Thanks for the comments.  Just an aside, I was happy to find my Carrara "clip" (mocap file) of a spell casting sequence.  That is the basis for all four (three in this trailer) of the carrier "shooter" scenes (the  catapult officer).  I recall seeing a clip of a real carrier catapult man doing a pretty spectacular dance while "shooting".  This isn't that clip, but pretty funny:

Dartanbeck said:

Headwax said:

from the other place: Installed Python 2.7.11 however CarraraVWDBridge failed on input of VWD location (tried having VWD in C:VWD and ...RuntimePythonposerscriptsVWD). Installed Python 2.7.12 and it appears to have fixed that problem. Now able to save VWD location and start VWD from Carrara. (Windows10 x64)

Thank you So Much, my firend! A life without VWD is like... well... living without! 

Yes it adds another dimension, I had a show a few years ago of my 3d renders  and vwd was a dominant tool in most of the works 

Our entry is a 6.5 minute animation titled "A Sailor's Vacation", which I'll post after the Sept. Screenings.  A young boy dreams of a long vacation on a real sailboat, then joins the Navy to learn.

WendyLuvsCatz said:

the python install and a separate instance of Carrara light on plugins is what seems to have fixed the bridge for me on the Win10

sadly VWD itself mostly gets stuck mid simulation and stops responding 

it has managed to finish and send back to host sometimes but mostly not

(on the otherhand, my Win7 install works beautifully)

It's working great in Daz Studio 4.24 

WendyLuvsCatz said:

can you export the Camera and movement to the standalone 

I used to from both DAZ Studio (as Alembic there) and Carrara to combine scenes

I haven't done that in a long time as I cannot have the free D|S version installed with UltraScenery

but it was one way to combine HDmorphed figures and Geografted figures with Carrara scenes before other options possible 

Wendy,

I'll admit, I do not have strong animation skills. Really just been trying to get still shots to look the way I desire all these years. I can say that the camera position I had in Carrara when I exported the scene from the plug-in is the same view I get in Standalone when I select the render target. Assuming the camera data is keyed in Carrara, it should export camera changes along with geometry, light, and texture data all in the same way. Probably the best person to put the animation features through some stress would be you. If you ever adopt the plug-in Ill have lots of questions for you. Maybe there is a simple benchmark Carrara built animation I can test with the Standalone?

Okay, so what's this business about not being able to have free DS installed at the same time as UltraScenery? Do these apps have conflicts? Wasn't UltraScenery designed specifically to work within DS? Just curious if I understood you correctly. Thanks, Wendy!

can you export the Camera and movement to the standalone 

I used to from both DAZ Studio (as Alembic there) and Carrara to combine scenes

I haven't done that in a long time as I cannot have the free D|S version installed with UltraScenery

but it was one way to combine HDmorphed figures and Geografted figures with Carrara scenes before other options possible 

Update:

Otoy replied to my ticket request, saying that there currently is no version of the Carrara plug-in that is compatible with RTX 50 series GPUs. No surprise there.

They suggested a workaround, one I had already adopted. Basically what Wendy suggested, but slightly easier. No need to install an old GPU or use an old system, and no need to send the scene information between devices etc. Posts attached below.

 

The Good News:

Although the plug-in will not render, it will at least load geometry and texture information as usual when activated from within Carrara. Only rendering is disabled.

For this reasson, it is possible to export the scene directly from the Octane plug-in via .ocs format, load into Octane Standalone, and render as usual.

So far, from what I've explored, all of the newest features since version 4 are indeed implemented in the Carrara Studio plug-in. Random Walk for instance, has adjustment parameters inside of the Carrara interface as expected. So really, once exported to Standalone, you're in business.

It's important to note that your node setup will be displayed as a rather long string along the bottom of the screen. You must Select the Render Target for the image to render, otherwise the screen remains blank.

Also, use the lock feature when rendering, otherwise every time your computer shuts off the display and reinitiates it upon touching of the mouse or keyboard, it can cause Standalone to restart the render.

 

The Bad News:

No real-time updates as you work. Not so terrible for still shots but probabaly not feasible for animations and simulations.

While Octane is very fast in both exporting and importing, it still isnt as smooth as the native plug-in would be.

Otoy did not give any indication that the plug-in would be updated for 50 series GPUs. Worse, it really doesn't seem the plug-in is being developed further at all. This means that eventually there will be new card titles as well as new rendering features which the plug-in will not address.

 

For proof of concept I have uploaded a wip aquarium scene I allowed to render overnight. Rendered to 100,000 pixels and STILL has some noise. Denoising is not much better than it was in version 4 from what I can tell. Still makes a blurry sort of effect. It doesn't sharpen up until it reaches very high pixel settings. So you have a choice, either noisy and sharp or smooth and blurry. Either way, youll need high pixel counts. For stills, I'll probably go without denoising since there's no getting around crazy high rpp counts anyway.

I'm comforted to know at least that I don't have to move away from Carrara. The very idea of building complex scenes in Octane Standalone is daunting, honestly, I dont even know how to navigate the camera in Standalone.

Hope this info is helpful to someone. Happy Rendering!

the python install and a separate instance of Carrara light on plugins is what seems to have fixed the bridge for me on the Win10

sadly VWD itself mostly gets stuck mid simulation and stops responding 

it has managed to finish and send back to host sometimes but mostly not

(on the otherhand, my Win7 install works beautifully)

Headwax said:

from the other place: Installed Python 2.7.11 however CarraraVWDBridge failed on input of VWD location (tried having VWD in C:VWD and ...RuntimePythonposerscriptsVWD). Installed Python 2.7.12 and it appears to have fixed that problem. Now able to save VWD location and start VWD from Carrara. (Windows10 x64)

Thank you So Much, my firend! A life without VWD is like... well... living without! 

from the other place: Installed Python 2.7.11 however CarraraVWDBridge failed on input of VWD location (tried having VWD in C:VWD and ...RuntimePythonposerscriptsVWD). Installed Python 2.7.12 and it appears to have fixed that problem. Now able to save VWD location and start VWD from Carrara. (Windows10 x64)

 

 

3deedlin said:

Yes Cycles can be tweaked and even supports other engines like Lux. Can render much faster. The long render times can get old.

I'm in the middle of this year's Houston 48 Hour Film contest (2 days to make a five minute video) and used a DS iRay background in Carrara, looks pretty good if I say so myself.  One useful Carrara feature is the shadow catcher, making the animated figure in front of a DS iRay background more convincing.  The 48 Hour contest allows use of still images done before the contest, so I can have a pre-rendered selection of images with full blown iRay settings to use for the contest animations.  Attached is the 20 minute render image I used with an animated M4 helmsman sailor character in the foreground (did not need the shadow catcher in this case).

I grew up at Belmont in Surrey, now classed as being in Greater London. My dad worked as a steam boiler stoker in the Belmont/Henderson hospital which was one of the many old gothic psychiatric hospitals in Surrey and had been a former workhouse in Victorian times. From our house we had almost exactly this view of the Belmont Hospital:

  

A mile or two away near the village of Banstead was the Banstead psychiatric hospital which looked like this: 

Then there was the Epsom cluster of psychiatric establishments which included the West Park one. There are more pictures and links from the Wikipedia pages for each of these hospitals. 

A good way to find outsides for the Jack Tomalin West Park is by searching for "psychiatric hospital" on the Trimble/sketchup warehouse. Then edit the downloaded buildings in Sketchup. Also, if you have Carrara, there's a freeware plugin by Inagoni called Architools which can make buildings in Carrara and export them. Downloadable for free from github. https://github.com/Chaplier/inagoni/releases/tag/v1.0?fbclid=IwAR3lM3yptVqAqC6-z4AISXXDEboBuyb0Ipr54jOZbzzdFn44PQlPlegqgEk 

Another way is to cheat. One time I used parts of the Dream Home, splattered it with grunge and pretended it was the outside of West Park. I put Grovebrook House in the background.  It looks close enough if you're only driving in the gateway and then entering the front lobby. 

 

Padone said:

I do not animate in daz studio because I find it somewhat "primitive" for my needs, especially the IK system, however of course I tested it to draw this conclusion so I believe I know what the limits are. The explanation by Wendy is sound so you may want to reconsider it, since you keep the keyframes on "node" it's not the whole figure that's keyframed, a better approach is to use "node recurse" then select the figure root and keyframe the whole pose.

Another thing I noticed is you use the parameters tab to pose the figure, this works for posing but not for animation, as the sliders can't handle keyframe interpolation aka they flip and break as in your example. To pose for animation always use the translate and rotate tools on the top bar, which also have options in the tool settings, these can work fine with interpolation it's not the same as the sliders.

I only mention it because it is yet another one of those issues for me in DAZ Studio that Carrara, Poser and iClone don't have and peeves me off endlessly, things literally explode copying and pasting

but if the user says it isn't their issue, I understand

well there's always DAZ studio there is a new Alpha that will use your cards for iray

(doubt Octane even supports that)

also grab the free Twinmotion from Epuc Games and Unreal Engine too

it's easier to use than Blender

the only other option is using the Standalone on your new PC with the awesome cards and saving scenes for it on the old one with Or4C

sadly there are not many Carrara users let alone ones who can afford an Octave subscription 

I know my time is limited but it's still cheaper than buying a subscription over the years

Seems I might be the only person on Earth using this plug-in. I knew there might be trouble when I saw the last update to the Carrara plug-in was in 2020. So many new generations of cards, and Octane Standalone since then. Sure, there are plug-ins for other apps like Blender, but generally I like Carrara more as I have so much Carrara stuff over the years. Disappointing because my old Titan Black's don't work the newer Octane releases. Everything incompatible. This might mean me moving away from Carrara. I'm bummed. Sent a support ticket to Otoy, let's see what they say. No reposnse yet from Sighman on the Carrara specific thread. Argghh

OK a weird one today

trying to load a Poser PZ3 scene into Carrara totally locked up my PC

it initially threw an error though it all appeared in my scene outliner but when I then clicked on that the whole computer froze and task manager couldn't be clicked after hitting CTRL Alt Del

CPU was running like crazy

it was just a DM scene Dark Legacy from Rendo  I have loaded in DAZ studio earlier and pretty sure have in Carrara too

I had to power my PC off and restart it

Heya folks a few questions about the Carrara version of the current Octane Studio 2025. But Im also curious who is still using it. 

Any assistance is appreciated. Thanks!

Diomede said:

Two thunbs up for the render, @3deedlin.  I've generally preferred Carrara hair to Daz Studio solutions.  In part, that is because Philemo's conversion plugin to mesh makes it easy for me to go back and forth between photorealistic and toon yet retaining the same hair style.  I am only now digging deeper into Blender.  Does it have a strand-to-mesh converter?  Or backwards?

There are many different ways to do things in Blender. Just depends on what you are trying to do. I haven't spent enough time with this to be able to recommend.I have seen hair cards to strands, curves etc... All kind of different things. The 4.5 ver with more robust Vulkan backend will be Amazing from what I can see.I think the advice here is very sound.

3deedlin said:

That's the rub. I think earlier content could be fine in Carrara. Just depends on what you want. Learning curves do take time. Lol. I am glad Blender finally got user friendly enough with it's interface. The Daz bridge is nice to have, though I haven't used it much. DS is good because it does work with the content. It has gotten better. Probably good to know DS anyway if you are using content.

Indeed.  My recent purchase was "Fletcher Bridge" by 3Djoji, an internal view of the bridge of the "Fletcher Class Destroyer" which I purchased earlier.  The Iray renders of this amazingly detailed model are pretty stunning, look great as backdrops in Carrara.  But at ~20 minutes render time (vs <5 seconds typical in Carrara), not so great for animation in DS.  I think I could reduce the Iray render time by fiddling with the DS settings, but I'm happy for now with the DS/Carrara combination.

ed3D said:

Diomede said:

More chicken men!  Where is Doug the Carrara chicken man?  Does he have his own KFC, or will Lorenzo share?  And where is Super Chicken and Fred (with a backwards F) when you need them?  So many questions.  Wonderful job on Chickenman and love the dtailof the litttle rubber chicken.

 

+ 1   ..  and  what  evil  lurks  in the  hearts of men ..  the Chicken Knows  ..

_  hope  no-one  Took  this  wromg  +  Thanx