Siggraph and Carrara

[Couerl]

Hi, I got back from San Diego at 12:30 am today and spent most of today catching up at work, but tonight I wanted to post some news and pictures and just give a little of my own perspective about Siggraph and Carrara 6 and just talk about 3D in general.

Here's some pictures I shot of the different booths and kiosks and of course,... girls:
http://3dsplash.com/Siggraph/Forms/AllItems.aspx

Setup on Monday was a bit of work and the Daz guys did a pretty nice job of getting everything together. They were really nice and friendly and we hit it off pretty well right away. Once all that stuff was ready and software and stuff was installed it was already pretty late and we just went out for dinner and crashed. Tuesday started fine and we had tons of people stop by and ask about features and they wanted to see stuff so I had some hair samples and NLA samples courtesy of Wayne and I went ahead and gave them whatever they wanted to see. I encouraged people to ask away and even had some come back and play with the software themselves so they could see up hand close what was new.

The top booths at the event were Autodesk and Softimage and Pixar, LuasFilms, Sony etc,.. But Daz did a pretty good job and gave away several thousand copies of the new D/S Studio 1.7.
The whole event went fast and every day was balls to the wall questions and answers and it wasn't really until the last day that I got to go and look at other booths. At the last minute I got a raffle ticket for the last free copy of ZBrush-3 and I had 9004845 and they called 9004843 and I almost cried.

After watching that though, I think it will end up in my tool kit pretty soon anyway... Okay, enough about that, I spoke with Charles too and he was busy doing the tech-nerd conferences and I did my best to stress BVH and NLA in Carrara so that its not all about canned content (which I think we'd all agree is not what we care about most). I also stressed that a wide variety of import and export formats were also being requested and that Carrara should remain as flexible as possible in that regard to accomodate other softwares and of course render speedups and more and better rendering, shading and lighting.

Okay, I got only a few hours sleep last night so I gotta just relax for now, if anyone has questions feel free to ask, I'll answer whatever I can to the best of my knowledge, I answered everything I knew at Siggraph so there shouldn't be any real secrets left to hide as far as I know.

[Nate Owens]

I guess the big question is when? (do we get our hands on C6)

[Couerl]

Anytime this month is my guess, I don't know release dates or pricing, but my guess is if you have C5 it will be cheap to upgrade and worth it for hair alone I think plus a lot of other goodies.

[Gus512]

Hi Steven .Nice work, Question.The sneak peek was for c6 or c6Pro? Can i expect some improvement into modeler also ,and animation tools ,means more hex tools , soft dynamics,graph editor improvements,etch or that was the complete feature list for c6pro. Thanks

Originally Posted by Gus512

Hi Steven .Nice work, Question.The sneak peek was for c6 or c6Pro? Can i expect some improvement into modeler also ,and animation tools ,means more hex tools , soft dynamics,graph editor improvements,etch or that was the complete feature list for c6pro. Thanks

Complete features list will come later and DAZ 3D has not finish posting sneak previews.

[Gus512]

Lets Hope C6Pro it'is not only for Victoria Thanks Ringo

[Nate Owens]

Ringo...

Really enjoying the sneak peeks.
I haven't read all the gadzillion posts about this new version, so I may be redundant... just curious... I see promos that say if someone buys C5 now they get C6 for free. Where does this leave those that have had C5 for quite a while (like since it first came out)? - Actually I have C5.1 pro.

Originally Posted by Nate Owens

Ringo...

Really enjoying the sneak peeks.
I haven't read all the gadzillion posts about this new version, so I may be redundant... just curious... I see promos that say if someone buys C5 now they get C6 for free. Where does this leave those that have had C5 for quite a while (like since it first came out)? - Actually I have C5.1 pro.

Hello Nate.

There is an offer as you mention that will end on the 14th of this month.
Its your typical offer that software companies do near the release of a new version. I believe it was also done for C5 near its release.
Brand "X" modo is doing it for modo 301 etc.
Very soon we will find out what upgrade price is for both C5 and C5pro going to C6 and C6 Pro.

[Piem]

yes yes --> off topic.
Ringo, you are definitively the King of quotes.

Originally Posted by Ringo Monfort

Hello..etc

[Nate Owens]

Well... I like Ringo's quotes... they are precise and they are attributed.
All the requirements of good journalism.
Aye, eye... eye

[azul3d]

Originally Posted by Couerl

Hi, I got back from San Diego at 12:30 am today and spent most of today catching up at work, but tonight I wanted to post some news and pictures and just give a little of my own perspective about Siggraph and Carrara 6 and just talk about 3D in general.

Here's some pictures I shot of the different booths and kiosks and of course,... girls:
http://3dsplash.com/Siggraph/Forms/AllItems.aspx

Setup on Monday was a bit of work and the Daz guys did a pretty nice job of getting everything together. They were really nice and friendly and we hit it off pretty well right away. Once all that stuff was ready and software and stuff was installed it was already pretty late and we just went out for dinner and crashed. Tuesday started fine and we had tons of people stop by and ask about features and they wanted to see stuff so I had some hair samples and NLA samples courtesy of Wayne and I went ahead and gave them whatever they wanted to see. I encouraged people to ask away and even had some come back and play with the software themselves so they could see up hand close what was new.

The top booths at the event were Autodesk and Softimage and Pixar, LuasFilms, Sony etc,.. But Daz did a pretty good job and gave away several thousand copies of the new D/S Studio 1.7.
The whole event went fast and every day was balls to the wall questions and answers and it wasn't really until the last day that I got to go and look at other booths. At the last minute I got a raffle ticket for the last free copy of ZBrush-3 and I had 9004845 and they called 9004843 and I almost cried.

After watching that though, I think it will end up in my tool kit pretty soon anyway... Okay, enough about that, I spoke with Charles too and he was busy doing the tech-nerd conferences and I did my best to stress BVH and NLA in Carrara so that its not all about canned content (which I think we'd all agree is not what we care about most). I also stressed that a wide variety of import and export formats were also being requested and that Carrara should remain as flexible as possible in that regard to accomodate other softwares and of course render speedups and more and better rendering, shading and lighting.

Okay, I got only a few hours sleep last night so I gotta just relax for now, if anyone has questions feel free to ask, I'll answer whatever I can to the best of my knowledge, I answered everything I knew at Siggraph so there shouldn't be any real secrets left to hide as far as I know.

Thanks for the info Steven.
Since the software has been demoed publicly I guess you can talk about its features. Here are some of the questions I have about Carrara 6:
1. Have they changed the metaball modeler room to have the same UI as the rest of the rooms?
2. Is there texture painting?
3. Has the UV mapper been improved to make it more usable?
4. Can you import template files (JPG,GIF etc) to use in the spline modeler?
5. Shadow catcher in GI mode?
6. Any improvements to SSS (speed, better control)?
7. Was multi-pass rendering added?
8. Was texture baking added?
9. Any improvements to volumetric effects like fog and fire? Like not limiting them to predefined shapes and not being able to deform them?
10. Has a measuring tool been added?
Thanks in advance,
Azul3D

[Couerl]

Well as Ringo mentioned, it looks like we'll have to wait and see and give the Daz team some time to finalize things and get sneak peaks all in order.

Seems only fair so I will defer any further comment until they are ready.

Sorry!

I will tell you that my experience demoing the software was a joyous one and that the soft was stable and agile, I only hung it once in three days and that was probably my fault. The Daz staff were also very professional, curteous and all around nice people, so I think until they are ready we'll just leave it at that.

Thanks,

Steven

[Couerl]

Oh, and in case anyone is interested, here are some of my thoughts on Siggraph and the questions going on and so on...
Since this is the first time I had been there, I really didn't know what to expect and so I got a pretty good crash course in demoing soft and seeing it demoed. I felt like I was reasonably prepared and I think a lot of it was presence anyway and some of these crews looked like they had done it a million times and were burnt to cinders.
The number 1 question I got from the hundreds I spoke with was what kind of file import/export did Carrara support. I got the impression and I know for a fact that proggy's like Maya and Max and even LW with its poser plug in do not do well with Daz or Poser style figures, yet the demand to have fast acting characters like these is evident. Despite whatever anyone feels about them being canned or cheesy or whatever, people on a short timeline want quick, simple and nice... In a day in day out workshop where time is money, V4 can get a lot done. Carrara was a hit in this regard and even the Poser folks at E-Frontier came and got their free Daz Studio copies and checked out C6... 1.7 is quite a leap forward from the early release and the puppeteer thingy is kinda cool if you like that sort of thing. I get the impression more and more that 3D artists depend less and less on any one tool and are looking for compatibility between all of them. I hope one day some better common format is achieved and that the proggy's all speak a bit better to each other. V4 with all her morphs will crash Maya in less than a minute because it makes a full mesh for each morph. This is to its detriment as many of the users (whether they want to admit it or not) would make use of a fully posable and pretty simple to use figure like V4.
Even though they didn't have the biggest booth, ZBrush-3 was the hot item and for good reason. You can take that stuff in anything and sail with it pretty quick and the demo guys did a good job of making it look simple and I think that simplification was a big part of Z3. I have used Maya 6 before and to me anyway it seemed like you needed a PH.D just to get something simple done. I think in the end as prices come down and users learn more than just one or two or three softs that we'll see more and more users saying, oh I model in such and such, rig and animate in this or that and finish in Z3 or MB and then compose and shoot in whatever it is.. Not one single person I talked to said; Oh I just use Maya or I just use Max or Poser or Carrara or C4D or LW or whatever... They all rattled off at least 3 and sometimes 5 or 6 different apps and it really got me to thinking that its a healthy industry and the guys who will come out on top in the end will be the ones who's software is flexible and plays nice with as many other ones as possible.

[transient]

The forthcoming Poser pro has plug-ins to directly host in the big four, for what it's worth.

To be honest I don't really see the benfefits of integrating Daz's products with Carrara except as a way of flogging their assets to Carrara owners. From what I can tell (please correct me if I'm wrong) there's no direct way to export from Carrara to Daz studio, or to Poser, Maya etc.

It seems Carrara is becoming more a place to host Daz content, rather than the affordable giant-killer it has a reputation for.

I've got no intention of getting Carrara so by all means take this with a grain of salt, but apart from the hair (which looks awesome) the focus seems to be to vertically market Daz's primary cash cows.

Of course, I'm probably old-fashioned but I'm becoming skeptical about the content kings and their approach to developing 3d software. I've got no prejudice's against the Poser crowd (although it's definitely not my thing) and I know these companies make money, but 3d software used to be about making original art, not flogging 3d action figures to people.

I can understand Daz's approach business-wise, but having Victoria as the main marketing weapon for C6 doesn't impress me very much. Maybe I'm just getting old and nostalgic.

Sorry, it's just my pov, no offense to anyone intended.

[azul3d]

Steven:
Thanks for your response and I understand your position. I guess the Daz information police (Ringo) is everywhere . It makes me wonder if I had been at Siggraph, would I have received answers to the questions I posed? So a product gets demoed publicly, but only certain people (the people at Siggraph), get to know the features about a product. This whole sneak peek stuff is getting old.
Azul3D

Originally Posted by Couerl

Well as Ringo mentioned, it looks like we'll have to wait and see and give the Daz team some time to finalize things and get sneak peaks all in order.

Seems only fair so I will defer any further comment until they are ready.

Sorry!

I will tell you that my experience demoing the software was a joyous one and that the soft was stable and agile, I only hung it once in three days and that was probably my fault. The Daz staff were also very professional, curteous and all around nice people, so I think until they are ready we'll just leave it at that.

Thanks,

Steven

[sadot]

Originally Posted by transient

The forthcoming Poser pro has plug-ins to directly host in the big four, for what it's worth.

To be honest I don't really see the benfefits of integrating Daz's products with Carrara except as a way of flogging their assets to Carrara owners. From what I can tell (please correct me if I'm wrong) there's no direct way to export from Carrara to Daz studio, or to Poser, Maya etc.

It seems Carrara is becoming more a place to host Daz content, rather than the affordable giant-killer it has a reputation for.

I've got no intention of getting Carrara so by all means take this with a grain of salt, but apart from the hair (which looks awesome) the focus seems to be to vertically market Daz's primary cash cows.

Of course, I'm probably old-fashioned but I'm becoming skeptical about the content kings and their approach to developing 3d software. I've got no prejudice's against the Poser crowd (although it's definitely not my thing) and I know these companies make money, but 3d software used to be about making original art, not flogging 3d action figures to people.

I can understand Daz's approach business-wise, but having Victoria as the main marketing weapon for C6 doesn't impress me very much. Maybe I'm just getting old and nostalgic.

Sorry, it's just my pov, no offense to anyone intended.

I can´t say it better -really i cant-

[mayito7777]

Sadot. If you look at the previous versions of Carrara, if I bad don't remember, 3,4 and 5 they all had girls on the front cover, I don't see anything wrong in using female figures as long as the figure represents the product, I agree with you and all the ones that have raise the concern about portraying C6 a some type of Poserish software, i don't like Victoria or any of the models of DAZ to represent C6, maybe a spaceship, an allien image like those that Thomas and other have created, maybe some architectural thing, or maybe the one that somebody posted here in the section about 3D finish products, that would be a better representation of what C6 is about. Don't take me wrong, I don't disagree with you, I am just saying that maybe a female figure in some mechanical environment, maybe a borg, could be a better choice.

[mayito7777]

This would be a better choice

http://forums.polyloop.net/3d-work-p...packaging.html

[sadot]

The Kali goddess V.2
The horse of ...hehe maybe Nierd V.3
The Chess Warrior v.4

covers that i remember

Let me search google......

[mayito7777]

My apologies, you are absolutely right, C3 was the horse and C4 was the chess piece, C5 was the one with the girl. So my bad.