[Carrara]Carrara - it is a dead end and here is why - Polyloop

OscarX · 6th March 2007, 04:00

From designer point of view it is a very easy to argue why Carrara is a dead end. The case? Look at Carrara SDK.
Carrara is one of the best designed and most modullar software I had ever seen. All its basic functions is done through COM objects, where each developer can work separately and create shaders, objects, primitives, lights, cameras, renderring modules and all the underlaying interraction without actually touching the main carrara code. The nature of the binding core is that any module or "plugin" will become a part of the carrara interface - you won't even know that it is a plug-in. In fact all things you use in carrara daily are such modules.

The SDK is free and it is very well docummented with a huge number of samples describing every type of module that can be plugged to carrara.
And the shocking news - it has been here form the first day. Every release has also updated the SDK.

So what is my point?
Appart of the handfull of third party developers (innagoni, carvers guild) that do the easier stuff like a extra shader etc, the third party support is practically non-existing. No bigger company ever created anything for carrara, yet there is a large market for the Max, C4D, maya with serious plugins for water, hair, new rendering modules etc.. Yes, you can do the very same things for Carrara and Eovia obviously hoped so with its SDK, but the third party simply called Carrara small market not cost effective for them to be bothered.

It is like Eovia send thousands invitation for a party, free drinks and food, but nobody came anyway.

Put 1 and 1 together and it is very easy to see why Carrara is a toast - we rely on the main developer (now DAZ) to do all the new hip singing that require a tons of developers , money and research, but the truth is they simply can't push it that far. These things require a serious research. It is amazing that Eovia was able to carry the ball that far - I truly admire the developers and researchers. I would probably quit sometime in version 3 and rather start do plugins for MAX or C4D which would definitely have better financial impact. But they didn't and that was amazing. Or maybe just too optimistic.

But there is also a good news. The open architecture of Carrara also means that even if the project die at some moment in future, people can still in theory add new things through the SDK - but here we go back to square one - who will do it if nobody is doing it today?

I think DAZ will add some things, and hopefully fix the few bugs and crashings here and there but we can't expect any significiant addition becuase it is simply not cost effective. Things like merging it with Hex or adding cloth simulation or hair etc.. - that is just a wishfull thinking. These things are very difficult, takes a lot of money and man-time. It is simply irrational to expect that.

Sorry for the long e-mail but I was today reading the SDK and was very, very impressed by its depth and the beauty of the Carrara architecture. But at the end I said as probably the other developers - it is simply not worth the effort.

6th March 2007, 04:17

Very well stated the Carrara SDK and its modular approach was way ahead of the SDK design. Now that DAZ owns Carrara there is much better market place for Carrara. With membership in the Daz forums in the hundreds of thousands of users I would say there is a great market there. Foolish is to think other wise. Get in the market now before the flood gates are open. ;-)

Ringo

rickei · 6th March 2007, 04:59

If I actually understood the SDK to the point of being able to write a plugin, I would quit whatever I was doing and start programming plugins for Carrara. The fact that DAZ owns it could mean a small goldmine for third party developers. the people/customers at DAZ eat that stuff up. Most recently Luxology did this with it's photoshop plugin imagesynth. From the looks of things it has been successful for them. DAZ will definately provide a lager userase than Eovia ever could.

Couerl · 6th March 2007, 07:37

If I'm reading this right, since Carrara doesn't have a lot of plug-in developers it is dead or is ultimately a dead end.

I think your premise holds some truthful insights, but I don't ultimately believe them.

Carrara is only on one or two shelves in the U.S. computer stores like Microcenter and maybe Fry's etc... If it were on the shelves at Best Buy and Comp USA it would begin to make great strides in sales. I think the devs have been very smart to stay with it because of the reasons you state above. Carrara is a brilliant software in a league of its own. It is not C4d or XSI or Maya or Max and it probably never will be. That's okay, those niches are very competitive whereas Carrara has no $500.00 or less competition really. Carrara will probably be cheaper anyway in the hands of Daz and I think by version 8 or so we should see name recognition begin to take place.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect that Carrara will round out its toolset with the things you mentioned above and then some. They may not be the same level tools as the high end programs, but they will get the job done and in the right hands it will sail much like it always has. Once the user base grows enough the money will be there to refine the program and by version 8 or 9 it should be fairly complete. There are a lot of programs out there just coming of age in versions 10, 11, 12 or more. Carrara is still a young adult at version 5 and has considerable room to grow. I personally think the future looks bright for Carrara.

Steve

medeamajic · 6th March 2007, 10:58

ringo monfort and ricki,

Daz does not deserve a pat on the back for the Daz membership thingy increasing the Hexagon user base. Infact they need a good slap in the face. Eovia could have quadroupled the user base if they sold Hexagon for $1.99 but they would not generate enough money to pay the programmers. As OscarX has posted it takes money to pay developers. Some may argure that Daz will make money on the Hexagon 3 upgrade. I doubt if there is any truth to that. Many Daz members bought Hexagon because of the cheap price but admit they never even use it. Do either of you think they will buy the Hexagon 3 upgrade for $149.99 if they do not even use the product? Selling the upgrade for $1.99 will not generate enough money to pay for good programmers. I can imagine reading this info in the Daz forum but not at polyloop.com.

I think Carrara might get put into the coffin under Daz but I think the Carrara programers might be able to get picked up by Newtek, Avid or Adobe.

rickei · 6th March 2007, 14:16

medeamajic

I have no Idea what you are talkin about.

I'm patting Carrara on the back. My point is that if you would like to write a plugin for Carrara, now would be the time to do it. DAZ simply provides a distribution channel, that has never been in place before.
Your HATRED of DAZ is obviously clouding your thinking. WE are discussing the Carrara SDK...Your post only mentions Hex except for the last sentence.

Hex and Carrara both work great RIGHT NOW, I'm really not that concerned about the future, they are both fledgling software's, and have plenty of room to grow. If you don't like how Carrara is being developed, then talk someone into writing some plugins, that's the whole point. the SDK is just sitting there ready for anyone to develop whatever type of function they would like Carrara to have.
As far as development being expensive... you're right. Eovia could not have sold Hex for 1.99 and still be able to pay their developers. But DAZ can

I think that a plugin developer could do well if they used DAZ to their advantage. One would simply have to rethink their business model. I would not set out to create a dynamic cloth or hair plugin. I would start with small plugins that could be sold rather cheaply... $40 or so. Create your own fan base, then move into larger projects once you have generated a cash flow.
With each new feature you add, the better and hopefully more popular Carrara would become. Then maybe other developers would jump on board. It could essentially cause a snowball effect.
Have some hope

OscarX · 6th March 2007, 15:43

Well I'd say there is not a real demand for small plug-ins, Carrara handles most of the small things already plus the innagoni etc. niche market. If you listen what Carrara users expect, these are biggies - cloth simulator, fur, rewritten editing etc.

Numbers do not lie. See here is a small calculation. Let's pretend I decide to build a team to make rather serious fur shader.
5 people in a team, these are no fresh from school, these have to be experienced 3d programmers so let's say the average would be 85k/year (not much chance to get a 3d senior in US or EU for that money but just lets pretend)
5x 85k = 425k
+20k equipment (comp. desks)
+25k utilities (rent etc.)
so we are talking nearly half mil per year.
If we are exreemely lucky the team will have something after a year of hard work (that's a pretty stretch) but not yet sales:
1. year -0.5 mil (debt)
the second year the team has to earn 0.5 plus servicing the debt from year 1., let's say 0.1 mil
so in second year the team MUST earn 0.6 mil minimum.
If the end user price is $150, we take out about 40% of sales margin (that would be paid to sites such as daz, renderosity, stores etc..) so the earning from unit is $90.
To make 0.6 mil the team need to sell more than 6500 units a year.

So you need to find 6500 users per year who will fork out $150 for a fur shader and that means the team will be still at 400000 in debt at the end of second year.

Now, that's a fantasy.

DAZ have to calculate in simillar terms except they are already selling Carrara in year 1 (we don't know how many), but the negative offset is now the purchase price from Eovia (we don't know how much).

I don't think there is any policy from DAZ to badly mess with Carrara and Hex and deliberately kill it. No, the intention is good. They will try to spin it for a year or so, then calculate the total. It will be in red. They will try to marry it more closely with their contents, try to probably spin it for another year with wild savings. It will be in red of course. Any manager will tell you, do not let your profit (content in this case) pay for the losses. Let the stinker go.
And why it will be in red? Again, simple calculation. If they have 5 developers and the average price they earning for carrara is $150 (average all the versions+savings), to keep it alive they need to sell 4000+ units a year.
Now, maybe I am dead wrong, but with that sales you will see this and simillar forums be very alive with newbies. You will see a growth with love-carrara personal web pages.

I just hope DAZ will try to spin Carrara for at least 2 years with some bug fixes.

Pete Exxtreme · 6th March 2007, 16:30

Very good business case explanation

Another issue could be the price of Carrara itself.

Carrara 5 Pro is sold (without promotion) around 550 USD (Std Carrara 249 USD)

Professionnal plugins, let say Maxwell Render costs 895 EUR and Shave and a Haircut costs 499USD...The use of those plugins in carrara workflow would bring it to another dimension....

But who would pay this price for those plugins if it doubles (or more) the price of the basic package ?

shaunmckinnon · 6th March 2007, 16:49

Isn't that kind of what C4D does? charge next to nothing for the basic modeller, and kill you with plugins?

Pete Exxtreme · 6th March 2007, 17:00

well the price is 895 USD for C4D basic module on Maxon shop... if you can call that "nothing"....lucky guy

rickei · 6th March 2007, 17:22

As i said, you can not follow a standard business model here.
Starting up with a half million a year spent on 5 programmers. that's suicide!
If you set out to develop one kickass product, I would imagine you are headed for certain doom.

People "expect" lots of things, but they often "purchase" things, much lower than their expectations. I would like for my Xterra to perform like a LandRover, but it doesn't, I paid about half of what I would have for the LandRover, and I got what i paid for. If you asked me what I would like to see in the next release of Carrara, I would probably also say cloth and hair... but that would not be very realistic. Even if it came with it, I doubt C6's render engine could handle it very well without some sort of rewrite.

DCG, Innagoni etc, have a niche market because they have created it.

we're talking DAZ/Carrara here, not Maya or MAX. as Pete said you could work some great stuff into Carrara, but it would put it in a totally different market, that would fit a more standard business plan, but sales would plummet, due to cost. Though it is not unusual for a plugin to cost more than the app itself

A successful Carrara plugin developer would need to think more along the lines of a fast food business model. Keep it simple and cheap. With 2 years or so between releases, you would have plenty of time to develop small plugins/improvements that could certainly keep you in the black. I'm not saying you would get rich, but, a business could certainly succeed.

You've got 100,000 dazzers out the with their $5.00 monthly vouchers, just waiting for something new to use it on.

But I do agree that it would be very risky at this point to base your livelihood on developing aftermarket products for Carrara, unless you could establish a honest open flow of communication with DAZ. As of now I don't know what will become of Carrara, or even what they are try to implement in the next release.

6th March 2007, 18:07

We are talking Carrara here not hexagon and after you get to see the next version of Carrara than you can say if it is in the coffin or not until than it is just pointless for you to say it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by medeamajic

ringo monfort and ricki,

Daz does not deserve a pat on the back for the Daz membership thingy increasing the Hexagon user base. Infact they need a good slap in the face. Eovia could have quadroupled the user base if they sold Hexagon for $1.99 but they would not generate enough money to pay the programmers. As OscarX has posted it takes money to pay developers. Some may argure that Daz will make money on the Hexagon 3 upgrade. I doubt if there is any truth to that. Many Daz members bought Hexagon because of the cheap price but admit they never even use it. Do either of you think they will buy the Hexagon 3 upgrade for $149.99 if they do not even use the product? Selling the upgrade for $1.99 will not generate enough money to pay for good programmers. I can imagine reading this info in the Daz forum but not at polyloop.com.

I think Carrara might get put into the coffin under Daz but I think the Carrara programers might be able to get picked up by Newtek, Avid or Adobe.

Piem · 6th March 2007, 18:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by OscarX

...
5x 85k = 425k
+20k equipment (comp. desks)
+25k utilities (rent etc.)
so we are talking nearly half mil per year.
If we are exreemely lucky the team will have something after a year of hard work (that's a pretty stretch) but not yet sales:
1. year -0.5 mil (debt)
the second year the team has to earn 0.5 plus servicing the debt from year 1., let's say 0.1 mil
so in second year the team MUST earn 0.6 mil minimum.
If the end user price is $150, we take out about 40% of sales margin (that would be paid to sites such as daz, renderosity, stores etc..) so the earning from unit is $90.
To make 0.6 mil the team need to sell more than 6500 units a year....

I agree with the OscarX busniness plan.
BUT
May I add a thing ?

You have forgotten the people to get paid for the second part of an enterprise: Marketing.
When I say marketting, it's not only the way the product must be seen by users or the way it should be "packaged". I'm thinking about goodies (content), services, , formations, and many things that must be done and paid by a large public.
This point is indubitably the cash source for Daz, and even if I do not really like all those barbies/ken props, I must admit that THIS seems to be the principal source of profit, and they are doing well.

Indeed, developpers and good products are not the only ones that make a company really profitable and successful.
So you can add in your plan the people to get paid for this job and the profit coming from this.

shaunmckinnon · 6th March 2007, 18:57

Why would people want to make Carrara just another access point to the "content"? It's original purpose was to be a low cost modeller / rendering package. Now it's becoming DAZ Studio basically.

Couerl · 6th March 2007, 19:18

It is not becoming Daz Studio... I think there is a lot of misinterpretation as to what "content" really is. Every time you make a scene in Carrara you are creating "content". Every time you make something in Maya, Max, XSI, Houdini or Adobe or Microsoft Word you are creating "content". The reason Adobe PDF is free like Daz Studio is free is so that people can share content.
The fact that the content readers are free and the content writers are not should be enough to distinguish the difference between them. Whether the actual content is "hand-made" or purchased makes no difference to the software really. Adobe knows it must create a free reader to build a user base and a sophisticated writer to create content for the free reader. Can you imagine the pdf using community getting upset because the writers actually read what they write? Hmph.. :\

shaunmckinnon · 6th March 2007, 20:08

DAZ seems more focused on the content sharing aspect of their software.

Couerl · 6th March 2007, 20:19

I won't argue that, it's what made it possible for them to buy Eovia instead of the other way around... If the user base at-large was more focussed on creating than reading it might be a different story...

jbshorty · 6th March 2007, 20:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Couerl

I won't argue that, it's what made it possible for them to buy Eovia instead of the other way around... If the user base at-large was more focussed on creating than reading it might be a different story...

...

Couerl · 6th March 2007, 20:34

You're a good man Shorty, you kill me.

So lets see some Rhino-4 screen caps and stuff, can you start a thread somewhere? I'm curious to see what kind of goodies it has.

jbshorty · 6th March 2007, 23:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Couerl

You're a good man Shorty, you kill me.

So lets see some Rhino-4 screen caps and stuff, can you start a thread somewhere? I'm curious to see what kind of goodies it has.

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...

6th March 2007, 04:00	#1 (permalink)
OscarX Vertex Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 18	[Carrara]Carrara - it is a dead end and here is why From designer point of view it is a very easy to argue why Carrara is a dead end. The case? Look at Carrara SDK. Carrara is one of the best designed and most modullar software I had ever seen. All its basic functions is done through COM objects, where each developer can work separately and create shaders, objects, primitives, lights, cameras, renderring modules and all the underlaying interraction without actually touching the main carrara code. The nature of the binding core is that any module or "plugin" will become a part of the carrara interface - you won't even know that it is a plug-in. In fact all things you use in carrara daily are such modules. The SDK is free and it is very well docummented with a huge number of samples describing every type of module that can be plugged to carrara. And the shocking news - it has been here form the first day. Every release has also updated the SDK. So what is my point? Appart of the handfull of third party developers (innagoni, carvers guild) that do the easier stuff like a extra shader etc, the third party support is practically non-existing. No bigger company ever created anything for carrara, yet there is a large market for the Max, C4D, maya with serious plugins for water, hair, new rendering modules etc.. Yes, you can do the very same things for Carrara and Eovia obviously hoped so with its SDK, but the third party simply called Carrara small market not cost effective for them to be bothered. It is like Eovia send thousands invitation for a party, free drinks and food, but nobody came anyway. Put 1 and 1 together and it is very easy to see why Carrara is a toast - we rely on the main developer (now DAZ) to do all the new hip singing that require a tons of developers , money and research, but the truth is they simply can't push it that far. These things require a serious research. It is amazing that Eovia was able to carry the ball that far - I truly admire the developers and researchers. I would probably quit sometime in version 3 and rather start do plugins for MAX or C4D which would definitely have better financial impact. But they didn't and that was amazing. Or maybe just too optimistic. But there is also a good news. The open architecture of Carrara also means that even if the project die at some moment in future, people can still in theory add new things through the SDK - but here we go back to square one - who will do it if nobody is doing it today? I think DAZ will add some things, and hopefully fix the few bugs and crashings here and there but we can't expect any significiant addition becuase it is simply not cost effective. Things like merging it with Hex or adding cloth simulation or hair etc.. - that is just a wishfull thinking. These things are very difficult, takes a lot of money and man-time. It is simply irrational to expect that. Sorry for the long e-mail but I was today reading the SDK and was very, very impressed by its depth and the beauty of the Carrara architecture. But at the end I said as probably the other developers - it is simply not worth the effort.

6th March 2007, 16:30	#8 (permalink)
Pete Exxtreme Lick it up Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Thonon/France Posts: 4,615 Images: 21	Very good business case explanation Another issue could be the price of Carrara itself. Carrara 5 Pro is sold (without promotion) around 550 USD (Std Carrara 249 USD) Professionnal plugins, let say Maxwell Render costs 895 EUR and Shave and a Haircut costs 499USD...The use of those plugins in carrara workflow would bring it to another dimension.... But who would pay this price for those plugins if it doubles (or more) the price of the basic package ? __________________ Toute faute de frappe ou erreur de syntaxe sont dues a un clavier rebelle à toute forme d'autorité. LightWave 9 \| Hexagon 2 My gallery

6th March 2007, 16:49	#9 (permalink)
shaunmckinnon Extrusion Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 187 Images: 1	Isn't that kind of what C4D does? charge next to nothing for the basic modeller, and kill you with plugins? __________________ "I put a hexagon on you, cause you're mine. And I love the things that you do.." DELL DIMENSION 5150, P4 3.2GHZ HT, 3GB RAM, 256 ATI X600 (128 SHARED), DUAL 250GB SATA, XP PRO CARRARA 5 STANDARD, HEXAGON 2, DREAMWEAVER 2004MX,COREL SUITE 12, BRYCE 5.5, POSER 5

6th March 2007, 17:00	#10 (permalink)
Pete Exxtreme Lick it up Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Thonon/France Posts: 4,615 Images: 21	well the price is 895 USD for C4D basic module on Maxon shop... if you can call that "nothing"....lucky guy __________________ Toute faute de frappe ou erreur de syntaxe sont dues a un clavier rebelle à toute forme d'autorité. LightWave 9 \| Hexagon 2 My gallery

6th March 2007, 18:57	#14 (permalink)
shaunmckinnon Extrusion Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 187 Images: 1	Why would people want to make Carrara just another access point to the "content"? It's original purpose was to be a low cost modeller / rendering package. Now it's becoming DAZ Studio basically. __________________ "I put a hexagon on you, cause you're mine. And I love the things that you do.." DELL DIMENSION 5150, P4 3.2GHZ HT, 3GB RAM, 256 ATI X600 (128 SHARED), DUAL 250GB SATA, XP PRO CARRARA 5 STANDARD, HEXAGON 2, DREAMWEAVER 2004MX,COREL SUITE 12, BRYCE 5.5, POSER 5

6th March 2007, 04:17	#2 (permalink)
Ringo Monfort Guest Posts: n/a	Very well stated the Carrara SDK and its modular approach was way ahead of the SDK design. Now that DAZ owns Carrara there is much better market place for Carrara. With membership in the Daz forums in the hundreds of thousands of users I would say there is a great market there. Foolish is to think other wise. Get in the market now before the flood gates are open. ;-) Ringo

6th March 2007, 04:59	#3 (permalink)
rickei Respect the Dawg! Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: USA - Conway, South Carolina Posts: 770 Images: 1	If I actually understood the SDK to the point of being able to write a plugin, I would quit whatever I was doing and start programming plugins for Carrara. The fact that DAZ owns it could mean a small goldmine for third party developers. the people/customers at DAZ eat that stuff up. Most recently Luxology did this with it's photoshop plugin imagesynth. From the looks of things it has been successful for them. DAZ will definately provide a lager userase than Eovia ever could.

6th March 2007, 07:37	#4 (permalink)
Couerl Polygurbs Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Denver Posts: 1,292 Images: 6	If I'm reading this right, since Carrara doesn't have a lot of plug-in developers it is dead or is ultimately a dead end. I think your premise holds some truthful insights, but I don't ultimately believe them. Carrara is only on one or two shelves in the U.S. computer stores like Microcenter and maybe Fry's etc... If it were on the shelves at Best Buy and Comp USA it would begin to make great strides in sales. I think the devs have been very smart to stay with it because of the reasons you state above. Carrara is a brilliant software in a league of its own. It is not C4d or XSI or Maya or Max and it probably never will be. That's okay, those niches are very competitive whereas Carrara has no $500.00 or less competition really. Carrara will probably be cheaper anyway in the hands of Daz and I think by version 8 or so we should see name recognition begin to take place. I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect that Carrara will round out its toolset with the things you mentioned above and then some. They may not be the same level tools as the high end programs, but they will get the job done and in the right hands it will sail much like it always has. Once the user base grows enough the money will be there to refine the program and by version 8 or 9 it should be fairly complete. There are a lot of programs out there just coming of age in versions 10, 11, 12 or more. Carrara is still a young adult at version 5 and has considerable room to grow. I personally think the future looks bright for Carrara. Steve

6th March 2007, 10:58	#5 (permalink)
medeamajic Now, I learn animation Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 1,026	ringo monfort and ricki, Daz does not deserve a pat on the back for the Daz membership thingy increasing the Hexagon user base. Infact they need a good slap in the face. Eovia could have quadroupled the user base if they sold Hexagon for $1.99 but they would not generate enough money to pay the programmers. As OscarX has posted it takes money to pay developers. Some may argure that Daz will make money on the Hexagon 3 upgrade. I doubt if there is any truth to that. Many Daz members bought Hexagon because of the cheap price but admit they never even use it. Do either of you think they will buy the Hexagon 3 upgrade for $149.99 if they do not even use the product? Selling the upgrade for $1.99 will not generate enough money to pay for good programmers. I can imagine reading this info in the Daz forum but not at polyloop.com. I think Carrara might get put into the coffin under Daz but I think the Carrara programers might be able to get picked up by Newtek, Avid or Adobe.

6th March 2007, 14:16	#6 (permalink)
rickei Respect the Dawg! Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: USA - Conway, South Carolina Posts: 770 Images: 1	medeamajic I have no Idea what you are talkin about. I'm patting Carrara on the back. My point is that if you would like to write a plugin for Carrara, now would be the time to do it. DAZ simply provides a distribution channel, that has never been in place before. Your HATRED of DAZ is obviously clouding your thinking. WE are discussing the Carrara SDK...Your post only mentions Hex except for the last sentence. Hex and Carrara both work great RIGHT NOW, I'm really not that concerned about the future, they are both fledgling software's, and have plenty of room to grow. If you don't like how Carrara is being developed, then talk someone into writing some plugins, that's the whole point. the SDK is just sitting there ready for anyone to develop whatever type of function they would like Carrara to have. As far as development being expensive... you're right. Eovia could not have sold Hex for 1.99 and still be able to pay their developers. But DAZ can I think that a plugin developer could do well if they used DAZ to their advantage. One would simply have to rethink their business model. I would not set out to create a dynamic cloth or hair plugin. I would start with small plugins that could be sold rather cheaply... $40 or so. Create your own fan base, then move into larger projects once you have generated a cash flow. With each new feature you add, the better and hopefully more popular Carrara would become. Then maybe other developers would jump on board. It could essentially cause a snowball effect. Have some hope

6th March 2007, 15:43	#7 (permalink)
OscarX Vertex Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 18	Well I'd say there is not a real demand for small plug-ins, Carrara handles most of the small things already plus the innagoni etc. niche market. If you listen what Carrara users expect, these are biggies - cloth simulator, fur, rewritten editing etc. Numbers do not lie. See here is a small calculation. Let's pretend I decide to build a team to make rather serious fur shader. 5 people in a team, these are no fresh from school, these have to be experienced 3d programmers so let's say the average would be 85k/year (not much chance to get a 3d senior in US or EU for that money but just lets pretend) 5x 85k = 425k +20k equipment (comp. desks) +25k utilities (rent etc.) so we are talking nearly half mil per year. If we are exreemely lucky the team will have something after a year of hard work (that's a pretty stretch) but not yet sales: 1. year -0.5 mil (debt) the second year the team has to earn 0.5 plus servicing the debt from year 1., let's say 0.1 mil so in second year the team MUST earn 0.6 mil minimum. If the end user price is $150, we take out about 40% of sales margin (that would be paid to sites such as daz, renderosity, stores etc..) so the earning from unit is $90. To make 0.6 mil the team need to sell more than 6500 units a year. So you need to find 6500 users per year who will fork out $150 for a fur shader and that means the team will be still at 400000 in debt at the end of second year. Now, that's a fantasy. DAZ have to calculate in simillar terms except they are already selling Carrara in year 1 (we don't know how many), but the negative offset is now the purchase price from Eovia (we don't know how much). I don't think there is any policy from DAZ to badly mess with Carrara and Hex and deliberately kill it. No, the intention is good. They will try to spin it for a year or so, then calculate the total. It will be in red. They will try to marry it more closely with their contents, try to probably spin it for another year with wild savings. It will be in red of course. Any manager will tell you, do not let your profit (content in this case) pay for the losses. Let the stinker go. And why it will be in red? Again, simple calculation. If they have 5 developers and the average price they earning for carrara is $150 (average all the versions+savings), to keep it alive they need to sell 4000+ units a year. Now, maybe I am dead wrong, but with that sales you will see this and simillar forums be very alive with newbies. You will see a growth with love-carrara personal web pages. I just hope DAZ will try to spin Carrara for at least 2 years with some bug fixes.

6th March 2007, 17:22	#11 (permalink)
rickei Respect the Dawg! Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: USA - Conway, South Carolina Posts: 770 Images: 1	As i said, you can not follow a standard business model here. Starting up with a half million a year spent on 5 programmers. that's suicide! If you set out to develop one kickass product, I would imagine you are headed for certain doom. People "expect" lots of things, but they often "purchase" things, much lower than their expectations. I would like for my Xterra to perform like a LandRover, but it doesn't, I paid about half of what I would have for the LandRover, and I got what i paid for. If you asked me what I would like to see in the next release of Carrara, I would probably also say cloth and hair... but that would not be very realistic. Even if it came with it, I doubt C6's render engine could handle it very well without some sort of rewrite. DCG, Innagoni etc, have a niche market because they have created it. we're talking DAZ/Carrara here, not Maya or MAX. as Pete said you could work some great stuff into Carrara, but it would put it in a totally different market, that would fit a more standard business plan, but sales would plummet, due to cost. Though it is not unusual for a plugin to cost more than the app itself A successful Carrara plugin developer would need to think more along the lines of a fast food business model. Keep it simple and cheap. With 2 years or so between releases, you would have plenty of time to develop small plugins/improvements that could certainly keep you in the black. I'm not saying you would get rich, but, a business could certainly succeed. You've got 100,000 dazzers out the with their $5.00 monthly vouchers, just waiting for something new to use it on. But I do agree that it would be very risky at this point to base your livelihood on developing aftermarket products for Carrara, unless you could establish a honest open flow of communication with DAZ. As of now I don't know what will become of Carrara, or even what they are try to implement in the next release.

6th March 2007, 19:18	#15 (permalink)
Couerl Polygurbs Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Denver Posts: 1,292 Images: 6	It is not becoming Daz Studio... I think there is a lot of misinterpretation as to what "content" really is. Every time you make a scene in Carrara you are creating "content". Every time you make something in Maya, Max, XSI, Houdini or Adobe or Microsoft Word you are creating "content". The reason Adobe PDF is free like Daz Studio is free is so that people can share content. The fact that the content readers are free and the content writers are not should be enough to distinguish the difference between them. Whether the actual content is "hand-made" or purchased makes no difference to the software really. Adobe knows it must create a free reader to build a user base and a sophisticated writer to create content for the free reader. Can you imagine the pdf using community getting upset because the writers actually read what they write? Hmph.. :\

6th March 2007, 20:08	#16 (permalink)
shaunmckinnon Extrusion Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 187 Images: 1	DAZ seems more focused on the content sharing aspect of their software. __________________ "I put a hexagon on you, cause you're mine. And I love the things that you do.." DELL DIMENSION 5150, P4 3.2GHZ HT, 3GB RAM, 256 ATI X600 (128 SHARED), DUAL 250GB SATA, XP PRO CARRARA 5 STANDARD, HEXAGON 2, DREAMWEAVER 2004MX,COREL SUITE 12, BRYCE 5.5, POSER 5

6th March 2007, 20:19	#17 (permalink)
Couerl Polygurbs Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Denver Posts: 1,292 Images: 6	I won't argue that, it's what made it possible for them to buy Eovia instead of the other way around... If the user base at-large was more focussed on creating than reading it might be a different story...

6th March 2007, 20:34	#19 (permalink)
Couerl Polygurbs Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Denver Posts: 1,292 Images: 6	You're a good man Shorty, you kill me. So lets see some Rhino-4 screen caps and stuff, can you start a thread somewhere? I'm curious to see what kind of goodies it has.

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