Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
well, with few bucks you can get quick animations with beautiful sceneries like in this 30 secs clip, 2.33 mins/frame average render time, no noise and very poor flickering
hard to say if such results could be achievable with the "big boys" , but carrara is very powerful for sure and the rendernode works like a charm
pure carrara outcome, no postwork
One thing that's very nice about Carrara is that it does a LOT of different things.
I've found that while I have stuff I like better for specific things, I often go to Carrara to fill in gaps in what other stuff can't do.
For example, I've mostly decided on using Substance Painter for texture design, but it lacks the ability to paint across different UV mapped domains... which is something Carrara can do easily. So when I _need_ smooth paint across such boundaries, it's worth moving the image over to Carrara to do it.
I found myself really wanting to do some modeling... again, there are apps that have a lot more tools or sophisticated bells and whistles, but most of them are hideously expensive. Or, like Blender, have UIs I find utterly cryptic.
Oh, which is another thing... I find Carrara has just enough documentation to give me SOME direction, and the UI feels reasonably approachable, compared to a lot of other things (particularly programs that use CAD-inspired UI, which I just don't click with at all)
Nice, smooth fly-through Magaremoto! Very nice!
I agree. Carrara's so fast for setting up this sort of thing and following through with it. By "very poor flickering" I think he means that there is no flickering to speak of - especially after seeing his shot.
We need beefy machines for any of this stuff - if we want to do it. Carrara runs really well on a machne suited for it. Mine was less than a $grand to build myself and is fairly mediocre compared to what we could do now, yet it cranks Carrara like a Beast - so that's what I call it: my Carrara Beast or Carrara Monster.
Cool... I do love the feedback so far - especially since none of it is trying to pry me away from my favorite software!
Wow... the info about C4D is shocking! That's one pricey thing, too!
thanks DB, only daz here seems to ignore how powerful can be carrara with slight improvements
if you try to do that simple fly-through wthin DS/Iray you run into a plethora of troubles (noise, flickering, hard shadows, albedo..) whereas carrara in one pass is almost ready for quick post production. I know it lacks many things but you can have good products with little effort
Agreed. I've been (as you know) working on getting decent animated render for a long time and I just love how well Carrara lets us set up our setting for our own specific needs. That makes a HUGE difference.
Looking forward to seeing what I do with them (my renders) in VFX now that I'm learning that. I can tell already that I'm going to have even more fun with even better final results! ;)
The new Howler is getting some sweet new features in the Rotoscope tool... I think I'm going to love them!
+100
Very well done. Margaremoto, thanks for posting. Clips of this quality get me really excited about using Carrara for animation.
animation skills and VFX..., that's the magic in animation, can't wait to seeing what you are able to achieve DB
thank you UnifiedBrain, I'm going to carry on with the video to show off many other features where carrara shines (and others don't), stay tuned
Yay!!
Carrara is the main core of my workflow, I use some plugins to make the bridge with other more specialized applications (mainly Realflow and Marvelous Designer).
Cinema 4D must have a bunch of plugins to only stay alive, Carrara makes the same job for a very lower price and with ability to natively use the DAZ and Poser characters and other props very presents on the market.
What more to be happy?
Nice job, Magaremoto!
Magaremoto,
Terrific video. The title says enhanced Global Illumination. What settings did you use?
thank you both,
Brian, I did graphically what should have been made by coders, I added to GI the lighting contributions from the environment in a simplicistic way: a bit of glow from the ground, a bit of lighting from the horizon (right or left or both), and, in presence of sun, a bit of radiance from the ambient. Moreover a bit of glare and haze too to take control over the white albedo. Then the funny part: in carrara you can finely tweak lights and shadows in the timeline when needed without perceiving visible changes thanks to tweeners; not all the big boys can do that
My video is a rough and quick attempt to show how carrara can be proficuos for animations (maybe need to use a bit of defocus blur, looks too sharp on YT default format)
following the render settings used
Can't wait...
Meanwhile, in Houdini land:
thanks 5thElement, the work is going to be long but very funny, any contribution or suggestion would be appreciated of course
yes, Houdini should be placed at 2nd place immediately after 3dsmax and if it had a fast renderer (mantra can be frustrating sometimes, but fortunately there are octane and redshift) would be my favourite in the list of the big boys, very powerful and intuitive indeed
In my view, Carrara gives you most of the tools that you need to do 3D stills and animations, and while the others may be slicker, be more targetted at big studio work practices, etc, what you can do in Carrara if you really put your mind to it is amazing. And as it can natively use huge amounts of relatively cheap Poser and Daz resources, something that none of the others can do, it is the preferred platform for individual 3D artists and animators. I recently had a project which involved creating some animation in Daz Studio and I couldn't believe how primitive its animation functions are - you can't even move a keyframe! It really made me appreciate Carrara even more. In case you haven't seen it, here is an animated short I did entirely in Carrara. You can watch it about a third of the way down the page, and it was well received by audiences at dozens of film festivals across the world (who of course didn't know or care that it was made with Carrara!).
http://www.trickortreatshort.com/
Wow!!! And, yeah... I can't wait either. very cool!
Yes, the key point. "Natively" meaning you don't need anything else, just load and animate. No Poser, no Poserfusion, no import, no troublesome format conversions, no $*&^%. For a while back there, DAZ and the owners of Poser had a nice relationship. I still install Poser 7 (~2006) and link it in Carrara's browser, to get its Runtime which includes M4, V4 and a lot of related content. I own later versions of Poser, but they don't have any of that. As I mentioned a while back, it reminds me of this old pop song:
I've used 3dsmax for over 10 years off and on, but have had to recently switch to Blender because I came upon some financial issues and can't afford it anymore. I also have some experience in the recent past with Carrara, and I'm being perfectly honest saying that while Carrara is great for throwing together some preset objects and materials to make a "fast" render, there is really very little comparison when it comes to creating complex scenes or animations from scratch. 3dsmax (and probably Maya and Modo and Houdini) have years and years of high end development for professional output in the world of animation and films, and the tools available in those applications reflect that kind of serious and deep development.
In terms of modelling, 3dsmax has hundreds of more features for the creation of complex geometry than Carrara and someone who knows the tools well enough would be able to achieve models much much faster than they would in Carrara because of the optimized tools. The same can be said for the animation tools. Again, the big difference with Carrara is the ability to use pre-existing, pre-rigged models from Poser or Daz. That's really the only advantage of Carrara. Carrara is an entry-level application which is great for what they call "kit bashing" a scene together.
Absolutely. 3DS Max certainly must be worth it's cost... for sure.
So I was wondering: when you say you've used Max for ten years and cannot afford it anymore, does that mean that you cannot update it anymore, or does one actually have to keep paying for it to even work?
I know a lot of high-end software requires things like dongles. And if the price wasn't paid, the software simply won't work anymore. Does 3DS Max require payment to work, or just to upgrade?
I would ask the same question regarding Maya and the others as well.
if you make AAA productions probably you get the best out of each one listed above, i.e. modeling from modo or lightwave, animating characters from maya or C4d, particles and fluids from houdini (but it's a case by case thing, the sotware is not the problem if you have big budgets, the real problem are the schedule and deadlines imho) .. put them together and gather the whole into 3dmax, possibly the one who can import and manage all with ease; anyway many indies have been changing their pipelines putting in clarisse or even unity or U4 or such, proving that software is not the point. Carrara has been "suicided" but it's greatly underated by anyone out of there
Autodesk has stopped selling software, they rent it out so yes you have to pay all the time otherwise it's gone.
So:
Carrara may not beat it on features but cost per feature I think it wins without problems, Max cost you $160-200 per month....
So comparing a <$100 one time cost software with something that cost you 2-3 times that per month is just silly, of course Max is much better, if it was not Autodesk should be spanked and get out of the business as soon as possible.
It's not really about the toys at all, one of the best examples of all times is Rust Boy (
) Brian never finished it but it's great work and it's made with a terrible piece of 3D software, Infini-D, (Infini-D has very little in common with todays Carrara) yes I had it and I gave it up after 2 weeks, was impossible (for me) to do anything good with it (the movie is made about 15 years ago or so).
Infini-D did have a pretty amazing renderer though and once it got some features from Raydream Studio, well actually most of the UI is from Raydream (Yes I had that one also ;) and turned into Carrara it started to get pretty cool.
for such a price I would jump into maya + arnold, less plugins and more user friendly; in many aspects a carraraist can find it handy to use
http://www.autodesk.com/products/maya/compare/compare-products
I just watched a critic on TV reviewing some of the latest offering at the movie theaters. He panned all of them..and from what I saw and heard in the clips shown , I woud agree. Some of them include scenes which were made with the best 3D software money can buy. Result...stinkers. It has been mentioned many times on this forum in previous posts; first it is the story, secondly music...thirdly the images. Since the days we sat around a fire in a cave we have been captivated by a well told story. No story..no audience ...its that simple. I watched "Rust Boy" above, a cute litte story, well presented... it held my attention. Made with a basic 3D software.
Carrara has the ability to turn out high quality work..it has the tools, the resolution and the rendering ability. If you use it in the same workflow as the large studios, in that you make only what you have to in 3D and then intergrate it with other assets in post, then you have the potential to create some high quality work. In a sense it is not how good your 3D images are, but how good you are with say After Effects.
Starboard
That was the first time ever I've read "Maya" and "user friendly" in the same sentence
/ I bet it will never happen again 
Arnold is freaking slow on a normal machine. You have to buy at least 10 Xeons
Not me. That's rent-ware as well. Screw that!
I don't discriminate on which software my modeling team uses. They have full reign to use whatever makes them feel most comfortable and productive. I'll just stick with the excellent tools in Carrara, since I can always get my meager modeling done on a whim. I barely have to think... just click, click, click, over and over until, a few minutes later, I have what I was imagining.
I leave the heavy modeling tasks to my modeling team: Daz3d, Renderosity, and sometimes CG Society. Most, really, comes from here, Daz3d.
Wow. How can they get away with that! I mean... I understand that an agreement is an agreement. How did they get anybody but the Big Studios to agree to such nonsense?
That's like having to pay each day to wear your shoes. Bad day? Sorry chummer! WTF? Wow!!! Appalled!
After watching my Behind the Scenes of The Clone Wars so often, I'm often in awe of how simplistic they do things. TV and Movies, Motion Pictures... it's all just a puppet show and often also a magic show. We are the puppet masters and the magicians.
Nobody but the puppet operators and the magic makers give a damn about what tools were used. Truly. They only care about the show. Mikael's example above is a perfect one, which brings up an excellent point. I have to understand better that Carrara might not be as awesome for everyone as it is for me. "I" love it and my experiments have proven to me that this is really all I need as far as my 3D department goes. Everything beyond Carrara can be 2D, but I have one exception that I am super grateful for... additional particle effects. 2D particles would be fine for me, but my software has 2D and 3D particles - and I love how handy that can be for additional assistance in making the magic happen.
But what I'm more impressed with is the fact that folks like Joel Aron (shown speaking a lot as of season 2 and beyond - now in Rebels) rarely even think that way, but rather just use whatever tools they have at hand to solve the problem. It's all an illusion that we get to prepare ahead of time, and even edit a few times before showing it. There's really nothing we cannot pull off if we just imagine how we want it to look in the end. Seeing in our minds is the whole thing. Then all we have to do is to make it happen.
It's a lot more involved when photo-realism is at stake... but the principles truly are the same. For example, True Fluid simulation should really only be needed for science. For motion pictures, we can certainly use what we have to pull off a visual effect. But as these technological advances head on down the pipeline, why not use them?
...and I'm not opposed to such things either. I'm just from a camp that doesn't care much about what we Don't have because I'm far more interesting in pulling off the effect with what we Do have.
I think the point is well made that the story is first and foremost and everything should serve that.
Right... I'm sorry. I was just so frustrated to here that, even after ten years, he doesn't have the software to work with. It's just done. Makes my tiny investment feel immensely valuable all of a sudden.
A new owner just bought Carrara 8.5 Pro for $19? My goodness! These folks have an artist cough up thousands up front, and then over a grand a year to maintain it. Have a bad year? Guess what... it's gonna get worse 'cause we're pulling the plug!
Here is the best 3d animation app comparison I could find quickly, lots of info is missing and not really helpful, but a start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_3D_computer_graphics_software
Ha Haa! I don't see DAZ Studio in this list of serious softwares and Carrara is in a very good place...
DAZ3d will not like that!
Tee hee hee!!! That's because the list is in Alphabetical order! :) (Shhhh... I won't tell them either!)
So another way to have a look into the differences in the various software is our handy dandy tool, YouTube (or other video player community thingy)
The example I went with is for Maya, throwing a ball with a simple character.
Instead of just watching one, before making any big time decisions on anything, I'd peruse through and watch as many as needed until I saw what I was really looking for. For example, in this one (above video) he might tell us to access part of the menu and turn something on or off and then say "and that's good", or something similar, but not really why. So what. We can find out why ourselves. He just needs to get going on his tutorial, right? Absolutely.
But by him telling us to turn this on and that off, etc., and then having us switch the menu from Vertex modeling to Animation tells us quite a bit about the software already. It's really vast with possibilities in all of these areas.
I found this one kinda cool - he like forward kinematics better for stuff too... I often feel alone in that!
By the way, I went into the manual the other day and set up my Rosie figure with IK and targets to adhere to for pinning. Prett sweet! Reminded me of how I used to pose my characters in Poser before I stopped liking IK for posing. Using it in Carrara for a quick test spin was fun and fortuitous. I'll still stick with my usual methods of forward kinematics for the most part, but can instill IK on the fly in a moment's notice now that I've seen the light!
Okay... now... here's the thing. In watching the above tutorial, I've already learned that I'd have a LOT of learning ahead of me if I upgraded my toolkit to Maya. It has an abundance of slick benefits for animation, rigging, parenting, and on, and on... it's really nice and, as is the point of this thread, is constantly being developed with the latest workflows coming down the pipeline from big movie houses.
That kind of constant development can be really worth a lot to someone. Me? No.
Also in watching that tutorial, I'm realizing that I don't want to have to interact with the menu like that to parent something. Maybe I wouldn't mind if I wasn't already used to doing it in Carrara. But that's just a tiny example. There are a LOT of features in Maya. Do I need anything that Carrara doesn't have for my animation endeavors? Anything? No. Well... yes. I need the aniBlock Importer for Carrara, and I bought that already, so I often forget how much I need that thing! Also Fenric's tools and other plugins and such.
I'm seeing two versions of Maya.
Doesn't seem that bad.
But the funniest thing is that, after seeing this tutorial and a few before it, I would rather be working in Carrara. I know.. ouch... not so hard!!! Tomatoes hurt too, you know! Yikes!!!
I'm serious! Someone I really look up to, whom also does a LOT more and a LOT better animations than I do used Messiah Studios for her latest work for NASSOS' Dinner for Few. They then brought the animations back into Carrara for rendering. She was also the animator behind Fenric's drive in making his ERC for Carrara plugin, to address areas of animation that she felt was severely lacking in Carrara for animators.
To me, animation is tedious - it's difficult - it's even more difficult to get right. And to me, animating is fun. Some day I might grab a copy of Messiah Studio. I'm seeing two versions right now:
Basic Edition $499
Pro Edition $1195, on Sale for $599 $399 or $65/month subscription option
Now that's not bad, even if one decides they don't like it after a while!
Well I hope that all goes well for me with all of the strange and unexpected family and related stuff going on lately... If so I'll be providing my own evidence along with my good friend, magaremto, that... yeah... Hollywood can go ahead and put Autodesk out of business and funeel their cash into a continued and prosperous development of good ol' Carrara Pro!!!
I cn't help it. The Messiah Studio site has this awesome trailer as the highlight. The author's site has the trailer and the full feature short, along with news of the TV series of the film that will be appearing soon:
http://thuristar.com/portfolio/850-meters/
It's a cool flick to see!
Along a slightly different perspective, Big Studios may get Fusion 8 for less than a grand per seat, and that's one time, not per month.
While it could be used to compete with portions of Carrara, it's much better used along with Carrara!
For $0.00 for an individual seat, there are very few drawbacks, like slightly (for me, anyway) limited resolution, no network or plugin support.
While that last bit might sound huge, I should really mention right away that Fusion already comes complete with a whole lot of features and plugin-like abilities. With top-notch, high-end VFX tools including professional keying, exemplary 3d particles, vector painting (still haven't tried - I really must!!!), amazing color grading tools and a whole lot more, it also has an incredible 3d text engine with so much control it's just difficult to fathom, volumetrics which can take advantage of UV coordinates, like those stored in multi-pass and/or EXR pixels, 3D Lighting, cameras, and particle-interacting physics and forces and such. Powerful scripting abilities to boot! I know nothing about coding (slight exaggeration) but we can even test lines of script right in the working interface! Pretty Cool!
This is an excellent playlist of video tutorials by Eric Westphal, from the company whom used to own Fusion, Eyeon Software
Fusion Lessons by Eric Westphal at Eyeon
This is an excellent promo/instructional series:
Ten Reasons you need Fusion
and this is for a much older version but still has some excellent ideas and techniques that should also work in other versions
Fusion 5 Tutorials
We don't need plugins for this to work with Carrara since they don't make plugins for Carrara anyway! LOL We can use our 3D creations inside Fusion but where we'll really see the magic is in using our renders, especially multi-pass renders in Fusion's powerful compositing to produce image and video clips full of high-end visual effects - the same stuff being used by the big studios!
This is an excellent short introduction to how any of us might enjoy using Fusion
in our Carrara endeavors, using the free version of Fusion 8