To Use Carrara, DAZ Studio, or Both?

laststand@runbox.com

Can DS do anything Carrara can't do?

Can DS do anything easier or better than Carrara?

IOW, is it best to learn both, or will Carrara do it all? I'm interested to hear what you have to say.

Thanks.

ncamp

I seldom use DS for anything but getting items ready for use in Carrara.

DS has Dynamic Clothing, where Carrara does not.

DS has rigging tools that allow a rigged character to be used in Studio, Poser, or Carrara. Carrara's rigging tools are Carrara only.

Shaders work differently between the two systems.

Autofit works better in Studio than Carrara.

DS and poser scenes can be opened in Carrara, but Carrara will not save out a DS scene (You can export objects and import to DS, but not entire scenes.

DS handles the multi-UV Genesis and G2 better. Carrara cannot change the UV from say V5 to default. You must use DS to save out a character preset with the correct mappings for Carrara to use the other maps.

Carrara is a more powerful overall system. It allows modeling, tweaking of models, landscapes, atmospheres, trees, oceans, 3D painting, etc. You could build an entire scene in Carrara and not use one piece of purchased content.

I mentioned that autofit working better in DS. In Carrara, you can go into the modeling room, soft select the mesh that has poke through, and move it out to correct the problem.

I never render in DS, but it is a tool to handle the content going into Carrara. So, my answer is to use both.

ncamp

wetcircuit

DS is just for figures. Like Poser. Carrara is a full 3d suite that also does figures, but a whole lot more.

DUDU

It as should be added as Carrara is many more convivial than Studio and one does not need to use another program to create all the conceivable scenes.

laststand@runbox.com

ncamp said:

So, my answer is to use both.

I thought that might be the case. I saw a bunch of Genesis morphs I'd like to try that were for DS, but not Carrara.

Thanks.

SickleYield

Since we're asking questions, does Carrara have an equivalent to smoothing and collision? How do you deal with pokethrough? With the modeling tools?

DUDU

SickleYield said:

Since we're asking questions, does Carrara have an equivalent to smoothing and collision? How do you deal with pokethrough? With the modeling tools?

I feel that Dartanbeck will lengthen the list!

evilproducer

SickleYield said:

Since we're asking questions, does Carrara have an equivalent to smoothing and collision? How do you deal with pokethrough? With the modeling tools?

Carrara does have smoothing, but I don't know how it works with collision. It is very useful. Using soft select in the assembly room is easier than it sounds. You can also add morphs. which is also pretty easy. This is coming from someone not that fluent with the vertex modeler.

DUDU

evilproducer said:

SickleYield said:

Since we're asking questions, does Carrara have an equivalent to smoothing and collision? How do you deal with pokethrough? With the modeling tools?

Carrara does have smoothing, but I don't know how it works with collision. It is very useful. Using soft select in the assembly room is easier than it sounds. You can also add morphs. which is also pretty easy. This is coming from someone not that fluent with the vertex modeler.
I think that he wants to speak about the physical engine of Carrara which is extremely powerful…

Dartanbeck

DUDU_00001 said:

SickleYield said:

Since we're asking questions, does Carrara have an equivalent to smoothing and collision? How do you deal with pokethrough? With the modeling tools?

I feel that Dartanbeck will lengthen the list!How incredibly insightful - and correct! :)

The DAZ 3D Publishing Documents are all about teaching folks how to make things for Genesis so that you may then turn around and sell the stuff at DAZ 3D. They are very helpful in this endeavor and have gone through great lengths to tweak DAZ Studio into something that can actually help us develop content, rather than having to rely on Poser.

We don't need to use that information for selling products. I have been using those lessons to make stuff for myself. I do all of the 'making' within Carrara, for use within Carrara. But then I export that, as per the instructions, and import into DAZ Studio Pro, where I turn the item into a piece of conforming clothing. While this can be done nearly as easily within Carrara, itself, the big difference is that, when doing it for Genesis via the tools in DS Pro, you get the beautiful auto-follow stuff. So the item follows your Genesis shapes as you change them. The instructions also include techniques on making Full Body Morphs (FBM) and Joint Controlled Morphs (JCM), which allows us to model specific differences in the mesh when certain things happen. So if I don't like what happens to the clothing when I crank up the V6 morph shape, I can load my original back into Carrara, Load in V6 and sculpt the mesh the way I want it to be when V6 is wearing it. Of course, the polygon count must remain unchanged. Now I can load that new OBJ into my clothing article in DAZ Studio Pro, as a morph. If I use the exact same name as the V6 shape morph, my new morph will apply automatically along side the V6 morph on Genesis. Really sweet stuff.

So along with what others have been saying about using DS for the purposes of prepping Genesis (and other figures) for use with Carrara... I totally agree.

Also, no matter how you save one or more models in Carrara, the actual mesh details get recorded - even if you use Local setting upon save. Local settings will not record the texture into the file, but instead the path to where the textures are located. But there is no way to save a model in CAR format without actually capturing the mesh data. This makes it illegal (and immoral) to share files with other people, whom don't own all of the models within the CAR file. This is another excellent way that we can use DAZ Studio.

Using the DUF format, we can actually save scene files and share them with others. Since Carrara 8.5, these DUF files can also be made, specifically for use within Carrara. A great way to be able to share ideas without worry of getting thrown in the slam! Although I haven't actually begun my tests in this regard yet, I am contemplating the idea of using duf files in conjunction with car files, along with Carrara master shaders and NLA data to be able to craft scenes that use protected content. Start by loading the Carrara file into Carrara. Then navigate to the duf and load that (those) and, finally drag the master shaders into place. The NLA data can then be used for specific placement or animation work, shape changes, etc.,

I feel that DAZ 3D has come really close with the latest DS Pro and Carrara in actually beginning to have the ability to work together. Many people think that I'm a bit insane for this way of thinking. Perhaps they're right. But there's still the ability to make clothing and props for Genesis, and that's huge!

I also feel that, since Genesis was made for DAZ Studio, and that DAZ Studio was built around Genesis, that if we wish to use Genesis, it is a good idea to have DS installed - even if you don't plan on using it for anything other than auto-fitting and then saving, dynamic cloth, etc., it's still worth having on board.

It's been a long time since I've tried rendering within DAZ Studio. I doubt I'll test it anytime soon too. This isn't because it's bad, per se... but rather that Carrara is so much more open to being set up differently - depending upon what you wish to do. While Carrara has a near limitless range of ways to set up a render, DAZ Studio seems to be quite the opposite - having almost nothing you can do to change render settings. Again... just how I feel, though I've not tried using the DS render engine in forever, almost.

Poser has a pretty flexible render engine as well as material nodes for shaders. I was impressed with Poser, back when I used it. Coming to Carrara was a real treat, but I still liked Poser. The thing is, Carrara seems to me to be a lot faster than Firefly. Carrara comes with default settings of 8 passes with ray tracing. That would really slow down a Poser render. But that's a fast setting for Carrara - the default Object Accuracy of 2, Shadows at 4, Fast Anti aliasing, etc., - Carrara screams that render out in a flash.

Besides all of that, I just ended up finding myself to be more productive if I just spend most, or all of my time within Carrara instead of jumping around from this to that. But DAZ Studio is excellent for dealing with Genesis and all of its supplements. Of course this includes all Triax Rigged figures, like Horse 2 and Big Cat, for example. One thing that I haven't yet tried is the idea of auto-fitting stuff to Genesis 2 figures within DS and then saving the duf, and loading that into Carrara. Another feature I've been procrastinating on - or rather I've just been too busy to work on things for myself - is the dynamic clothing via DAZ Studio. Is it still using Optitex? Do you need to buy a plugin for Dynamic Clothing in DS? Can we make our own clothing now for DS dynamic clothing, or does it still have to come from Optitex? That's stuff I'd like to nail down, one day. I love the idea of dynamic clothing, but if it becomes the slightest bit of a PITA, I like to punt and go back to the predictability and ease of use of the conforming clothing option.

Steve K

Rottenham said:

Can DS do anything Carrara can't do?

Can DS do anything easier or better than Carrara?

IOW, is it best to learn both, or will Carrara do it all? I'm interested to hear what you have to say.

Thanks.

I spent many years with Poser and Bryce, then discovered that Carrara could do everything they do and much more. In particular it loads Poser type content (e.g. fully rigged characters like M4 and V4) directly, no "import". And it handles much larger scenes with ease. I tried an earlier version of DS and got very frustrated, but I admit I'm strongly biased in favor of Carrara. There are a very few scenes I like that require DS, but beyond that I never use it.

evilproducer

DUDU_00001 said:

evilproducer said:

SickleYield said:

Since we're asking questions, does Carrara have an equivalent to smoothing and collision? How do you deal with pokethrough? With the modeling tools?

Carrara does have smoothing, but I don't know how it works with collision. It is very useful. Using soft select in the assembly room is easier than it sounds. You can also add morphs. which is also pretty easy. This is coming from someone not that fluent with the vertex modeler.

I think that he wants to speak about the physical engine of Carrara which is extremely powerful…

I took it to mean collision artifacts (pokethrough). I don't have C8.5, but I have been trying to keep up with the discussion. DAZ Studio has some smoothing option that if used with Auto-fit, is supposed to help with the mesh collisions (pokethrough).

When you see poke-through, it's proper designation would be collision artifact. It's quicker to type pokethrough or pokethru. There are a few variations on it.

I could be wrong though. It's been known to happen. My wife will gladly testify to that. ;-)

evilproducer

I will say Dart, I can understand your reluctance to render in D/S.

The DAZ Studio interaction between its render engine, lights, and shaders seem far more complicated than it needs to be. That's why I see many new users make the same mistakes in their renders, right out of the box. Shadows are the biggest bugaboo that the new users seem to have problems with. That and the interaction with lights and shaders. BTW, I've been following some threads lately, and what the D/S user needs to do to get a simple glow, seems ridiculously difficult. Now, let's say you want the glow as a light source..... Yikes!

Having tried rendering in DAZ Studio, if I were to set up the 3Delight engine (or whatever it's called) to approximate Carrara's default render settings, the render time for 3Delight would be noticeably longer.

nDelphi

Dartanbeck said:

The thing is, Carrara seems to me to be a lot faster than Firefly. Carrara comes with default settings of 8 passes with ray tracing. That would really slow down a Poser render. But that's a fast setting for Carrara - the default Object Accuracy of 2, Shadows at 4, Fast Anti aliasing, etc., - Carrara screams that render out in a flash.

That's my biggest gripe with DAZ Studio (this and the fact that Carrara can handle large models way better), I use UE2 a lot for renders now, and I use my own settings, for great final renders you seriously have to jack up the settings and they can take a very long time to render vs the render times in Carrara for the same scene. I need to get back to Carrara myself.

SickleYield

nDelphi said:

Dartanbeck said:

The thing is, Carrara seems to me to be a lot faster than Firefly. Carrara comes with default settings of 8 passes with ray tracing. That would really slow down a Poser render. But that's a fast setting for Carrara - the default Object Accuracy of 2, Shadows at 4, Fast Anti aliasing, etc., - Carrara screams that render out in a flash.

That's my biggest gripe with DAZ Studio (this and the fact that Carrara can handle large models way better), I use UE2 a lot for renders now, and I use my own settings, for great final renders you seriously have to jack up the settings and they can take a very long time to render vs the render times in Carrara for the same scene. I need to get back to Carrara myself.

So Carrara does have a 64 bit version?

nDelphi

SickleYield said:

So Carrara does have a 64 bit version?

Yes. But only the Pro version, if I remember correctly. The regular cheaper version is still 32-bit only.

evilproducer

Plus, the Pro version also includes the 32 bit version. From what I've read, the 32 bit version says standard, but if you enter the Pro serial numbers, it un-locks the Pro 32 bit version.

Dartanbeck

SickleYield said:

Since we're asking questions, does Carrara have an equivalent to smoothing and collision? How do you deal with pokethrough? With the modeling tools?

Sorry Sickle... missed this one. Yes. It has SubD smoothing and you can use it on any mesh - and even use the SubD to model in high detail, including using a really cool displacement paint brush, with a decent selection of textures to start with, too. Things like Genesis that use it as part of their thing get a slider right in the main working view, other models can get it by going into mesh edit mode, where you may also change edges from smoothed to creased... whatever you need to do... really cool!

HD Morphs for Genesis currently are not supported, and don't work.

More2burn

I was wondering something myself when I found this thread. Carrara doesn't have "Power Poser" in it does it? I know it got Puppeteer in 8 but not sure about Power Poser? If I'm right and it doesn't have this, then that would be a major thing for me. Anyone know for sure? If not Carrara can import all the poses made in DAZ Studio without any issues though, right? You would need the latest version to use Genesis and G2?

DUDU

More2burn said:

I was wondering something myself when I found this thread. Carrara doesn't have "Power Poser" in it does it? I know it got Puppeteer in 8 but not sure about Power Poser? If I'm right and it doesn't have this, then that would be a major thing for me. Anyone know for sure? If not Carrara can import all the poses made in DAZ Studio without any issues though, right? You would need the latest version to use Genesis and G2?

You can have an idea about Pupeeter here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtFnC1a-pPY&feature=related
Carrara accept .pz3 too...

More2burn

I was wondering about PowerPoser. Both work very good together and make it so much faster. So is Power Poser in Carrara or just Puppeteer? Power Poser has the nodes on a 2d image that moves the joints, for those who may not know.

DUDU

I use Poser very little, sometimes for the clothing and animation.
I prefer Carrara by far because it is much more convivial and as powerful as Poser.
There are two things where Poser is higher : the soft dynamic clothes and hairs dynamics, but Carrara has many more possibility of creation than Poser.
I am of agreement with you, the two programs make the pair but, each one has his preferred tools…
What is "Power Poser" ?

DUDU

Afflicted not to have understood the question, after research, I saw that “PowerPose” is an option of Studio…
Sorry.

WendyLuvsCatz

no Power Poser in not in Carrara but you can certainly import poses made using it in studio by converting to pz2 using the Poser format exporter script free in Daz store.
C8.5 can also read one saved in .duf format.
you may need to import it on a figure that is not Genesis.

More2burn

No, its fine. Easy to misunderstand what I was talking about. Ya, for those who don't know "Power Poser" is a feature you find in DAZ Studio under the same menu you find Puppeteer. When you use both these things together inside Studio, you will save yourself a ton of time. PowerPoser to pose and the other to animate. I dont think PowerPoser is inside Carrara like Puppeteer is and I was just saying it should be because this would make the perfect program for me.

I think I'm gonna try to keep Studio and Carrara open at the same time. I'll try and make a pose with "Power Poser" and export every time I need a new position, and use Carrara for the animation because it's so good with Carrara. Anyone know if that would work? I havn't got that far yet, still workin on textures.

More2burn

Thanks for the confirmation wendy♥catz.

laststand@runbox.com

wendy♥catz said:

no Power Poser in not in Carrara but you can certainly import poses made using it in studio by converting to pz2 using the Poser format exporter script free in Daz store.

I found Poser Power, but I couldn't find Power Poser to save my life. Then I found PowerPose. :lol: I'm off the get the Poser export script now.

I learn more on this forum than on any other. Thanks wendy♥catz.

Dartanbeck

More2burn said:

I was wondering something myself when I found this thread. Carrara doesn't have "Power Poser" in it does it? I know it got Puppeteer in 8 but not sure about Power Poser? If I'm right and it doesn't have this, then that would be a major thing for me. Anyone know for sure? If not Carrara can import all the poses made in DAZ Studio without any issues though, right? You would need the latest version to use Genesis and G2?

No idea what you mean by Power Poser. Maybe Power Loader, which can pre-load Morph INJ into your figure upon loading of the figure. Perhaps Power Pose is a special thing for DAZ Studio, in which case you certainly may save the pose file within DS for use in Carrara. If it's an animation, I know that, if you own AniMate, you may Bake the DS key frames into an AniBlock. Then use the aniBlock importer for Carrara to import the animation. Poser animated poses load fine in Carrara, and with Fenric's BVH/PZ2 Exporter for Carrara, we may export our Carrara animations to Poser animated PZ2 files, which I do all the time. Such is how I make my animated pose packs.

DUDU

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/artzone/pub/software/powerpose/start

evilproducer

It's what you're used to of course, but personally, I find it easier to start from scratch in Carrara. I like using IK tracking and target helpers to assist me with posing and animating.

DUDU

Dartanbeck said:

Poser animated poses load fine in Carrara, and with Fenric's BVH/PZ2 Exporter for Carrara, we may export our Carrara animations to Poser animated PZ2 files, which I do all the time. Such is how I make my animated pose packs.

Dart,
When I create my characters animated in Poser, I import them in Carrara in .pz3, but I do not build a scene.
Afflicted for Fenric…