Carrara vs Daz Studio
Testing6790
Posts: 1,091
So, I've recently been reading about Carrara a little bit and it seems interesting. I've read a few other posts titled similar to this, but none actually end up... addressing the question at all.
What can you do in Daz that you can't in Carrara? From what it sounds like, Carrara can use all the figures, poses, wardrobe items, etc BUT can do a bunch of other things (Dynamic hair, for one).
So, is Carrara really just better at everything?
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Carrara is also a modeller, and DS can't do that.
But DS is free and has a clearer User Interface. I can't even read Carrara's text without reducing the resolution on my 24" monitors. And really, I shouldn't be forced to do that. Hexagon 2 keeps crashing on me, so I can't use that as my modeller either. So it's Blender for me until DAZ fixes Hex or makes Carrara more readable (or provides better vision options).
I really want to use DAZ solutions, but right now it's only DAZ Studio for me.
Hi there! :)
I've been using DS for about a year and a half, and I just got Carrara last week on the sale. There hasn't been enough time for me to dig that deep into Carrara, but these are some of the differences I've noticed so far: (a caveat: there may be differences with other setups. I'm using an old Gateway Core Duo with 7 GB RAM)
1. It seems to be much faster to pose figures in Carrara. There's not so many sliders and dials, it's about grabbing the universal tool in the viewport and manipulating the figure directly. It works great!
2. Carrara seems to comfortably create many, many instances with the memory it has available. It doesn't slow down too much on me even with a whole mountainside full of trees.
3. It has built-in modeling, makes Beautiful!! hair, and has a terrain maker. All things that either don't exist in DS, or require purchasing additional plugins. The terrain maker doesn't seem at first glance to be quite as powerful as the one in Bryce, however I may be mistaken.
On the down side, it doesn't import some 3rd party DS morphs, and the text on the interface is very small and difficult to read.
Overall, Carrara feels to me like a very nice combination of Bryce, Hexagon, and DS. The interface is Bryce-like.
I can't tell you one software is better than another, though. I foresee using all of them well into the future :)
Carrara is a full 3DCG modeler, texture and animation program including, landscapes, plants, atmospheres and physics(etc.). Carrara has all the necessary features to create/model from scratch, a Toy Story or Final Fantasy type animations out of the box. Studio would need many plug-ins for similar. Their both powerful programs for what they do, it just depends on what is needed for features and workflow.
somw major limitations are
no HD on HD figures
no smoothing modifier like DS one that has collisions
no uv swapping in surfaces
cannot run Optitex sims but can import frozen saved scenes
IMO the pluses outweigh the minuses though
Those two are rough for me. Especially the smoothing modifier. I abuse that thing left and right!
Carrara has more whistles and bells built in. With DS you have to purchase a lot of add ons and peripheral programs to do some of the things that Carrara can do in-program. That kind of sounds like a win for Carrara until you take into account that it's been consistently way behind in figure support for the last several years, that it still doesn't have dynamic clothing, and has practically no support by vendors.
Whereas DS 4.7 is free, and with the reality and Octane plug ins now has access to arguably superior rendering software. DAZ Studio still lacks dynamic hair and its dynamic clothing abilities are limited, but if those are the main thing you're looking for, you can get them both in Poser.
Frankly, I think the fact that the new website has now dropped Carrara from the Technology section is telegraphing the future of the program... though they did, at least, finally rewrite the text on the product page description, which was still describing 8.0 instead of 8.5 through the end of the old store.
I just wanted to point out that Studio has a very similar tool to the one you're describing above, called ActivePose. It's a lot of fun, and fairly easy -- once you get the hang of it.
Carnite has a great video on YouTube that'll help you get started:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH369w2Bza8
As for the age old Carrara vs Studio debate: I mainly use Studio and dabble here and there in Carrara. Carrara unquestionably does more -- just about everything you'd need in a 3d package. But my old blind eyes find Studio's UI much easier to use.
That, and the development cycle for Carrara seems to be pretty slow. I've no doubt that Carrara 9 will eventually come out, and hopefully modernize the UI, fix autofit and collision detection so they work as well as they do in Studio and offer full support for Genesis 2 out of the box -- just to name a few minor quibbles....but by the time Carrara 9 sees the light of day, Studio will be up to version 6, and we'll be using Genesis IX and Victoria XVII as our main figure! Ok, kidding a little bit...
Thanks for the tip. I doubt I'll ever be able to keep up with all the stuff this software can do! :)
DAZ studio is great for rendering premade DAZ content
Carrara is great fort lots of content DAZ or otherwise inc FBX imports
and you can model in it, create terrains and populate them with instanced trees
use bullet physics and particles
Eponica - yes, believe me, I'm still learning stuff every single time I open up Studio and create a scene! This is one of those hobbies that has a near-endless learning curve, yet still manages to be loads of fun.
...I see it as kind of an apples to oranges thing.
Both applications have their strong points and weaknesses.
Studio is primarily, a posing, morphing, scene design and rendering programme and is superior for morphing and shaping figures without having to know modelling. With smoothing and collision detection, clothing fits are much easier to manage Then thee is the third party morph issue. I tend to use a lot of these as well as many of the Merchant Resource morph kits. As mentioned there are also a number of bridge plugins that give it access to different render engines, a sculpting/modelling application, and a powerful 2D programme. True, while Daz Studio requires plugins, the core programme is free thus allowing one to spend as much time testing it as needed rather than being stuck with a trial version that is limited by both time and in some cases available tools/functions. This is what has attracted me to it as I can build it to suit my needs as I go. Yeah in the long run the cost of the plugins does add up, but it's a lot easier than having to plunk down 300 -500$ in advance.
The one issue I do agree on with many others is that the time has come for Daz Studio to have it's own "open" cloth dynamics system either built in or via plugin.
The one small issue I have concerning "all in one" programmes is that they have to cover a lot of bases and therefore either can become quite complex and unwieldy or the individual parts being somewhat lacking. For myself the old "jack of ll trades..." adage comes to mind when compared to programmes that are primarily dedicated to a couple of tasks like modelling and sculpting (Hexagon) or terrain and environment generation (Bryce, Vue Studio).
As mentioned above Autofit seems more hit and miss in Carrara (mainly because there is no smoothing or collision detection). Another issue is shaders. Many Daz shaders do not translate well, particularly, those that depend on overlays or are 3DL dependent. Also unlike Bryce, there is no direct bridge from Daz Studio, so loading a custom .duf character preset doesn't always go very well as I have found out.
Where Carrara does excel compared to Studio is with terrains, modelling, physics, and 3D text/logo design. I have moved over from Hexagon to Carrara for learning modelling as the latter is far more stable and has 64 bit support (so no tight memory restrictions to deal with). 3D texts and logos are very easy to work with as one can load fonts from the system's font library rather than have to model text from scratch. Like with the vertex modeller text and logos can also be saved as a .obj and imported into other applications. The one weakness regarding modelling is that the UV mapping tools leave something to be desired (though Hexagon's are not much better).
One interesting thing I discovered with Bryce is that I can create terrain elements an import them as textured .objs into Daz Studio. Haven't tried this with Carrara yet.
I'd just add that the "DAZ Studio requires plugins" argument is rather dated -- DS can do far more without any added plugins than it could a few years ago, and people do make plugins for Carrara and other programs that are traditionally described as not needing them.
Carrara does more "Out of the Box" than DS does, and it's render engine is much faster than 3Delight at similar quality settings (especially with trans maps). I like, and use both Carrara and DS, though Carrara is my favorite. There are some things that DS does better, like dynamic cloth, and some things that Carrara does better, like landscapes, physics (other than cloth), modeling, UV mapping, trees/plants, and realistic sky's to name a few.
Like DS, Carrara also has plugins for Octane and LuxRender (Luxus). Carrara also has a large number of outstanding plugins that extend it's functionality, and make it easier to use (quite a few are free). Because it does do more than DS, it has a much steeper learning curve, but of all of the "full features" 3D apps I have used (Maya, 3DS Max, Cinema 4D, Blender) and those that I have tried (Lightwave, TrueSpace), IMHO Carrara is much easier to learn.
Genesis and Genesis 2 doesn't work as well in Carrara as in DS, but for the most part are very usable. I find Genesis 2 a bit more usable than Genesis. Poke Away 2 for Genesis 2 (G2F - I don't use G2M much) goes a long way toward addressing the lack of smoothing and push modifiers in Carrara. The standard DAZ morph packs for Genesis/G2F work well in Carrara except for the HD morphs, and all of Handspan Studios and Zevo's morphs that I have work perfectly as well. From what I've seen on the forums, Genesis and Genesis2 geografts seem to not work very well, or not at all in Carrara (I've never tried them). There are some clothing items for Genesis and G2F that don't work at all in Carrara, and some that will work if they are loaded onto the figure in DS, then saved to .duf, and improted/opened in Carrara. In my experience, the majority of the Genesis/G2F content I have works well in Carrara.
All of the Generation 4 (V4, M4, etc.) and earlier figures work very well in Carrara. Most of the other content available here (and elsewhere) will work in Carrara as well (unless is uses DS specific features like LIE). Quite often you will need to adjust the shaders/materials the get the best quality in Carrara, but it is actually quite easy to do, and there is a very inexpensive plugin called Shader Doctor ($10.00 I think) from Fenric that will do most of the work for you with a simple mouse click.
IMHO, Carrara greatly expands your 3D tool kit, and gives you more flexibility than just using DS alone. I prefer using Carrara because I find lighting and materials/shaders easier, and rendering for me is MUCH faster (plus I've used it since version 2). I use the Octane plugin for Carrara most of the time now, because it is even faster and easier to get the results I like/want (I have the DS Octane plugin as well, but find it to be rather unstable where the Carrara plugin is extremely stable).
I have a few images done in both DS and Carrara in my gallery here (several of them are done with Octane though) if your interested in seeing a comparison of what one person can do in either application (http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#galleries/591). There are a lot more images from both DS and Carrara in my Rendo Gallery (link in the sig line below) if you're interested. For a quick example of how Carrara can expand your options, the entire image below, including the text, the little drone that I modeled in Carrara, and the G2F figure wearing V4 cloths, was done in Carrara. It was rendered using the Octane Render plugin for Carrara, but very similar results could be easily achieved using the internal renderer in Carrara (click on the image to see the full details - a lot is lost in the compressed version below).
..after all the resources and time that I invested in Genesis/Gen2 to create the characters for my story, I am not about to step back to Gen4. As I mentioned above when I loaded my character presets into Carrara, the shaders looked terrible and some didn't even translate like skin details, transmapped eyelashes, hair details, and eye details (the eyes always came in solid white). I spent a lot of time developing these character presets and don't really wish to do so from scratch again, particularly when some of the morphs and texture maps I need are unavailable.
I remember being able to load partial scenes scene set up in Daz Studio into Carara in 6.3 with no issues. Apparently that is no longe the case as I usually get an error that says the operation failed (and I have a lot more memory as well as processor power available to me now than I had back then).
As I have began working with LuxRender (though Reality), I have a high quality unbiased render engine available. Adjusting materials and surfaces (particularly in Reality4 which will be released Monday) is so much simpler than Carrara. Also Reality4/and the latest version of LuxRender are compatible with Daz's SSS shaders, which still give me trouble in Carrara.
Daz needs to update Carrara to better handle it's latest products out of the box and include a more direct import bridge from Daz Studiothat can interpret Daz Shaders more accurately.
Reality is awesome, especially Reality 3 for Poser, and Reality 4 sounds like it will be much better. But again, I'm limited to DS or Poser with Reality, which is OK, but I can get great renders faster with Carrara's internal renderer, though the new version of Lux may be much faster now. You might ask why I would be interested in Reality/Lux if I have Octane. Again, it gives me greater flexibility, plus there are features in each that the other doesn't have, and some things are easier in one compared to the other, and Lux isn't limited by the amount of GPU RAM you have (can have larger scenes with Lux).
Well said!!! If they want to make Carrara more attractive to more people, the materials/shaders translation really needs to improve, along with Genesis/Genesis2 support.
There are two things that keep me out of Carrara.
1. Clothes fitting. DS has a lot of native conversion and adjustment, between the smoothing and collision and push modifiers and the Transfer Utility and Morph Loader and just all of the things its creation suite can do.
2. Skin shaders. I've never seen a single humanoid rendered in Carrara whose skin didn't look terribly flat. I include commercial shader pack renders in that statement, not as an insult to their creators but because I assume it to be a limitation of Carrara itself. In DS you can go with Ubersurface 2, SSS, or Amazing Skins and get some effects that look good even if they can't approach photorealism without postwork; and since I need to do a lot of midrange to close renders of humanoids, that's important to me.
I don't need its 3d creation features. I have Blender, 3d Coat and Zbrush for that. The only thing it has that I can't get elsewhere is the hair system, and I see so little of that used that I'm guessing it must be up there with Poser's Hair Room or with Garibaldi/LAMH in terms of difficulty. It's far more likely I would get the Octane plugin than ever switch from DS.
Carrara can handle huge and highly complicated scenes that would make other apps curl up and die, and it does so with ease.
Carrara hair is the most realistic I have seen so far in the industry (at least apps priced where hobbyists can afford them and useable with DAZ characters). Others have sworn that Hexagon is the superior DAZ modeling app, but for me Carrara is 1000 times better than Hex, because Hex crashes all the time to the point of not being useable and Carrara almost never crashes (actually for me it has never crashed while modeling), plus it has nearly every tool that Hex does for modeling and a few that Hex does not. It is missing a few Hex tools that I've heard from others are indispensable, but honestly as modeler Carrara works great for me. That's not to even mention it has other modelers besides the standard Vertex, Metaball, and Spline modelers, including a terrain modeler that allows you to create terrains, a truly outstanding plant modeler that lets you make the best/most complex trees, a hair modeler as mentioned for truly excellent dynamic hair, a volumetric cloud modeler, a realistic sky editor to make skies and atmospheres, a particle generator/modeler, in-built physics, both the Carrara standard physics and bullet physics, a tremendous amount of different animation tools, an inbuilt render engine which is powerful, fast, and capable of extreme quality (honestly with the tips from PhilW I've done Lux, Octane, Thea unbiased renders and put Carrara's render engine beside them and it looks very very close, one of the best biased render engines out there, period, when used correctly), has an ocean primitive with wave function, has an incredibly useful texture room, has very good light types/options, has rigging tools, has UV mapping tools, has weight-mapping tools... the features of Carrara go on and on, and it's much easier to list the very short list of things it cannot do then try to list all of what it can do.
Studio on the other hand... well, I know the old argument that it's a great little free tool for quickly posing and rendering pre-made content, but honestly that idea doesn't hold much water for me, since Carrara does that way better too.
But the original question was "What can you do in Daz that you can’t in Carrara?" And I'm really struggling to find an answer for that. Studio is at least free, and you get all that you pay for with Studio (and far less!) :)
Carrara has soft body physics, but does not have true dynamic cloth yet, though I've certainly seen many carrarists use do very good cloth sims with the soft body physics. I was going to say that's something that Studio can do, but yeesh no it can't, I forgot it takes a purchased add on plugin to make that work. Personally when I want dynamic cloth (not often) I do it in Poser and then import to Carrara. So, kind of even-steven on that one.
Studio is better for using Genesis and Genesis2 content, though not by much. Genesis works almost exactly as well in Carrara as Studio, with the exception that the geografted genitals don't seem to work right at all in Carrara (they will attach, but do not texture correctly). So if you were planning on close up hardcore erotica shots, then Genesis (and Genesis2) would not be a good choice in Carrara. Genesis2 has the same geografting/texturing problem as Genesis, and additionally doesn't autofit anyone else's clothing, so it can only wear Genesis2 clothes.
Also if you are going to use Carrara, you will need to learn the basics of the texture room, because it does not read textures the same way that Poser or Studio do. If you just load up a V4 and apply the poser textures to it, you'll end up with a shiny plastic V4. There are plugins to correct this (I'm thinking of Fenric's shader doctor and skin doctor) and they do a decent job, but Carrara's texture room is so friendly and fun that I actually enjoy tweaking shaders/textures myself. But if you hate that sort of thing, then fair warning, because Carrara reads textures differently.
Carrara doesn't have an in-built unbiased render engine, but then nothing does (though I've heard the new version of iclone . There are plugins for Lux (luxus for Carrara) and Octane (Octane for Carrara) though. Actually there's lots of different plugins for Carrara, including Architools which makes building houses and buildings really easy (it's one of my favs) amongst many others... well, really we shouldn't talk too much about plugins though.
For me, it's no contest, but again that's just my opinion. I wish years ago when I was first getting into this hobby that I had stumbled upon Carrara sooner, it really is one of the best kept secrets out there. I tortured myself using Poser and Studio before finding Carrara, which I only discovered when I was investigating the merits of Vue and looking for alternatives.
One drawback for Carrara is that the development cycle is glacially slow. There is some development still ongoing, there was actually a minor point release a couple of weeks ago, but Carrara 9 was supposed to have been out sometime in quarter 1 of this year, and obviously that never happened yet, and it's anyone's guess when Carrara 9 will actually be released and what will be included (I'm assuming fixes for Genesis and Genesis2 to make it equivalent to Studio). However I've tried tons of different rendering apps, and to be honest if there was never another newer release of Carrara or any further development and things stopped just where they are I would still use Carrara as my main app. It already does nearly everything.
...several of the missing morphs unflrtunately alter the physique and look of of my saved characters. I spent a lot of time setting up these character presets and to not have them look exactly the way I intend them to is just not acceptable. It's really a disappointment for I sank a lot into purchasing a number of "Carrara only" scene sets to use in my illustrations which would have worked for locations in the story on the premise that Carrara would have no issues with the shaders and morphs of characters built on Genesis once there was Genesis (and later G2) support.
I already tried importing the character's in (as a .duf) when which is when I noticed the poor quality of the shaders and missing morphs.If I import them as a.obj lose ll the textures and ability to adjust poses.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "terribly flat". from the context of the rest of your post, I'm guessing you mean dull or lifeless due to the lack of SSS. I doubt this is a lack of capability on the part of Carrara, just a reflection that the Carrara community doesn't have an Omnifreaker to develop the proper shaders for great SSS. If it weren't for Omnifreaker DS would no doubt still have this same issue, as very few people were creating their own SSS shaders.. It takes quite a bit of trial and error to come up with the perfect recipe for skin and SSS. Here is a render by moviehawke1 that has pretty good SSS (warning - nudity) http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2574404
I can see for you, with the tools and skills you have at your disposal, Carrara might not make sense. But for a hobbyist who doesn't want to (or can't) make the financial and learning investment in 3D Coat and Zbrush, Carrara looks much better. Of course Blender is free, but IMVHO the learning (and frustration) curve is much greater than Carrara. Plus you can't use(or easily use) DAZ 3D/Poser figures natively in any of the three applications you mentioned. Carrara isn't perfect for everyone, but for someone willing to invest a bit of time and effort to learn it, it can be a great addition to their 3D tool-set.
Hair in Carrara does require a bit of work, it's not a one click "Make Hair" button, but you can get great results. Like the hair plugins for DS, hair in Carrara does take a lot more skill than using transmapped hair. Also, like DS, you don't see it used very much because it does take more work, but, with a little effort, you can get outstanding results with it.
I love Octane!! Octane has been one of the best investments in 3D that I have made. I prefer the plugin for Carrara over the one for DS. The Carrara plugin is rock solid for me, where the DS plugin continually crashes. Octane has really improved my renders, mostly because it is so much easier/faster to tweak shaders and lighting.
Why Carrara? Cause I can't do this in DS (see below).
Sorry to hear about your problems/frustrations KK. With a little bit of work, textures can be easily fixed (unless they are procedural shaders), but some things with Genesis/Genesis2 there is no easy work around for. Hopefully C9 will fix those issues (and come out in the not too distant future), and you will be able to use the Carrara content you purchased for your illustrations.
...yeah, but the issue with waiting involves that nasty word which begins with "s" and ends in "n".
My concern is we may see a new updated "Genesis" (G3?) along with Gen 7 before the stable release of C9 is available.
lol!
I was very careful to avoid that dreaded word - don't want to jinx C9 - but your right, it could be a long while before we see it. Carrara was consistently at the top of the "Trending Now" and "Most Popular" categories during the PC sale (after it went on sale), so maybe there is a bit more reason for DAZ 3D to push forward with development on C9.
DS does have dynamic cloth, using items made with the Optitex system, in the base - the paid for plug-in adds the ability to manually tweak cloth settings (the free version can use presets or the settings applied to the cloth in the file only) and a wind-force controller. But this is not, of course, a general-purpose system that can clothify an arbitrary object the way the Poser Cloth Room can.
Which part?
..ahh recognise that, He makes really nice sets as well. Granted a bit taxing on the GPU memory (as everything is modelled) but definitely on par with Howie's Carrara sets.
BTW Howie is working on his first set for Daz Studio which will be a reissue of his Harpsburg.
Which part?
Touche!! :) Nice render
Hmmm ... your trees were created in the tree/plant modeler/creator in DS ... oh yea, DS doesn't have one. :smirk:
In my image, the trees were created in Carrara, using the tree/plant modeler/creator in Carrara. Also, I don't think that DS could handle all the geometry in this scene, it's a lot larger and more complicated than it looks like from the render - the scene is Secret Lake for Carrara by Howie Farkes.
OK, I'll see your stream render, and raise you one stream render. I don't think DS can handle all the geometry in this scene either, though I would gladly be proven wrong. Everything in the scene is geometry - no backdrops or textured image planes, and the scene is a lot larger than what you see in the image. The fog is atmospheric volumetrics, no post work was done on either image (again, click on the image to see the great details). Of course the trees were created in Carrara, not imported from another modeler. This scene is Stoney Creek also by Howie Farkes.
Fun with physiscs - something else that Carrara can do that DS can't. These are just quick renders of demo physics animations that come with Carrara.
Physics Animation #2
Something else I can do with Carrara that I can't do with DS. Import a USGS format DEM (Digital Elevation Model) created from high resolution LiDAR data (in this case 1 ft spatial resolution), and overlay an aerial photo of the area. This does require a plugin called Ground Control, from Digital Carvers Guild, but this is something I can't do in DS.
I could use a plane and create an displacement map from the DEM and use that to displace the plane to re-create the terrain in DS. Unfortunately doing this doesn't give me the subtle elevation detail I need for my application (in either DS or Carrara). I have found that using Ground Control in Carrara to import my DEM data to work much better than using any other options available (including Vue).
Note that even the trees are included in the "DEM". I use this type of data to help visualize linear features, that in cross section have less than 4 inches of relief across a width of 30 ft. (none are visible in this image). DS simply can not meet my needs for this type of work.
Not a need that most people have, but if you like or need to work with real world terrain data, Carrara with the Ground Control plugin is a great option!
Another thing that I can do in Carrara that I can't do in DS. Model, UV map, texture, and render technical illustrations. This isn't anything fancy or awe inspiring, but it is a basic need I have that I use Carrara for.
Yes, I could do the modeling and uv mapping in Hex, or another modeling application, then render and texture in DS. But Carrara gives me all the tools I need to accomplish this objective within one single package, thus avoiding any conversion issues I might run across using multiple applications.