Carrara - For Aspiring 3D Artists and Animators!
Dartanbeck
Posts: 21,209
It's really cool to see how advanced Daz Studio has grown over a few short years. It's an amazing toolkit for realizing most any dream into a 3d scene for rendering, animating, or even exporting to other software or other things, like 3d printers. But there's another incredible suite of amazing tools I'd like to remind every aspiring artist and animator about:
Carrara 8.5 and Carrara 8.5 Pro!
I came to Carrara from using Poser, and was delighted at the similarities in the interface, and even more delighted that those similarities were only the parts that I liked, while the rest was a marvel of fast and easy-to-use 3d animation/rendering Powerhouse!
I've loved working in Carrara so much that, even though I'm very excited about and interested in Daz Studio and all of its modern advances, I simply have a hard time putting aside Carrara long enough to really get to know DS. So I know Daz Studio as an amazing suite for creating content from transfering common rigging from figures to new models, adding new morphs to DAZ 3D's incredible figures, editing variables of content and saving anew to get better compatibility with other software, tweaking aniBlocks and reading animated files into aniBlocks using aniMate 2, and stuff like that. Iray came along and gave us the truly wonderful world of PBR-based rendering, now there's D-Force, and that's not to mention the world's top-technology in fully rigged Human assets in Genesis 3 and 8 figures.
There are folks doing PBR-based rendering using Carrara too, but that requires additional plugins and third-party render engines. I happen to be entirely content with Carrara's native Raytrace render engine. Coming from Poser back in 2010, I was completely awe-struck at the speed of Carrara's render possibilities. Even more, Carrara is utterly easy to use after a short period of looking around and getting to know the interface a bit.
The main reason I switched to Carrara is the fact that it is a 3d modeling software that can load Poser/DAZ 3D figures with working morphs and rigging. In my animation endeavors, it was always commonplace to have poke-through and other issues. I wanted a modeling option without having to become a profesional figure maker. I needed to tweak, not to perform complete overhauls. I did some internet searches - only to find that some folks were struggling with trying to get Poser/DAZ 3D figures into LightWave, but it was a major workflow thing. When I saw a person in a hospital waiting room playing with a Victoria 3 figure in a strange, poser-esque 3d application, my jaw dropped! "Carrara 5 Pro", he said. I started saving immediately. By the time I was ready to buy, Eovia no longer owned Carrara - it was now at DAZ 3D!!! Joy!!!
It's been a blissful bunch of years. I've never been trained in 3D art. I went from drawing and painting to sculpting - first from clay, then alabaster stone with hammer and chisel. GMax was a free, watered down version of 3DS Max back when it was owned by Discreet, and I learned just a bit of that to perform some 3d edits to game assets. I basically just tweaked existing models. Texturing became my thing. My mentor bought a copy of Poser 5 for me, then he upgraded it to Poser 7 when that came out - skipping on Poser 6. I loved creating characters from premade assets, assembling scenes, posing everyone, etc., and finally animating them. Loved it! Still do, but now it's a whole lot easier for me!
Carrara has an actual full-blown vertex (polygon) modeler built in, also including a spline modeler, metaballs, terrain modeler, plant modeler and a whole lot of various types of primitive objects - each one being fully and easily animated, often simply by setting values or dragging sliders! So cool! Carrara Pro has an amazing Ocean primitive - set the wind direction, set the size of the waves and resolution of the detail... let the render engine take it from there!
Powerful lighting options, Carrara has its own build in skies - basic and realistic. In both, we just drop in a Sun light and either rotate the light to set where the sun is in the sky as well as the direction of the sun's light, or go into the sky editor and drag the sun to the position we want (which will set the rotation of the Sun light) or we can enter in the time, date, and location and let history set how the sky looks. And, yes... it also includes a moon and Moon light, atmospheric effects, like fog, haze, clouds and god rays.
Spot lights with volumetric options and other realistic and non-realistic effects, directional lights, bulb, tube and shape lights, "anything glows", which can make glowing objects also cast light, and we can also use (and create) Image Based Lighting (IBL), use and create spherical maps with global illumination, and load HDR images for use with global illumination. There's also more options to explore with lighting.
Cameras are really (Really) easy to use - one of the hardest parts about me using Daz Studio is that Carrara's cameras and navigation is so fluid and simple. I set up several cameras to render each of my animations from several points of view for getting just that right edit in the final stages of making a movie. Carrara's Batch Queue Render makes this a breeze. Set the render engine to render as many saved scenes as we want in the Batch Queue, each instance allowing full control of every aspect of the render settings, then launch - it will render everything in the queue while we sleep, go to work, take the dog for a walk, etc., I love this feature!
Carrara's Spherical camera combines very well with Carrara's ability to handle incredibly vast scenes - so even if we prefer to work in Daz Studio, or like some of us, work in both, we can use the spherical camera to render multiple spherical images of the same scene with different lighting (exposures) for use in image editors to create HDR domes for use in Iray and/or Carrara. Likewise, these spherical images don't even have to be HDRI to work in either engine. I've tried using png, tga, tiff, and jpg spherical renders in Iray and it works fine, we'll just want to add some additional illumination.
I like to use Daz Studio as a toolkit for Carrara. Carrara only supports Genesis up to version 2. Misty from our Carrara Discussion Forum, here at DAZ 3D has working files to get Genesis 3 and 8 figures to work in Carrara with a small dose of work-around, but it only truly supports Genesis 2 and earlier figures. I still find a lot of life left in Genesis 1 and 2 and even still enjoy using generation 4 figures as well.
With Genesis Generation X, by Dimension3D I add Genesis 2 and Generation 4 morphs to Genesis 1 figure and have a blast having compatibility (via auto-fit) from Generation 3 (V3, M3, A3, H3, etc.,) through Genesis 2 on my Genesis figures. A cool thing about Carrara: I can edit what is contained in my Genesis morphs directory and load in Genesis, set it up as the character I want and save it to my Carrara browser and then return my collection of Genesis morphs back to the directory. Unlike Daz Studio, this Carrara-saved Genesis figure will only retain the morphs I had in the morphs directory at the time of creation. So I can limit the number of shape dials, etc., on each figure I store!
With the aniBlocks plugin for Carrara, I love using aniMate 2! I went ahead and bought the actual aniMate 2 (for Daz Studio) instead of just using the free version that comes with Daz Studio, so now I can bake to and from the Daz Studio timeline as well as use all of the other functions that come in this amazing plugin.
Carrara's dynamic hair is some of the most realistic 3D hair I've ever seen without applying any post work to the render. It can take a bit to get used to, but there are some wonderful tutorials (free) available to get us up-and-running without headaches.
Carrara's Terrain modeler is not only really simple to use, it is also very powerful in very simplistic ways. Just dragging around a few sliders and adding, swapping, or removing a few simple drag n' drop parameters changes everything about the terrain. The possibilities truly are endless. I know its common to hear that, but it really is endless! Same with the plant editor - commonly known as the Tree modeler, since most people use it for making trees - as its default arrangement is based around tree structures. We have the ability to add multiple type of 'leaf' which doesn't have to be a leaf at all. It could be fruit or even a car, bicycle or spaceship! LOL Carrara comes with a bunch of really nice presets for this plant editor, even actual preset, premade trees we can just drop into the scene without editing anything.
Every one of Howie Farkes Carrara products that come with trees also includes new presets in the editor along with new materials that really make up some real-looking trees. Remember I said that most everything has animation built in? That also applies to the Plant editor! Wind direction, speed, rustle frequency... we can just set a few simple values to have our trees sway during our animations, and the settings are animate-able too.
Modifiers are really neat in Carrara. So simple. Just go to the (you guessed it) Modifier tab on the easy to use interface, click the + sign and select any from a large number of modifiers, a list that differs depending upon what i selected. Very powerful. Very easy.
Plugins Galore for Carrara, and some of our wonderful Carrara discussion forum frequent users are on the path of keeping this list growing! I have a LOT of plugins and Carrara's open architecture makes using these plugins a real breeze. Digital Carver's Guild (DCG) has now made all of their profesional plugins for Carrara Open Source - so they're absolutely Free! With all (or even just some) of the plugins available for Carrara, our suite has grown to a very formidable and complete CG VFX department all on its own!
There's a lot to talk about regarding Carrara. I've run out of time for now, but I'll be back!
Cheers fellow artists and animators! I'll leave you with a few of my Carrara renders
Dartanbeck
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Speaking of plugins, this is a tutorial I did on Alvin Bemar's Fluidos for Carrara plugin, with is a free fluid simulation! Works great too!
In the video, when I mention dropping from 100,000 to 10,000, that was for speed in testing. later, when I tried 'linking' lights and eventually enlarging, that is all because of this reduction. Just wanted to mention that because I never did mention it in the video.
In this video, I demonstrate Fluidos in Carrara to create a water splash stock footage that I can use for filmmaking - all just a test in workflow possibilities. I edit the fluid simulation animated render in PD Howler (Love Howler!!!) and then use my stock footage creation in HitFilm Express to further demonstrate why I did what I did, and what it's useful for ;)
Just another thing that is easily done in Carrara
After owning Carrara for less than two years, it started to occur to me that I need a movie making software. After looking around a bit, I had a short discussion with Jonny Bravo, who used Sony Vegas Movie HD. So I downloaded the 30 day trial and started looking at how it might work (total noob at this point).
I really liked it (still do). It has tutorials built in that puts pop-ups onto the interface as I work on my project. Pretty neat! I had a pile of test renders that I was done with, but haven't deleted yet, so I started tossing these things into Movie HD to see if I could stitch something - anything together.
Here is the result of that. It was most fun! LOL What a noob I was! These renders were all done in Carrara by a total noob! LOL
The Art Studio forum would probably be a better place for your thread since you keep adding to it. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/categories/art-studio
Nice to see something in the main forum for those who may not know about Carrara :)
Yes it's a pity daz has dropped this program, I've always felt it got a better render engine and way more feature then studio.
Well, it's still for sale, and it works beautifully. So they haven't really dropped it. I know that their main developmental enthusiasm is, and always will be their very own Daz Studio, but I'm always optimistic that some day they'll dust it off for another round. In the meantime, it's still really great software!
Thanks, Dartanbeck, for helping keep this alive!
I may have missed it, but I did not see a mention of the GRID add-on, which allows easy setup of a Renderfarm for Carrara with old or new PCs. A full GRID farm of I7 or newer CPUs (80-100 cores/threads) will be roughly equivalent to GPU rendering on a mid-range GPU (est. 3000-4000 LuxMarks, LuxMark 3.1 lobby test scene), but with lots more ram. A perfect use for those used X8 server blades I picked up cheap. Plus, it will help heat my house in the Winter : ) Grid has been on sale a few times a year.
Carrara was ahead of its time - still hoping they will update it someday.
Hey Dart!! Long time no see, glad to see your back.
Definitely, Carrara can expand the tool set available for DAZ users. It has a very user friendly interface, and plays well with DAZ content (up to G2, after that DAZ didn't provide G3 and G8 compatibility - though there is something available at Rendo that will let you use G3 in Carrara, and maybe G8 too). Carrara provides a lot of things (true atmosphere, dynamic hair, landscapes, skys, etc.) that DS doesn't have too, so it makes a great companion to DS.
Carrara also has an Octane Render plugin, that work extremely well Carrara, and does an amazing job of translating shaders. It even gives you the ability to have Octane and Carrara native shaders on the same object, so you can use either render engine. There are several other really useful plugins for Carrara to, including cloth, and dynamic fluids.
Unfortunately, the lack of development by DAZ on Carrara has pushed me in a different direction. I use DS a lot more now for character renders than I used to, and for general 3D work I've begun learning Blender. I think it's important to note that while Blender 2.8 is much more used friendly than 2.79 was, there are many things that Carrara makes sooo much easier! Unfortunately for DAZ, switching to Blender will reduce my spending here a bit (but my spending is pretty insignificant compared to many, so probably not a big deal). As Greymom noted, Carrara really was ahead of it's time, it's really sad that DAZ didn't see it as a valuable asset, and continue to invest and developed it.
Just for fun, I thought I'd post a couple Carrara renders.
This was done with Carrara's native render engine, the character is V4.
This was done with the Octane Render plugin with G2F
Glad to BE back!!! :) I Love those renders!
When I mentioned PBR possibilities via plugins, truthfully I was hoping you would chime in about the Octane plugin! ;) Thanks!
Absolutely! Yeah... I could only include 'so much' in that first post:
A - There's SO MUCH to Carrara that it will take a l o n g time to mention a majority of its many features, and I doubt there could ever really be a complete list.
B - I ran out of time! LOL
I love the comment about Carrara being ahead of its time. It really was being pushed for a while there to incorporate 'tomorrow's features'. Beyond that, being a one-person hobby 3D CG filmmaker, Carrara is actually perfect for me. Dustrider mentions Blender, which I think is Amazing software, but it's not a good fit for me. In fact, if Carrara didn't exist, I'd be using Daz Studio and Hexagon - I'm sure of it. Well... I'd probably still have Poser too? Not sure.
Carrara, being able to simply open content from my Poser runtimes as well as my DUF files from My DAZ 3D Library, is exactly what I want and need. I realize that some folks truly desire or even require the latest and greatest technologies and constant upgrade/update development. That's not me. Carrara works really well for what I want to do, so I'm just happy to have it - glad it was invented in the first place, and also glad about ALL of the wonderful new things that DAZ 3D's wonderful developers added to it.
Along my path of learning to do what I really wanted it for, Carrara fascinated me with features that I knew were there from reading about it, but using them turned out to be so much more user-friendly that I actually started adding things to my workflow that I wasn't planning to at first.
I loved Poser's material room and all of the possibilities offered through that node-based system. Really powerful. Well Carrara takes those same possibilities and basically puts all of the nodes into a worksheet-like form, where all we have to do is tell the engine which options we want to use, set the paramters how we like, and it connects the nodes for us in the correct order! Probably a strange analogy, but that's really how I see it.I love Carrara's Texture room - even moreso than I did the Poser Material room. A lot more. Since everything is right in front of my face in the form of drop-downs, sliders, color chips and so on, I can actually learn whole new techniques simply by trial and error experimentation, instead of having to know or learn what nodes or other things might be possible.
I also love the animation timeline with all of its vast abilities - again, easily manipulated like everything else in Carrara.
Along these same lines of thought, I really love how easy it is to configure the render engines. The Render Room's three pages are very easy to understand and use, unlike a lot of software. I really like what DAZ 3D has done with setting up Iray in DS - I really do. But I like Carrara a lot more. If I want to quickly set the render engine to do super-fast renders, I can in a snap. Between the Texture room and the Render room, my early adventure with Carrara included setting each up together - Shaders vs Render settings - to get ultra-fast renders as my finished work. The "Just a Bit of Fun" video above was the earliest results of those experiments. In other words, we can set up really fast (less than a minute per frame) renders as our main, final renders if we want. I really love that!
I had always been interested in Carrara but the seemingly lack of support for current content has kept me from investing in it. I always wonder if eventually they'll just combine the features of each program into one thing but that's probably unreaslistic.
Thanks Cbird! Yeah, that's what I was going for. Rembering back before I discovered Carrara's existence, I was pulling my hair out trying to decide on what to do for the workflow I'm looking for. It was looking expensive, and that expense still wasn't going to allow me to work how I want to work.
Carrara Pro was over $200 when I bought it, and I was more than happy to pay it. That is a LOT less than any other option I was facing. Even Poser was more than that. I don't mean that to sound like a rip on Poser. I think Poser is worth every penny and a lot more. Just that Carrara's price was really great when DAZ 3D took it over. I think it was like that when Eovia owned it too. Just a great priced hidden wonder in the industry.
With my PC+ membership, I'm seeing Carrara Pro as being darned close to paying nothing at all! So Sweet!
I agree. As cool as the thought might be, reality makes it seem unlikely. The good news is that they are making Daz Studio more and more versatile with more and more incredible features on a fairly constant basis - and to be able to use their perpetual drive into the latest in Figure technology with such a great piece of software for free is a magical thing.
Like I said, I feel really lucky that I'm happy enough with their earlier (Genesis 2 and earlier) figures that I don't feel the need to switch software just to jump to the latest figures - especially since I have such a large investment into these earlier figures already. I do use Daz Studio, but not as my scene setup/animation/render studio. I use Carrara for that.
If I ever do make that switch to using Daz Studio for scene setup, animation and rendering, I'll likely still use Carrara for making my Iray domes. These are Iray render tests I did in that workflow (Iray environment dome built and rendered in Carrara, figure rendered in Daz Studio with Iray using the Carrara-made dome map)((These are pretty old - it's been a while since I did this))
What frustrates me is that Carrara has SO many tools and functions that just need a little more oomph to be attractive to a wider market.
For example, the UV unwrapping is pretty nice and straight forward, except it then does a sort of dumb job with the unwrap. And it could use more functions.
The plant generator is pretty cool, but needs some more functions.
The 3d paint is amazing for a program like this... but needs some more functions.
(sense a pattern?)
Ah well.
Perhaps. While I do agree with all of that, I don't think Daz Studio does any of those functions. Carrara might not be perfect in everything it has to offer, but it does a lot of really important things.
I've simply learned to adapt - as have others - to learn ways to use these tools in Carrara rather than to opt for some other software that does it better. I actually model differently than I used to to make UV Mapping easier for me in Carrara, and it works beautifully. And while DAZ 3D added soem great new features to the Plant modeler, I loved it before they did that but Love the new additions!
3D Paint does have its quirks. I use it for some things but always finish my work in an image editor (Howler) - In most cases, however (old habits die hard) I take my UV projections into Howler and texture the old fashioned way.
Adding to that last thought, with the new Render-to-Normal Map, it's on my docket to use Carrara to create texture maps via rendering, not the actual model I'm texturing, but assembling a scene to create and render a set of texture maps for the model in question. This is even further enhance with Carrara's sweet Multi-pass rendering options.
Still, it really would be nice to see DAZ 3D put some of their amazing developer talents into Carrara again and expand - especially in those directions you mention, just giving some of those many tools that extra oomph to become a bit more attractive to the wider market - a place I'd love to see Carrara sit again. I have an old 3D World (I think it is) magazine with Carrara mentioned right on the cover! I also (somewhere) have an older Animation textbook, and the author recommends Carrara as one of the possible options for students looking to seek a career in 3D animation.
Here is my love for Carrara for my anime needs
I love its rendering engine and material effect my whole site is 100% carrara.
!!!
great thread thanks for starting it, beaut renders too
with node rendering, extra computers can help render. up to 20 cores, more than 20 cores, there is a carrara grid available, gives extra node licenses
2 ryzen 7 pcs gives 32 threads of render power.
also, Carrara goes on sale for pretty low, in fact I picked up Pro version for $9.98 a couple years ago. well, it was in 2016.
Hi!
I come with a question I'm sure it has been asked a lot by now, probably generated a few heated arguments (which I hope this doesn't) and most likely will get a few "again!?" eye rolls. So, sorry in advance if that's the case but most discussions I have seen about it are quite old and I'm interested in feedback considering the current state of Daz Studio (4.12 and free version of Octane), and also that's why I thought it was best to ask here instead of opening a whole new thread. Thing is, with the sales today I can get Carrara 8.5 Pro for 13$ (plus the cost of 2 new releases that I want but don't really need right now) and I'm wondering if I should jump the gun. My case: (insert drama sound)
I use Daz Studio a lot and most of my stuff is Genesis 3/8. Having said that, I do like the look of a LOT of Genesis 2 characters. The truth is, I love realistic and stylized looks, and it's something I'm constantly torn between, so I sometimes go for one look, sometimes for another. I like Gen2 characters because I feel they have this kind of more "gamey" stylized look and have already a few characters I've got when the Pro Bundles have gone for extremely cheap or "free". I don't use them in Daz because, well... I rather mimic the look with a Genesis 8 figure and have the benefits. Just saying, I don't think I mind that much being limited to Gen2 characters without workarounds if I do get Carrara.
The main things I have heard about Carrara over Daz that piques my interest are the better animations tools and environment rendering. Not sure about the modeling and materials tools, maybe stuff that it's more useful than I think but can't tell until I try them, I assume. About the animation point, I wonder if that's still the case considering the new Daz Studio version improved it a lot with IK chains and the new timeline (although I already had keymate 2 and graphmate 2). I have a lot of interest in animation, but in Daz it is a bit... limited and...torturous? xD. And quite frankly, animations I have seen done with Daz characters, etc, that have the level of quality I'm aiming for, are actually made in Blender or similar most of the time (if not always), as far as I know. But I was thinking that depending on how good Carrara is for animation and what tools it has that Daz doesn't, it may work as a bridge for me to Blender.
The rendering, to be honest, I rarely see character renders from Carrara that I like. There are a few I have seen, but not entirely sure if they were made with Octane or just knew how to really play with the strengths of Carrara renderer. So, for still character renders I won't be switching from Daz Iray but for animation, I think it may work considering it's also way faster. However, I do like the environment renders I have seen, they look really nice. I know there is Bryce but that one is limited to 32bit so... eh...(though it's currently on sale for 2.99$ so, don't know, might also get it). Honestly, if Octane's free version had been released also for Carrara I wouldn't be here asking because I've been messing around with it in Daz and I'm liking it quite a bit, thinking of using it for animations there and Blender in the future. But yeah... not going to spend that much to get it working in Carrara...
And well, also wondering how big the learning would be if I'm already quite used to work in Daz. Also currently learning about how to work with shader in Octane. Anyway, I hope this post wasn't too long or confusing and grateful for any feedback :)
for $13 you really cannot go wrong even if you just used it to render 360 panoramas to use in the DS Octane environment
(iray is fussier and needs HDRi)
If you are interested in using Carrara for animation, I recommend you also visit the Carrarators website. Devoted to animation.
http://www.bond3d.byethost18.com/index.php?i=1
the reason you probably haven't seen character renders in Carrara you like is the lack of ability to natively read HDmorphs
however Philemo has made a plugin to address this where you can export a HD obj from DAZ studio to add a morph to the character in Carrara
https://sourceforge.net/projects/carrara-time-savers/
Well, I didn't say I haven't seen any character render that I liked, just that there are not many, while pretty much every environment I've seen looks pretty great. And I don't think that's the reason, it's an issue with the render engine. I feel that either I simply prefer PBR renders or most people using non-PBR like 3delight or Carrara's don't really know how to use it without the renders looking waaay too fake/old. Not sure, since I don't know if the ones I liked were rendered with the Carrara's engine or they were using Octane. Today I was using Callie 6 with more Genesis 2 props, barely a pose and a simple smile to test Octane in Daz and I was perfectly fine with the results I was getting. So, yeah... not really sure.
I guess I'd like to know what tools for animating Carrara has that Daz hasn't before trying too seriously to make anything in it. My biggest issue with Daz was the lack of IK and physics. IK has already been pretty much solved.
But yeah... I guess for 13$ I can't really go wrong. Getting all that for less money than going to see a movie seems worth it even if I end up not using it for anything else besides environments.
RE: $13 - Daz3D Store has a return policy.
RE: IK Chains - yes, Carrara has IK chains.
RE: Physics - yes, Carrara has physics
Carrara comes with two physics engines. One is standard. The other is intended for softbody physics simulations.
In addition to two native physics, there is also a plugin to use the VWD draping add-on in Carrara. You have to pay for VWD separately.
A fluid simulation Fluidos can be used in Carrara for free, without purchasing Fluidos for Daz Studio.
I started using Daz when Genesis 8 was new so I don't know much about the history behind the company and all their apps. But from what little I know, I can understand them wanting to make Daz Studio their "flagship app" focusing entirely on it, but then I have never understood why they won't just bring the things from Carrara that Daz still lacks. Not saying it's a walk in the park, but it has been years and years and we barely got IK chains just now. Heck, considering Hexagon is pretty decent and the bridge works pretty well, they don't even need to bring the modeling capabilities.
Well, I know about the refund policy but I don't think I'll have the time to properly check Carrara out in 30 days, so I'm pretty much assuming it's a definitive purchase. Very nice to know about the physics and IK, I thought I remembered reading about that before but good to have confirmation. Also, did some googling after reading your post and it seems there are ways to use the soft body physics for those soft body parts in characters most people want animated automatically ;)
About Fluidos, I already was using it in Daz, not free but well, I have it. Also, just got Fluidos 2, in fact, currently waiting for a simulation to finish :) (iirc, Alvin said a Carrara version is coming too)
Anyway, took the plunge. 13$ and 1.20$ for Bryce Pro. I guess you'll see me soon annoying people for help over at the Carrara's forum