rigomrtsfx - Not my first, I started with free Terragen at the time but when I had a bit of money left I bought Bryce 5 and stayed with it - though I also used Studio from version 0.8 up to 4 from time to time and Carrara from version 3 to 8.1 but seldom.

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.

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?

Saw this stop motion animation tribute to the opening credits of Johnny Quest and began thinking... "How would I do each clip in Carrara?"  With Carrara and nothing else.  And for each clip, I thought I had an answer.  

http://www.jonnyquest.tv/

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.

we need a LAMH and Standbased hair to Carrara hair converter 

Blender you can actually use Diffeo for the latter I believe to get particle hair

still looks great

This was rendered in Blender (Cycles). Using LAMH exported from DS. Tried to see what Carrara could do out of curiosity, but it couldn't handle the fiber obj at all. I am curious about the difference in the free player versus the full, but looks like there are some issues with it and DS. Amazing how much work hair and fur can be.

I'm 76 (and a half) My first order from here was in Sept. 2003.  I had a new WinXP machine at home.  I got the Michael2.0 and the Barbarian outfit for him.  (Yes, I like barbarians).  But previous to that I'd been using early versions of Poser, Bryce and Carrara.  But previous to those I'd been using Carrara's predecessor RayDream Studio during the '90s on my home Win98 computer.  And previous to even that, during the mid '70s, in my spare time at the Kennedy Space Center, I was creating my own 3D objects by scratch from fundamental principles, on a Raytheon RDS-500 mini-computer (the size of a Volkswagon) with only 64KBytes of memory.  Input was via Teletype and 80 column punched cards and 8-bit punched tape.  Display was via either a Gould electrostatic dot matrix plotter/printer, or a Tektronix 4012 Storage Display terminal.  Disk storage was tiny in capacity but had it's own 5 foot high rack.  Yeah, yeah, my graphics were only wire-frame work and the objects were simple geometrics and the results weren't earth shattering results, but it was a lot of fun.  To animate rotating objects properly/smoothly, I had to pre-render each frame to the vector-graphics Tektronix display, which also fed the vector output through a graphic scan converter to be rasterized and sent to a manually cranked video recording disk (think magnetic phonograph, one video frame per track), turn a crank to advance the record head one track, then record the next frame, etc. etc.  Then switch the video to PLAY, rewind the head, and crank the crank at a desired rate to view the result as motion.  Wheee!  A lot of work for a rotating cube and a simple airplane model yawing, pitching and rolling.  But hey!  it was 50 years ago and I was using stone knives and bearskins, and all the graphic software, including floating point arithmetic and printer & display drivers came out-o-my-head.  Yeah, it was convoluted, but it was doable if you had a million dollars of US government ancillary equipment handy.

These days I've got a good sized collection of DAZ items and I still dabble, slightly, but have moved on to other things in my life.  I played in the surf for a few decades, but now I just flounder in the white-water.

you can in Carrara

checking displace in 3D view and exporting an obj with morphs and skinning checked

it is a dense triangulated mesh but keeps the UV mapping of the original 

run as administrator maybe... 

install in a seperate folder and not in the Program Files folder

instal via DiM maybe... 8.1 was a free update if I recall correctly so you can download it from your account.

I run 8.1 no problems in Windows 11 Pro 

or just copy all the Carrara folders from your Windows 7 and paste it into Windows 11 ... create a desktop shortcut and that should work. 

WendyLuvsCatz said:

trying it yourself and working around the limitations is the best advice I can give

...

OK, thanks.  It does make me realize how I use Carrara without thinking too much about "how" to do something, more about what I want to do.  But still, lots of DS content around ... 

trying it yourself and working around the limitations is the best advice I can give

the updates that gave Filatoon also added ambient glow which is nice

one still needs lights though as unlike iray texture emission isn't possible 

(Carrara equivalent  to iray emission is anything glows as opposed to point lights)

iray works without additional lightis as uses texture and HDR lighting

Filiment although also PBR does not cast shadows without lights added

think of it as a halfway point between 3Delight and iray

however like openGL it has issues with alpha mapped textures 

(D|S unlike Carrara needs an additional cutout opacity map for alpha too)

probably Carrara 8.5

I don't have Win 11 so cannot test if 8 works but the upgrade definitely does for other users

its frequently on sale if you are not in a hurry

I have a licensed copy of Carrara 8 running on a Windows 7 Pro computer. I would like to run Carrara on a Windows 11 Pro computer. However, the installer for Carrara 8 will not install Carrara in Windows 11. What do I need to do to run my copy of Carrara in Windows 11?

MD

WendyLuvsCatz said:

well it's a lot easier than it used to be, that's for sure

I too am using DAZ studio a lot now there is iray and Filament precisely because the newer content is made to work in it

back in the Poser days Carrara was the obvious choice, 3Delight was abysmally slow and openGL looked awful 

things have improved drastically 

I still use Carrara as well myself but certainly you should give D|S a try too

if you have a good Nvidia graphics card iray is a no brainer even if you only render characters as png series to add to scenes in post

I myself do that a lot and so does Dartanbeck

Great, many thanks!  I do have a good nVidia card and have done some DS still renders using Iray, very impressive and useful as backgrounds for Carrara animations.  I did a quick search on "Filament Daz Studio" - is it required for reasonably fast DS animations? 

But OK, sounds like a mix of Carrara and DS might be the answer for animations.  Another learning curve ... sigh. 

well it's a lot easier than it used to be, that's for sure

I too am using DAZ studio a lot now there is iray and Filament precisely because the newer content is made to work in it

back in the Poser days Carrara was the obvious choice, 3Delight was abysmally slow and openGL looked awful 

things have improved drastically 

I still use Carrara as well myself but certainly you should give D|S a try too

if you have a good Nvidia graphics card iray is a no brainer even if you only render characters as png series to add to scenes in post

I myself do that a lot and so does Dartanbeck

I'm getting ready for anohter 48 Hour Film contest, doing some Carrara animation just shake the rust off.  As always, it's a lot of fun doing animation in Carrara, especially when it's become second nature after all these years.  But I've lost track of animation in DS, which I'm tempted to get more into because of all the products available.  Any comments on the comparison?  Not trying to start an argument, just curious about folks experiences.

well Draagonstorm won't care I think from her new plane of existence

so arrays would be fine as long as you script it yourself not looking at hers

as you are

some others may appreciate it

I am sure there are many options like a circle or elipse or rectangle edge not covered

That Carrara replicators for example do and I miss

(have to use ultrascatter on primitives those shapes)

Thanks for the comments and interest.

I had another longer play today and find the program to be very impressive.  Help documentation seems to be a work in progress unless I'm missing something. 

My work is still amateurish but I never hesitate to show rubbish like the Carrara render I posted above if it makes a point. My last screenshot from today shows how an extremely simple pattern can be drwn out in 2d to be stitched and simulated in 3d.  The pattern drawing can be much more precise with tons of features that I will never get into.  I really only want tunics and robes with shawls and belts but easy dresses are also useful to learn from and use.

I'm showing a screenshot where the Avatar is DAZ G8 'Clarisse' both in Style 3d and in a frame from a cloth sim test of the garment in Poser.  In each program I put in a wind force to add extra movement.

I guess that's about all.

Hermit Crab said:

OK, I downloaded Style 3d Atelier and had about 30 minutes play only with it.

The program started with an avatar and T-shirt pattern.  I added 4 freehand rectangles to stitch together and to stitch on to the botttom of the shirt.  I exported the avatar and garment as an object and imported to Carrara.

What you see in Carrara was the first result but I went back and shortened the T-shirt which you see in Atelier.

That's as far as I've tried tonight but will probably not use again for a couple of weeks.  The trial seems to be the fully functional version with many export options - so you might want to have a shot at garment creation.  Even if the results are only to be used as a general starting point for future refinement. 

The figure can be animated but I didn't have time to find out how to get the simulation to animate with it.  There is a wind object but I haven't found yet how to control it.

It goes without saying that what I finished with is the result of an extremely slapdash session.  I think it can produce garments on a par with MD.

Thanks for checking it out and reporting back with screenshots.  Looks promising.