Oh... Alpha version. Using Daz Studio 2025 "Alpha" I bet.

Yeah... "Alpha" means that it's still incomplete software that has not been taken to "Beta" yet, Beta being pre-release unstable version.

The Alpha version of Daz Studio doesn't even have a SDK yet so none of the plugins can be made to work for it yet - so... yeah... Alpha. 

In any case... that's Not Carrara

Dartanbeck said:

Alpha version of what, Carrara? If so... Why?

Either way - what do you mean that "nothing works" for you? Lights? 

Describe what you're doing and I'll see if I can help you get going

Could be related to this https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/41982/michael-4-what-is-the-deal-with-this-money-pit-of-a-figure

Alpha version of what, Carrara? If so... Why?

Either way - what do you mean that "nothing works" for you? Lights? 

Describe what you're doing and I'll see if I can help you get going

So I downloaded the Alpha out of curiosity, wondering whether it would work at all on my old Windows 10 OS. 

The main interface loaded OK. I didn't log in to my account because I wasn't sure if that would mess up settings for my existing installation of DS. 

We were reminded in advance that some features would be missing but I was surprised that the missing features included some of the main, most essential, things. 

No camera cube, no ability to choose camera, nothing visible in the viewport, no ability to frame selected object. No plugins. No 3Delight. Export formats limited the most basic ones. 

So I felt that this was, on my OS, an almost non-functional version. I mean, it boots but isn't yet able to do any work. I can't guess whether this is simply because my computer is too old or whether the beta and customer ready versions will include the backwards compatibility that I need.

I'm worried that day is coming when I won't be able to use Daz Studio at all because the system will have become so advanced that old users like me will be left in dust. I'm so worried about that that I've almost completely stopped buying the newer Daz content and my purchases are mainly of V4, M4, A4 type of things which will still work in Poser, Carrara and, to a lesser extent, Vue. 

It feels like having a ticket on a train which won't be there much longer. 

Khoe said:

3deedlin said:

 

Very Nice. There is a lot going on there. Not sure of the work flow, but besides the tweaking with polys, instances, billboards and lighting. I can see a distinct forground and background, so this could be speed up doing compositing. Otherwise, a render like that could take awhile.

The rendering took about 4 hours, which is perfectly fine for scenes like this, at least for me. I've also had renderings that took 18 or 20 hours. :) Of course, you can insert a ready-made background and only work on the front part, but I enjoy building everything in Carrara. I have plenty of time for this kind of thing. I don't have to create many images, perhaps from pre-made backgrounds or existing scenes. I have fun doing it and am always learning new things about how things work. I'm always impressed by what you can create with such an old program. What if it had been updated? What could it still do today? It's a shame that it's slowly being forgotten.

Khoe said:

 I'm always impressed by what you can create with such an old program. 

Good point.  Carrara is still my main tool for short animations, e.g. the 48 Hour Film contests.  Supplemental programs include VUE (now free) and Particle Illusion for FX (also with a free version).  For my graphic purposes, these cover it all.  Other programs cover music, sound FX, dialogue, etc.

3deedlin said:

 

Very Nice. There is a lot going on there. Not sure of the work flow, but besides the tweaking with polys, instances, billboards and lighting. I can see a distinct forground and background, so this could be speed up doing compositing. Otherwise, a render like that could take awhile.

The rendering took about 4 hours, which is perfectly fine for scenes like this, at least for me. I've also had renderings that took 18 or 20 hours. :) Of course, you can insert a ready-made background and only work on the front part, but I enjoy building everything in Carrara. I have plenty of time for this kind of thing. I don't have to create many images, perhaps from pre-made backgrounds or existing scenes. I have fun doing it and am always learning new things about how things work. I'm always impressed by what you can create with such an old program. What if it had been updated? What could it still do today? It's a shame that it's slowly being forgotten.

therixx said:

Well, it seems that the hunt is over.
ShareCG is officially closed.
There were still lots of items I would have downloaded, but I cannot complain too much. I got most Carrara related stuff and a ton of other things.
I hope there will be a huge content transfer to other sites, as they suggest in their final message.

therixx said:

Homeworld

Previously on the Chocorabbits Saga:
By observing a new, mysterious planet, the Chocorabbits decide to land on it with an expedition that will search for traces of cocoa. But while they are busy with the sampling, our intrepid explorers stumble upon a strange monolith, which turns out to be an astonishing sort of portal to other worlds…

Where will this strange passage lead? How dangerous will it be?
Amazingly, by entering the monolith on the chocolate planet, our heroes reappear… in the Land of the Chocorabbits!
Is the Chocoplanet somehow linked to their home? Maybe even to their origins?
What could the relationship be? A question that remains unanswered, for now.
Being pragmatic, it definitely is a convenient shortcut.

Best wishes for a…

INTRADIMENSIONAL EASTER 2025!

----
The Whole saga is here:
The Land of the ChocoRabbits
Carrara 8.5 Pro Render.
No A.I. was bothered asking it to do this as a commission for me.

stem_athome said:

3deedlin said:

........ Can one still get the Carrara Octane or Lux plugins?

For the Luxcore beta that was available, check the post from Sphericlabs on this thread:-  https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1722001/#Comment_1722001

Thanks. That was interesting. It works, but seems development stopped? Will have to play a bit.

Welcome to yet another round of RRRR. This time we're having a theme, and the theme is Good Intentions / Mixed up Mythology. This time we have two parallell themes, I just like to change things and the Mixed up Mythology was something thrown out in a chat by a fellow PA and friend and stuck like glue.

RRRR stands for Random Runtime Roulette Renders, and it's a contest that has been running for over twelve years now, on and off. We invite anyone to enter, specially all those new users who have shown up the past years. This is not the usual make a very nice render contest but more like tell a really great story, often fun, with your render!

How does it work?
Make your pull of 4 items, and if your any Lucky Bastards, you pull one extra item per LB.

Who can play?

Anyone can play!

How do you prepare yourself for play?

The rules are very simple, but first you need to have all your items in some kind of order in a text file, dumped from the itemized history into a text file or a spread sheet. Remove things like software, gift certs, and special plugins from the list and items that wil not work with the software you work with.
 For example if you have items for Poser, Bryce or Carrara, and want to use DAZ Studio, remove those other items from your list. If you have loads of older figures, M3, M4, a ton of non Iray stuff and you only want to use Studio with Iray, remove all the junk from you list. 

Then you use a randomizer to randomly pick items from your list (your Runtime/My Library) for your start pull . You can use items from any store. Now build a scene with those 4 items plus any other items you want to add to make a fun scene. For newcomers I heartly recommend looking at the previous contests below to get ideas how you can do this. 

Working randomizer:: https://www.random.org/integers

There are some situations where you allowed to redraw, these are:


- You pulled something that doesn’t work, broken thing, only works in a version / software not used etc etc, or you forgot to remove that item from you list even though you knew it wont work, or figure that out later.
- You pulled a software or add-on to a software or anything you should have filtered out from the list.
- You pulled only huge environment props and will not be able to render a scene without crashing.
- You pulled an item you already have been using in two RRRR renders in this content and that was picked randomly. Three is a curse - rule!

Lucky Bastard Rule!
I say this again: If you have Lucky Bastards, you pull one extra item for each LB you have, simple as that. 
Explaination of Lucky Bastards. 
Lucky Bastards, or LBs, are a form of handicap system which makes the contest a little more difficult for those who have won.

Current Lucky Bastards Standings

How to play?
You pull, you compose and you Render. You post your images and pulls in this thread (Don't miss that, entries without pulls and posts in this thread will be disqualified!!).
Then the entry should also be posted in the Entries only thread

Bundles
If you pull a bundle, use two or three complete items from it, or more if you like, but you do not need to use all, but only picking a hairpin from Victoria 8 Pro Bundle is “too little”. Clarification: A bundle still counts as only one pulled item.

Poses, Expressions and textures/colors
If you pull a pose pack, an expression pack or a texture/color pack, you only need to use one of them, not all. For example if you pull 500 expressions for Genesis 8 Female, use one, if you pull 128 colors for Frappe Hair, use one.
Accidenty breaking the TOS
If your entry is removed by the forum mods because it accidentally, not deliberate, broke the TOS, you do not have to redo that entry but can move on and make a new pull. 

The rules of madness! 
Now you have successfully and randomly picked your items, make a scene, you can add other items as well but the one you picked should be prominent or cleverly used. Render it, post it and make us all laugh! Remember though that the renders must follow the TOS of the forum. As we have a theme on the contest, the render should in some way touch that theme. 

The contest categories! 
There are two categories Best and Funniest. Every image will compete in both categories.

Contest duration!
It starts now at Monday April 21 - 2025, and will go on until Sunday June 22, 2025 at 23:59:59 local DAZ time. Yes, a long run, but I thought what is better to do in the holidays than render what you do not do in the holidays?

This months sponsors so far:
Totte (Code 66) is sponsoring with two items from his store
Elliandra is sponsoring with two items from her store
3Diva is sponsoring with two items from thier store
Luci45 is sponsoring with $25 in Daz GCs
Dartanbeck is sponsoring with items from his store
(Sponsored items does not include any Daz Originals, as it has never done)

We want more sponsors!
 

Do you want to sponsor the RRRR?
Please chip in a gift card sponsorship, sponsors can play, they should play, they are even extra encouraged to play, as sponsors always plays for keeps.

Maximum number of entries? 
For this round it will be a maximum of 12 entries per player.

So, good luck and start your render engines!

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I read an interesting article that honestly left me scratching my head

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/techandscience/ai-dolls-are-taking-over-but-real-artists-are-sick-of-them/ar-AA1Dcxxa?ocid=socialshare&cvid=74627c3e8b3c4686e9b26fb15b2139c2&ei=7

I prompted one of those Starter kits myself in ChatGPT4 a few days ago

then

I loaded Carrara, used a Blister pack made by our own Stezza and rendered a 3D version, exported the blister pack as obj and rendered one in DAZ studio too

I am still puzzled about that article

 

That is an odd article. I did this in AI for my neice and now she wants it as an actual toy, LOL

Fenric said:

The "PluginName.mcx failed to load" usually means one of these things:

32-bit plugin on a 64-bit system (or vice versa)
Mac plugin on a Windows system (or vice versa)
For Windows, a missing dependency file (usually one of the Visual C++ runtime packages)

The most likely Visual C++ runtimes are 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2013 - you're best off if you have all of them installed.

Edit: Loading up my Carrara and just one AniBlock, it's using Visual C++ runtimes 2008 and 2010 - make sure you install the correct one (32 or 64 bit)

Laptop or Tower PC?

a corrupt disc drive sector?

I'd try moving the carrara install to a different location just to dismiss it.

3deedlin said:

........ Can one still get the Carrara Octane or Lux plugins?

For the Luxcore beta that was available, check the post from Sphericlabs on this thread:-  https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1722001/#Comment_1722001

Please check whether a Carrara.dat file is present in the Carrara8.5 folder ( parent folder of the Extensions folder )  It contains metadata for mcx files. Check its size and properties.

BTW On what OS are you running? Win10 / 11? 32/64bits?

therixx said:
----
The Whole saga is here:
The Land of the ChocoRabbits
Carrara 8.5 Pro Render.
No A.I. was bothered asking it to do this as a commission for me.

What fun!  Thanks for the link to the full saga.  Wonderful series.  Great job.

Thanks for the suggestions. 

I don't recall changing any Carrara plugins or extensions before this happened.  There was a Windows update not too long ago, but I am pretty sure I had a successful Carrara start between the update and the recent failures.  After the load failure, I launched the Daz DIM installer.  DIM had updates, including changing some C functions.  DIM can't be the original cause, but it could be a complication.  Just hard to know.

Again, I appreciate all the suggestions.

Looks like they are one of the required Extensions for Carrara to run so deleting them might not be an option. Got me stumped - a real PITA .....

Homeworld

Previously on the Chocorabbits Saga:
By observing a new, mysterious planet, the Chocorabbits decide to land on it with an expedition that will search for traces of cocoa. But while they are busy with the sampling, our intrepid explorers stumble upon a strange monolith, which turns out to be an astonishing sort of portal to other worlds…

Where will this strange passage lead? How dangerous will it be?
Amazingly, by entering the monolith on the chocolate planet, our heroes reappear… in the Land of the Chocorabbits!
Is the Chocoplanet somehow linked to their home? Maybe even to their origins?
What could the relationship be? A question that remains unanswered, for now.
Being pragmatic, it definitely is a convenient shortcut.

Best wishes for a…

INTRADIMENSIONAL EASTER 2025!

----
The Whole saga is here:
The Land of the ChocoRabbits
Carrara 8.5 Pro Render.
No A.I. was bothered asking it to do this as a commission for me.