It's a primary feature of C6. What ya think?

[Altered_Ego]

DAZ has not abandoned Carrara, Bryce or Hexagon.

DAZ has made significant improvements in each product, and will continue to do so.

[medeamajic]

Please list the significant changes for me.

[LoneGunman]

Let me explain

I believe that what we have here is matter of fate (in DAZ). You do not actually have to see changes and improvements in order to believe in them

[rickei]

Ron, I am interested in the significant changes also.

[Roberto Poulpo]

Altered_Ego : for Carrara, the Universal binary (then, only for Mac...), for Bryce, then, well.. some render improvments (but not significant IMHO), and Hexagon, they didn't do anything with it or release any update since they bought it to Eovia...
Please, can you clarify?

Anyway, I think we have to let some time to DAZ, and see what they will do with Carrara (let's trust their developpers, they are old eovians employee!)

[Plum]

Hiya.

I recently took a serious look at Carrara. I'm a died-in-the-wool Softimage user, but liked the 'all-aroundedness' that Carrara was offering. At this time I have no huge projects that would warrant me up/sidegrading my XSI to v6 Essentials. I tried to find out if Carrara v6 was going to add in 64-bit support...nothing. Not a peep. Still, I figured Carrara v6 would probably have some nice changes, seeing as the bought Hexagon. So, seeing their little 'deal', I bought the Platinum Club membership...but something in the back of my head made me hold off on the Carrara Pro v6 purchas. I picked up the demo to give it another whirl. Then that little sentance showed up (the thread's starter)...

That little sentance tells me exactly what DAZ cares about; selling lingery content for Viki. Content. Pure and simple. That's fine, if that's their bread and butter, but there's no way I'm gonna trust a company to make "real" improvements to the software when their first concern is makeing sure the latest panty/bra set will import correctly. ... I can see it now "Well, we were going to focus on adding some non-linear animation improvements, but that will have to wait. A more pressing matter has come up...it seems that Vikki's boob morph-points aren't carrying over correctly! Oh the humanity!"

So, it decided to wait. I plunked down $700 on a new Wacom Intuous3 9x12 and Painter X.5 instead. (another purchase that was on my list; XSI will just have to wait another half year or so). DAZ has lost me on the whole Carrara thing...and I'm just gonna have to be content using a buggy Hexagon 2.1 and 'fix' stuff in XSI.

Then again...there's Blender. I find the interface uncomfortable...but man, that program is SERIOUSLY looking up in the last year! As soon as they get a new manual for 2.42 or greater out, I'm all over Blender like a drunk sailor at Hooters!

[rickei]

Plum,

Good decision on the Intuos

But wait... Who needs a Hooters, when you've got Vikki to look at

Blender is looking good, I just feel like a drunk sailor trying to use it. Maybe a new manual would help

[Altered_Ego]

I'm not a DAZ employee, and I'm not about to go through an exhaustive report of all DAZ's efforts concerning Carrara. You can read the DAZ Carrara forum yourself:

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewforum.php?f=66

I know that many of your are more "Professional" than myself and others.

This whole idea of Carrara being handled by a "Content Creator" is hard for you to accept.

I am merely trying to present another side of the issue, based on my satisfactory experience as a DAZ customer for the past 6 years.

[Patrick210]

"Hexagon, they didn't do anything with it or release any update since they bought it to Eovia..."

Actually, they did keep Eovia europe under contract for a month after the buyout and release the 2.1 patch for Hexagon.

[jbshorty]

Originally Posted by Patrick210

Actually, they did keep Eovia europe under contract for a month after the buyout and release the 2.1 patch for Hexagon.

Yes it was a very smart move by DAZ to keep original Eovia team until first patch was completed. But does it count as actually "doing" something for the development of Hexagon?

[Plum]

Originally Posted by Altered_Ego

I'm not a DAZ employee, and I'm not about to go through an exhaustive report of all DAZ's efforts concerning Carrara. You can read the DAZ Carrara forum yourself:

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewforum.php?f=66

I know that many of your are more "Professional" than myself and others.

This whole idea of Carrara being handled by a "Content Creator" is hard for you to accept.

I am merely trying to present another side of the issue, based on my satisfactory experience as a DAZ customer for the past 6 years.

Hiya.

I did read through a LOT of the Carrara posts there. I know it has problems (every software does).

Now, I actually don't really care who 'handles' a program (re: who owns it), unless it's a company that I refuse to do business with. ..and I can't think of any business that has warranted that privilege...yet. (although Discreet comes close sometimes) ;) What turned me away were two primary reasons:

1) Experience with Hexagon. I got it when DAZ got it. The 2.1 patch was out, and there was much rejoicing. Then... *barren desert...a lone tumbleweed blows by...* ;) The DAZ folks have pretty much nothing to say about Hexagon. I looked at the Hexagon Forum there on DAZ. Guess how many reply-posts (ie, not "Announcments" or "Stickys"; just regular questions by regular Hex users) I saw by DAZ employees? Two. That's it...2. That should be a warning sign right there. If they treat Carrara as they treat Hexagon...no way am I biting that apple again.

2) (Please don't take offense to this one, it's just an observation on my part)... Any problems that I may encounter would probably fall on deaf ears unless it involved some sort of "DAZ content aspect". The actual DAZ employees might respond...sometimes, maybe. But I'd wager that if I asked about "gimble lock problems" or "adjusting the bias on an f-curve" or "easiest way to create good edge-flow for subdivided models" or "adjusting the weight map falloff of bones"...I'm guessing that the tumbleweed would make another appearance. ;) It's not that I'm some uber-pro or anything, but, well, I think a lot of the people who are 'into' DAZ are into it because it's simple, easy to use stuff, affordable, and they can let their creative muse go after a long day at the office. This is good. It's not so good for those of use who are more 'advanced' in our knowledge and/or needs...the community knowledge pool just wouldn't be what I would require. My questions would have nothing to do with DAZ's main source of income; 'content'.

This is getting a bit long, so I'll sum up by saying this. DAZ needs to proove themselves capable 'handlers' of the assets they buy before I (and probably others) start to trust them. When a company buys a product, and then basically pretends that they don't, it's just bad all around. It makes them look bad, and it pisses off all the people that bought into that program.

[Couerl]

Well, I think they were under contract to finish it through Hex 2.1 so they had to stay and finish the job, but it's all water under the bridge. The most important thing in my mind is Eovia USA (the development team and not the company) is well and intact and so is Eovia France, (Hex/Amapi team and not the company) both under new leadership, but gainfully employed and working to create new releases one way or another. (beats the unemployment line)..

I think by necessity that Daz will make changes to reflect a more balanced business portfolio to include selling content and software and not being so one-sided (on the content side) as they have been and should have been. Likewise E-Frontier will bolster its portfolio/image to include more on the creative end with Amapi as they should too. This is all a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned and it should help both companies in general. The sale on Carrara is a very, very big success by all account and already generated an entirely new group of users ("thousands") who will help to perpetuate the applications growth. As people use it they'll see it's not all about importing laungerie and clicking render and so the demand in this new and larger base will dictate it's future pretty much as it always has... Interestingly enough, had Eovia started developing content for Carrara in version 2 or 3 it may well have been them buying Daz or Poser or whatever and it's likely that the "content" business model was superior in the end to that of the "creation only" model. All Cad related programs sell boatloads of content too (do you think some knuckleheaded architect wants to waste time modeling cars and people and trees and dishwashers for their million dollar house and building plans?) and as that market flourishes, the demand for artists to create and sell their own materials to them will grow as well. I'm glad to see things like CadStyle come about and think communication between poly's and Cad will carve a new niche for a lot of artists.

I think that the future for 3D artists is very bright in general.

[rickei]

Well put Steve

[mickey2]

Well, I read throught the whole thread. I am a DAZ PC member and I have bought tons of graphics from them. I really appreciate the $1.99 deals because I seem incapable of doing all these fine things myself. I've put off buying C Pro and was going to wait for C6.

All these programs are hard for me to learn and I depend on people like you to help me. I haven't been able to cross over from 2D Photoshop to 3D originals.

I really bought some programs because I thought I had to use my original graphics (and some I want to use) for commercial micro movie production. However, as long as the (DAZ) graphics are rendered I can use them in movies. This is a tremendous boost to me.

I am thrilled you all can make such beautiful graphics.

Alas, I would like some help in getting my 2D photographics (faces) into a 3D face. The only place I could find that would allow me to do this easily was IClone. Someone said that Carrera would let me do this too. Is this correct?

Keep making those graphics. People like me need them.

[Couerl]

Hi Mickey,

There is no magical "Convert my lovely 2d faces to 3D models" button anywhere. ;) (none that are really useful anyway)
That said, yes 3D can be hard and take a few years just to learn all the basic principles. Just like anything else though, the more you put into it the more you'll be able to take out.
My suggestion is to take it one step at a time, ask specific questions and go from there. It's tough sometimes to get away from 2D thinking if that's all you've ever done and I see people over and over asking how to import and translate their 2d .ai files into nice lovely models thinking that somehow there's a nice clean bridge between the 2d world and the 3d one.
In most cases there isn't, but learning the basic polymodeling principles in Hex or Carrara or whatever you have will be your first big step.

[ronjurman]

Originally Posted by mickey2

... Alas, I would like some help in getting my 2D photographics (faces) into a 3D face. The only place I could find that would allow me to do this easily was IClone. Someone said that Carrera would let me do this too. Is this correct? ...

I'm not entirely clear here, but if you simply want to put a 2D photograph on a 3D face (eg. one side of a cube), that is indeed easy to do in Carrara. If you are instead looking to something considerably more involved like turning entire 2D scenes into 3D scenes, ... well, Couerl described it as well as any.

rj

P.S. I took a quick glimpse at www.reallusion.com's description of iClone. From the brief summary, it does sound more than a bit similar to Carrara in general direction and features. I'm sure though that there are pros and cons for each package, but without further knowledge of iClone, I really can't say more.

P.P.S. OK, final note (read a few of the related product description pages for iClone), iClone appears a bit more Poser-like (characters plus very simple 3D objects) than Carrara-like (all-purpose 3D), but that is still just a perception based on some pretty brief iClone info.

[bwtr]

This should help

[mickey2]

Thanks, I guess I really should have used the term human face. The program does actually create a 3D face from a photo. It uses a map, which is morphable (a mesh). It is a low poly count. It works really really fast. I thought Carrera did the same thing but of course until I can get the registration keys worked out, I can't try it. Actually Hex should do it too but I can't figure it out. I does have a head mesh, I believe.

I found a wonderful tutorial by montages, nate, and hair from the blender site. I have a place to start finally--at least some I can understand.

I'm sure I will be back here looking for more "data" as I stumble my way through.

[OscarX]

I think the main Carrara problem could be traced back to the unfortunate decision in Metacreations pithole to create a "professional application that will appeal to ordinary users." This way it didn't focus on any specific user group in particular, hoping to attract all and ultimatelly lost both.

Even with the Eovia's later $99 low-cost version they couldn't capture the low-end of users whose idea of "three-dee" is to turn "Breast Size 8" dial waaaaay-waaaay up and call it a day well spent on 3D modelling.
And of course for professionals Carrara had always low appeal with all its two books written, few tutorials here and there most of them unaccessible now... There is no reason to save few hundreds bucks buying Carrara instead of industry standard C4D, XSI (now same price actually). You can't even put it on resume without peope asking "whazit?" Not to even mentioning that Carrara modelling features are rather clumsy.

So I was actually really surprised Eovia lasted that long! Don't get me wrong, I was fan of the development team but I couldn't figure out to whom they were selling it. I bought Carrara Studio 3 on ebay for $32 bucks and I was the only one posting any bids...that should explain the polularity.

So I think when DAZ bought Carrara (and got Hex thrown probably as a parting freebie) they did prolonged its life for few more years. Who cares they will add their half-naked cake mix into it, they will also probably fix few bugs here and there (native Poser import should be a good example) and we all will somehow benefit. And, yes Vista compatibility, since Carrara behaves really funky on Vista.

Yes, forget about any new pro features, that time is already behind us but at least the software didn't die slow death of economic black eye. Could be much worst, Corel may bought it. I think DAZ should set a permanent price $199 for PRO version, throw away any of the low-cost cripled versions and they may actually make some money out of it.

Unfortunately I don't think Hex will survive (unless DAZ sells it) since I don't see nice old ladies making Hats and Purses for their Vicky dolls in Hex nor I see Stonemason abandoning MAX in order to experience a genuine Hex crash at least twice a day.
Hey for the savy of us we have Silo, Mudbox or even Zbrush.

I do like Hex and Carrara, don't get me wrong and I am a paying owner of these (upgraded to C5 pro a week before DAZ was selling it full $100 cheaper - a good lesson never to upgrade to early) but if I was PRO I wouldn't even bother and go straight for XSI with Silo or any of these other funky combinations. It could even give me a job in a game farm 14 hours a day, minimum wages and pica for dinner, of course if I feel like working.

long live metacreationism.

[LoneGunman]

Well said Oscar, could not agree or say more