all, I wanted to hear from who have it, but use Daz instead
I have used Poser since v1 ... still not an expert, but a hobbyist user. I just really started using DS less than a year ago. It is now my goto program, mainly as the characters for it, G3 and G8 are much advanced over the Poser figures, and just look a lot better overall. DS seems to be much deeper in its rendering capability, shaders, noiw with dforce, which Poser has had, but the DS version seems morer adsvanced.
Poser was conceived as an artists tool ... a way to "see" a figure, pose it, etc and then draw it .. an artists human subject.
MDO2010 was brief and on point. However, I do want to clarify with just a little bit more detail.
Carrara is not just Daz Studio with modeling capabilities. If you took out the modeler, it would still have a great many features that the free version of Studio does not have. In some cases, there are plugins available for Studio, in other cases not. Here are 2 examples.
Environments - ( Bryce is better)
Carrara has a realistic sky editor, cloud modeler, and replicators to create atmospheric environments including storm fronts, night skies of specific days and times, and lighting that can be tied to the sun and the moon. This can be combined with Carrara's grayscale landscape modeler and custom plant modeler and replicators to create custom outdoor environments from scratch. It can also import geologic data from USGS to its landscape modeler to create a specific real world terrain.
3D - Paint
In addition to simple vertex modeling, Carrara has a built in 3D paint feature that can paint accross material zones and UV seams.
As other programs get updates while Carrara does not, programs that are specially designed to do a task become even better than Carrara at that task. But a person can start with an empty scene in Carrara with no other programs, and model a character, grow dnamic hair on its head, rig it for animation, adjust its weightmaps, uvmap it, paint textures on it, create morphs for expressions, create a landscape for the figure to stand on, paint location zones on the landscape for vegetation, create the vegetation (model/uvmap/texture), replicate the vegetation while limiting placement to the painted maps, edit the sky, create custom clouds, and replicate the clouds on a placeholder to establish a stormfront or to partially abstruct the moon, create and save animation presets to make the figure run, create a motion path so that the figure runs through the landscape, and render the animation to a choice of photoreal, toon, or brushstroke render.
In order for a Daz Studio user to get similar ability for customization, one would have to purchase plugins that together cost more than Carrara, and still woud not have all of Carrara's features. On the other hand, Blender is also a full feature app, and Blender is free.
Ah, I understand now. I used Poser for almost 20 years and switched to DS because I wanted better figures and since those were Daz figures, it was just easier to use them in DS than to shoehorn them into Poser. Initially, I had trouble learning DS, but I stuck with it and eventually most of it sunk in. Still learning ;). I still do use Poser from time to time because, well...old habits die hard. LOL Poser's dynamic cloth is still easier to use than DS's...at least for now.
Laurie
The Poser Bryce interface
https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/digicult/dc9704/krause.htm
and
https://mprove.de/script/99/kai/index.html
Here is additional information on the history of Carrara, including a specific timeline of mergers and acquisitions.
https://firelight3d.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/carrara-history/