Carrara - it is a dead end and here is why

[laughingnome]

Originally Posted by jbshorty

well, i have been a bit guilty of not modeling lately. But not for the same reason as you mentioned. I have been devoting all my time lately to writing several hundred new tools for Rhino 4 (macro-based because i know nothing about scripting). But there is some really KILLER stuff i've put together. You would never think these things can be possible with macros. And i am compiling my whole interface, shading modes, toolbars, and UI setup and will make it publicly available on the Rhino wiki as soon as i can. I will post a link (to the Rhino wiki page) here at Polyloop as well. There will be a detailed help documentation for the JB UI workflow and for the macro-tools as well. The problem is i keep adding more tools, so it never gets finished. I'm always thinking of new tools to save time (just in case i decide to actually model something ). Just kidding, writing these tools has exposed the full power of Rhino to me. Rhino 4 you are now under my total control ...

If you want to see the "goodies" of Rhino 4, the Rhino website has many videos posted already at www.rhino3d.com . But i think they do no justice to the real thing (they're not slick sales videos like ZBrush or Modo). And you know if i posted a list of my favorite Rhino 4 goodies, I might as well just post it directly on the Amapi 8 wishlist, and save other people the trouble of copy/pasting it. Also, such a move would firmly secure my reputation of being Polyloop's Rhino-boy. Not that Thomas minds a little competition, but this is "enemy territory" you know... but in the spirit of pompous gloating, perhaps i will start that "goodie" thread you mentioned...

Sorry for being off topic... didn't mean to interrupt another speculative thread about Carrara's demise...

doesnt worry me that you are off topic so far shorty , does worry me that you think this is a hostile envoriment because you use rhino though, we have a rhino forum here
and anyway there are others here that are rhino masters, nobody cares or worries too much we all use whatever works.
some model pics would be nice though every now and again

stu

[jbshorty]

Originally Posted by laughingnome

doesnt worry me that you are off topic so far shorty , does worry me that you think this is a hostile envoriment because you use rhino though, we have a rhino forum here
stu

Hi Stu. No i don't think there is any hostility here. Maybe i should have put the little winky face next to my statement so you know i'm just joking (as i always am!). I haven't found any Rhino forum here at Polyloop. and very little Rhino action in the general forums. So i just guessed there is not too many Rhino users hanging around here...

Originally Posted by laughingnome

...some model pics would be nice though every now and again

stu

just for you, i will resume modeling as soon as possible so i can get some R4 models posted. but at the moment, i am re-writing my tools for creating non-round pipes (curve thickening) in all sorts of cool shapes... Are we still off-topic? Yes? OK just making sure...

[Couerl]

Bah,... there I go again steering the thread off topic. I am sorry OscarX. :\

I meant to start a new thread about Rhino-4 and will do it erm,... In the miscellaneous section.

Now, please lets get back to killing Carrara and all that.. ;)

[laughingnome]

Originally Posted by jbshorty

Hi Stu. No i don't think there is any hostility here. Maybe i should have put the little winky face next to my statement so you know i'm just joking (as i always am!). I haven't found any Rhino forum here at Polyloop. and very little Rhino action in the general forums. So i just guessed there is not too many Rhino users hanging around here...



just for you, i will resume modeling as soon as possible so i can get some R4 models posted. but at the moment, i am re-writing my tools for creating non-round pipes (curve thickening) in all sorts of cool shapes... Are we still off-topic? Yes? OK just making sure...

hi shorty,sorry i thought we had a Rhino forum here, i see we dont, my mistake many users here do use Rhino amongst other things.
the request to see some pics was just that no more, im curious to see what you are doing with your new tools is all and i appreciate how time consuming creating new tools are and how they leave little time for actual modeling, im currently editing a bunch of video tutorials and that leaves me no time to actually make anything.
please dont feel you need to make something just for me bud

stu

[achrystie]

I think first of all that $500,000 is an overestimate of the cost associated with generating something like a hair plugin or a cloth simulation plugin. I don't want to trivialize the effort it would take, but one good programmer could probably come up with at least a reasonably good and functional base for cloth simulation in half a year or so. Single programmers have done this for multiple different open source projects with a high level of success.

The largest problem with developing for Carrara is the complete lack of communication from the developers themselves. Maybe it's different if you chase them down and say you're a developer, but the bottom line is, if we don't know what the Carrara team is doing on their own, developing plugins could turn out to be a lot of wasted effort.

ABC

[CarlLydon]

I started with 3D with Ray Dream back in, what was it, 1994? It seemed like every time the program would make a big leap in capability, the company would get sold; it's really gone through an incredible array of owners. Some were better than others, and there was allot of worrying after each sale that Ray Dream / Carrara would become an orphan, especially when the new owners took a long time to get the next version out.

Despite all that, here I am with a relatively inexpensive program that does just about anything I need it to do. I mean, I own Lightwave as well but I never use it if I can avoid it. Carrara is so much easier. I think the ease of use and inexpensiveness make it ideal for many users. Not every program has to be Maya. I like having a cheaper, easier alternative.

So, just because we don't have the same number of plugins as Maya or 3DS doesn't mean that Carrara is going to die, and it certainly doesn't mean that the program can't be used to do some incredible stuff.

[OscarX]

Of course, Carrara can be used as well as any of the other software and in many cases with less learning. Its rendered output is in pair with all the others, it has dynamics, bones etc. It is rather a marvel as software goes.

But this doesn't mean it is not in a decline (if I am extreemely optimistic or I work for DAZ, I'd say stagnation) simply because it never captured the big bucks that are in studio work and it will never do. You can't escape the numbers.

Yup, maybe someone out there work for free on a hair plugin for open source app in his spare time because he already has a good paying job. But as soon as you want to hire him - free is not the price you'd pay. Not even close. You would pay him what he makes now in his day job + bonus for risk associated with changing job. The people who makes open source software are often quite recognized and well paid senior programmers in the 3D field, not just some jobless hacks (as some people thinks). They don't need additional job.

Now, I really don't know the situation around eovia and daz, but here is my shot in the dark: Eovia has been in red already for rather alarming number of years because of the lukewarm sales and desperately looking for a safe way to exit. (I bought the C Studio 3 for $30 buck new in box on e-bay, and I was the only one who bid and the seller has still tons of boxes to sell - this is how popular it really is) Their relation with E-frontier didn't bring much hope in the Carrara field. But here come DAZ that will take their developers under their wing in hope Carrara and Hex will somehow bring more users for the contents. Or maybe bring even some of the "higher class" citizens. I don't want to soot how much the deal with eovia was, but it was probably far less than anybody think. It's no pre-2000 any more.
Anyway, we have to take that DAZ intentions are good, for us at least, they prolong the lifespan of the software, not to kill it or snatch it before someone else. (It is definitelly not a hot seller, rather a hot potato).

So I guess our goal, foremost, is to demand from the developers that bugs and annoyancies are being fixed first and rather soon than later, it could be 5.5 release who cares and stop bombarding them with nonsense features that takes years to develop and they never will be finished because someone some day pull the plug. You know developers usually don't care what they do if they being paid, fixing bugs that takes weeks or working on a big feature that takes years.

Think about Canoma. They were working on Canoma 2 for long time, adding new cool thinks so the next release will be biiiiig, but nobody ever saw it because it was killed before its second release. So somewhere in cyberspace (most likely in Adobe basement) there is Canoma 2 with many of the requested fixes and features already implemented, sitting there crying....

[Pete Exxtreme]

OscarX your words are gold

[Couerl]

Oscarx I don't think Carrara will end up like Canoma, but that is almost entirely up to the developent team. If they are happy and Daz treats them well they will stay and continue and Carrara will continue to thrive. If they are not happy, well... We've all seen what happens when developers are not happy. :\

[Sketchy]

I've done the math myself when I heard that DAZ let go of the Amapi team. DAZ can't simply afford them. Developing a software is no picnic. It requires hundreds of man-hours to finish the job. So this talk about delaying C6's release is not in DAZ's advantage. They need to sell it now to recoup what they invested paying for highly-skilled developers.

About Carrara being in a dead end, I'm not really sure about that. Why? Because there were no real alternatives. If XSI, TrueSpace, or even Blender were the alternatives, users would have long left Carrara. By alternative I meant the ease of use users find Carrara to be, not to mention the unique landscape feature.

I would agree though that what they should go after is STABILITY more than anything else. Only add features that are really very necessary. Then leave the other features to third-party developers.

I would be glad, for instance, to do everything in Carrara and leave behind my modeling app, albeit temporarily. Integrate modeling and assembly in one room, add the symmetry feature. What else? More rendering capability. (I'm not into animation yet, so that's far from my needs currently.)

I don't think a good developers salary is less than $100.000 and if you have 5 or 6 of them working on a product it sured add up. Plus add the marking people, QA people, website people etc and you have a very high cost of software development. That is why most software companies have investors to help pay the bills and many times software sales alone do not fully cover the cost of a version development.
Say for example "Modeler SUPERDUPER 1.0" sells for $99 intro price and it sells 3,000 copies. Is that enough to cover all of the development time? Why $297,000 sounds like lots of money. It sure doesn't cover the salary of 5 developers, marking manager, CEO, VP and the rest of the team. So SUPERDuPER 2.0 needs to come out next and hopefully add more users but many times it will only sell as an upgrade to current customers.
In many cases if you can sell additional items to go alone with Modeler SUPERDUPER such as CD, DVD, Books and should I dare say it CONTENT to help add more income to the company. It will help continue development or you are better off selling Modeler SUPERDUPER to company X that has more cash to cover cost.

Originally Posted by achrystie

I think first of all that $500,000 is an overestimate of the cost associated with generating something like a hair plugin or a cloth simulation plugin. I don't want to trivialize the effort it would take, but one good programmer could probably come up with at least a reasonably good and functional base for cloth simulation in half a year or so. Single programmers have done this for multiple different open source projects with a high level of success.

The largest problem with developing for Carrara is the complete lack of communication from the developers themselves. Maybe it's different if you chase them down and say you're a developer, but the bottom line is, if we don't know what the Carrara team is doing on their own, developing plugins could turn out to be a lot of wasted effort.

ABC

[risdoid89]

I use (and teach) Rhino 3 as well as Carrara at my highschool. I think work very well together. Rhino for the mechanical/CAD type work and Carrara for the more organic. I also prefer Carrara for shading and rendring my rhino "content". What ever gets the job done I say. I even use Rhino at home on my Mac under Parallels. Works great for me.

[transient]

I don't personally think relying on plug-ins is the answer. It's one reason I was originally turned off Carrara a bit. That and the "rooms" setup which I thought was clumsy (but good for beginners, I suppose). That said, it's definitely powerful enough to do quality work from what I've seen.

It's tough for middleware 3d developers at the moment, especially with aggressive pricing from bigger apps, and the continuing success of Blender.

If you really want Carrara to survive, having a killer demo reel to show off it's features would be a major asset imo. Perhaps even an animated short movie or something.

If the Carrara community could manage this it might be better than a thousand new features as far as Carrra's future is concerned.

Even better, you don't need to rely on the developers pulling their finger out to get it done. My 2c.......

[jbshorty]

Originally Posted by Ringo Monfort

...In many cases if you can sell additional items to go alone with Modeler SUPERDUPER such as CD, DVD, Books and should I dare say it CONTENT to help add more income to the company...

I have to agree 100% with Ringo on this point. Modo costs $895 and Luxology is constantly pushing their training DVD's and logo sweatshirts. Why should they? Modo is not cheap. It's because the "extras" are typically high-profit items which greatly help offset the cost of the core product. I can't imagine that most software is incredibly profitable these days unless you can sell it off to Google. Most companies would be happy to break even at the end of the year, and not fire any employees...

[risdoid89]

Good thread, i agree with most of what's been said. I too worry about the future of such a great app as Carrara. Plug-ins are wonderful and I own many but they should be just that "plug-ins" "extras", not required to get the job done. I feel that good fur/hair and cloth need to be a part of the app not an extra if Carrara is going to stay competitve and draw (maintain even) a solid user base. Just my opinion.

[OscarX]

I also thought at first the Rooms idea looks really like a babysiter for grown-ups. But after the main interface got out of the Poser-ish look (big controls, small workplace window) and I had second look at the C5, I started to like it to the point of buying it. I like now that I can mess with my shaders in Shader room, then go back to assembly without cleaning the tons of shader windows I had opened. I also started to appreciate that various finished renderings are collected in the Render room where I can later compare them.
On the other hand I avoid any polygon/vertex editing in carrara like a plague. I find the editing mode tiresome, non-economical and slow with just a moderate amount of polygons. I do all editing outside, then bring it to carrara and setup the scene - this is where carrara really shines!
I like the rendered output. Some times I like it too much... there is some joy looking at fresh render that simply looks crispy to eat...I mostly render 4k and C5 has no problem with it, but a bit more control would be appreciated - for example I can setup AO occlusion or GI only for all lights or none, it would be more ecconomical for animation or big renders to be able to specify lights. (like Calisto)
And for me, the most important feature, I would truly love to be able to substitute low poly versions of high-poly-costly objects in assembly room while the render will pull up the original high poly version. Some bigger softs have this feature and it is a lifesaver. As polys pile up the memory gets cranky, carrara slows down up to the point of the software actually locking down. Main biggest complain! I think I should log on DAZ forum and start lobbying for it!

These are things that are actually easy to add, not any special hair/fur/cloth/liquid/talk/Hex FXs as some others foolishly expect. These would be all I want for the update and I would gladly pay for it.

[Couerl]

I support conservative development as well, I'd love to see IES support for real lighting like Maya/MAX or something along those lines that GI and AO can't seem to accomplish alone. Anything to improve whatever is already there would be nice in my mind including the present animation tools and so forth. I do think though that they will have to round out the toolset so it is competative. Hair and cloth are the two big requests and then maybe talk/water etc... I don't think its foolish to want these, but to implement them all in one cycle may be asking too much. I'd say keep it simple and make it nice and I'd say the same to the Amapi devs and anyone else in the world. Do what you can and make it solid and then go after the fancy stuff later if you have time. It's just common sense..

[bwtr]

The update from Bryce6 to Bryce 6.1 (today), requires a complete reinstall and a 647MB download!. Think on that maybe for Carrara and Hexagon?

[medeamajic]

Transient, I agree. Plugins turn me off. I want Carrara to get 3-D paint and symmetrical modeling ASAP. I now I can use plugins and 3rd party programs but Carrara should continue to evolve under DAZ. A demo reel? I agree. Daz should construct a few demo reels that show what Bryce and Daz studio can do vs what Carrara can do. A few good tutorials on the home page at daz3d.com would help sell Carrara but Daz is more concerned about their Doll House. Eovia was adding tutorials for Carrara and Hexagon both. I think the tutorials helped sell Hexagon and Carrara. Daz should constantly make new tutorials. The Dazzers are a funny crowd. They can afford a Daz Platinum Club membership and afford to buy content but paying full price for Carrara or Hexagon costs way to much money. That kind of logic is why no one wants to make plugins for Carrara while under Daz's control

[Narration]

Oscar, more wisdom here, on a number of things.

I especially agree with you about the rooms, and how they are actually a very sophisticated way to solve multiple-window UI problems.

I could imagine usefulness in being able _also_ to tweak geometry as an option in the assembly room - to fit things together. But the basic separate rooms for separate toolsets principal is very strong.

Kind regards,
Narration

Originally Posted by OscarX

I also thought at first the Rooms idea looks really like a babysiter for grown-ups. But after the main interface got out of the Poser-ish look (big controls, small workplace window) and I had second look at the C5, I started to like it to the point of buying it. I like now that I can mess with my shaders in Shader room, then go back to assembly without cleaning the tons of shader windows I had opened. I also started to appreciate that various finished renderings are collected in the Render room where I can later compare them.
On the other hand I avoid any polygon/vertex editing in carrara like a plague. I find the editing mode tiresome, non-economical and slow with just a moderate amount of polygons. I do all editing outside, then bring it to carrara and setup the scene - this is where carrara really shines!
I like the rendered output. Some times I like it too much... there is some joy looking at fresh render that simply looks crispy to eat...I mostly render 4k and C5 has no problem with it, but a bit more control would be appreciated - for example I can setup AO occlusion or GI only for all lights or none, it would be more ecconomical for animation or big renders to be able to specify lights. (like Calisto)
And for me, the most important feature, I would truly love to be able to substitute low poly versions of high-poly-costly objects in assembly room while the render will pull up the original high poly version. Some bigger softs have this feature and it is a lifesaver. As polys pile up the memory gets cranky, carrara slows down up to the point of the software actually locking down. Main biggest complain! I think I should log on DAZ forum and start lobbying for it!

These are things that are actually easy to add, not any special hair/fur/cloth/liquid/talk/Hex FXs as some others foolishly expect. These would be all I want for the update and I would gladly pay for it.