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My use of the word "inference" was not directed at you PhilW. It was to toward the comment that was made in response to your inquiry.
"...don't worry...We love the messenger" speaks volumes. It's a partial of the saying, "hate the message, don't hate the messenger". To me, the comment and the years of indifference communicate the prevailing sentiment that Daz3D seems to have toward the subject of Carrara. Carrara, Bryce and Hexagon took Daz3D to the dance. With the existing software, Daz3D tapped into an established market, making it possible to sell content and pursue Daz Studio. But now that the usefulness of the legacy software has lessoned (to Daz3d), any conversation about the future of these tools has become an aggravation. Take a look at Bryce and Hexagon forums. The good folks in those communities are asking the same questions - they too are greeted with indifference and silence.
Much respect to PhilW, Dartanbeck and the many others who have continuely contributed to this community in a measurable way. It stinks to have been here long enough to remember the roll out of the new features from Carrara 5 to the present. At first - It was exciting to see a feature by feature reveal from C5 to C6 then to C7 and at that time I was eager to invest $$$. Just hate to see it tank.
Hi Realtime, thanks for responding, as a fellow S&M (sales & marketing) person I'm sure you can appreciate that while a customer is important as the manager for sales you have work with your director and the director for development to negotiate how resources will be allocated to maintaining customer satisfaction versus budget limitations versus meeting your quarterly/annual sales targets. I have customers every month asking if we can customize our products to meet a certain need. When we quote $60K and 3 months for the work now there wondering if they can make do with what exists. Daz isn't Micro$oft. I doubt they have programmers just sitting around wondering what to do next. Hexagon, Daz Studio, Bryce, and Carrara (all completely different to program) require different teams for each with maybe some cross-over. The management asks development and sales if I make these improvements to each software what is my forecasted cost of development and increased total sales. The math decides where to spend your money. Customer satisfaction is important except when you have bridge loans with your bank and they want to see how you are guaranteed to generate revenue next fiscal.
There is another point that seems to be discussed that I am not clear about. How is genesis 3 so different from genesis 1 and 2?
My understanding was that is based upon the tri-ax weight mapping model and that the only difference is a simplified mesh (which means muscles won't show as well without special morphs or normal maps), fewer bones in the body, and a great many bones in the face (no bones in previous faces?)?
If my understanding is correct, then they will only need to extend or add a new class structure to Carrara. So it is not a leap of logic to say they will add Genesis 3 support to the next Carrara. If they are going to bother spending money to develop Carrara further then ofcourse they will want as much Gen 3 tie-in as possible. Software development is very expensive (money, time & resource consuming) and I doubt they ever break-even on all the development costs just by selling the software itself (based on their prices) so the content pays for the software development.
As I have said many times before, go dig up the old articles where people from Daz have spoken. They only bought the software to not be dependent on Poser for their content sales. Content sales is where it is at for Daz. I think they are currently trying to figure a way to license their entire library to someone with the money to pay them to modify for their needs.
G3 isn't triax weight-mapped, it's dual quaternion weight-mapped.
And I think these new developments whereby DAZ is actually selling and advertising and promoting competing 3D apps in its online store makes it even more certain that their business model is an online store, not a software developer.
When's the last time you went to a Toyota dealer and they were promoting and selling the new line of Fords?
DAZ no longer has a vested interest in its software as a revenue source. It is SOLELY to support its online store sales. That's what DAZ does now. The more 3D apps out there, the better for DAZ because it means more people buying 3D content. All they care about is if you can drag 'n drop some of it into those other apps. Otherwise, they get a percentage from the software sales and they're happy.
It's the WalMart model. They don't care if they promote and sell 6 brands of competing toothpaste, they just care about the revenues from the sale. And with that business model, there is no reason to invest big $$ in developing Carrara or Bryce or Hexagon, unless it significantly helps store sales, and the investment is MINOR. Unfortunately, the investment required for developing any of those apps is HUGE, and it won't significantly help store sales. Especially compared to other ventures.
The effort required to give Carrara a major overhaul would be huge, and I consequently do not expect that to happen. However I do not believe that the effort required to deliver G3 compatibility is huge, which is why I am perhaps more optimistic than some others that it will happen at some stage.
Oh, and G3 has more, not less, bones than G1 or 2. There are more "spine" bones, more articulation in the hands and feet and the twist in the upper arms and thighs is now on a separate bone from the bending, which makes some sense as the area of influence is different for each. Plus there are now many more bones in the face, so rrather than relyng on a set of morphs, you can more interactively adjust bones to give a wider range of expressions. Plus the dual quaternion bending, which gives better preservation of volume in more extreme bends. So a number of definite improvements, even if some have reservations about the topology of the mesh.
I'm curious why you think that the effort to deliver G3 compatibility is not huge...
You may be right, I'm just basing my speculation on the ages it took to finalize G2 compatibility in Carrara. Unless my rememberer is broken again. I recall it was over a year or something like that. Or am I off base on that?
Yes it took a long time, something like a year. Maybe they hit issues they were not expecting. Which could be why they are not publicly promising anything regarding Carrara and G3. But my belief that it will not be too difficult is based on the fact that you can export G3 from DAZ Studio and get a figure that works in Carrara, but not with the morphs intact, or others have reported exports where the morphs work but the figure then doesn't follow the bones. So all the pieces can be made to work (or so it appears to me), it is a matter of getting them all to work together. Which doesn't sound like as big a task as developing and integrating a new technology from scratch. I have no idea on timescales either. But I think the economics of delivering G3 compatibility will look generally favourable, whereas some other developments, which would not promote content sales, are much less likely to happen. Again, just my personal view, and the only way it will be proved one way or another will be to wait and see what happens. Maybe I am just a "glass half full" kind of person.
Believe it or not, in the real world I'm very much a "glass half full" person. Actually I've found that optimism is the way you get great things to happen. The greatest advertising logo ever was, IMO, "Just do it", by Nike. Yeah, it can be taken the wrong way, but like I've said before, rational optimism is the way to go.
There are times, however, when no amount of "glass half full" is gonna help you, and in fact might leave you in the dust. Sometimes the glass is cracked. In my opinion at least. For what little it's worth.
Hehehe ..... thanks mike. I just came back to update my post after re-reading the Daz blurb page about why Gen 3 is the penultimate 3D figure in this galaxy when I read your post.
"New technological advancements, such as Dual Quaternion weight maps, triangle free mesh, reduce polygon count and UDIM standard UVs, make Genesis 3 even more compatible with other industry standard 3D applications for ease of cross platform use. " ( http://www.daz3d.com/genesis-3 )
http://softimage.wiki.softimage.com/xsidocs/idef_deforms_DualQuaternionSkinning.htm
http://www.fxguide.com/featured/udim-uv-mapping/
So has anyone tried importing Victoria 7 (Gen 3) into Maya with these new weight blending and uv mapping schemes?
Yep, collada import works quite well for both bending and materails (UV's). FBX, not so much, the bending isn't good at all. Of course I haven't found the morphs, but that may be just because I don't know Maya.
Thanks Dustrider. Weird that FBX has difficulty from Daz to Maya since Autodesk owns FBX ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBX and http://www.autodesk.com/products/fbx/overview ).
You would think autodesk would make it as painless as possible to import FBX from other packages. I realize Daz is responsible for its FBX exporter where the problem probably lies but you would think autodesk would be thrilled to help fix its exporter to comply with what autodesk requires for import. After all it could mean more customers for autodesk products and for them more software users is always better. Plus the cost of assistance would be peanuts to them.
Work has meant limited time to do CGI this year, but a return after 12 months to find Carrara abandoned by Daz3D is very sad. I bought a lot of content that I can load into Carrara, and found Daz3D application very mundane to use compared to Carrara, which has such control over lighting, camera position, shading, and most importantly the quality of rendering that Carrara is just plainly way ahead. As said by DustRider, Carrara's unique offering was all in one that handle all content. I have bought Daz3D and Poser content and made it work in Carrara; a little twiddling with shaders and configuration and wham. Many kids probably wouldn't have the time or patience to do this or dig around the Net finding tutorials and manuals that always seemed to be hard to find for Carrara (again, mistake in terms of encouraging uptake). I hope they sell it rather than just let it die.
1 - over 500
2 - Carrara (almost exclusively - though have played a little with Blender)
3 - still exploring G2, but yes - keep the principle of it supporting all content formats.
I'm not sure where you're getting that Carrara was abandoned. I think folks are focusing a bit too much on other negative comments from other forum users and applying to much weight to guesses. It becomes kind of a negative echo chamber.
Carrara has always been a step behind in DAZ 3D's figure integration. Look at the Transposer plugin in version 5, which was needed just to load a Poser style figure (and then you also needed Poser installed if I recall correctly). Then with the advent of Genesis and Genesis 2, we had to wait for parity. Why would this be any different? How does this wait make Carrara abandoned? I have Carrara loaded right now and am using it this very second. Nothing that has been added in recent builds stopped functioning in the last few weeks.
If you are referring to DAZ's marketing of Shade (an offering by a third party developer), I see nothing so compelling to drop Carrara, and some features that are included in the standard version of Carrara, are only in the Pro version of Shade, which costs a darn site more than the Pro version of Carrara at the moment.
Evil,
In March 2015, Steve Spencer, VP of Marketing at DAZ, said in an interview in DS Creative magazine:
Also, Mr. Headwax started this thread, saying "DAZ abandons Carrara..." so it has to be true
But as EP noted, DS was always their main focus. And since he says "we still have plans for our other titles as well", that must mean Carrara.
Your last bullet supports my statement. If you recall, I never said Carrara was the top priority. I said I don't know where people get the idea it was abandoned. All this speculation is just that: Speculation. And judging from some of the responses in this thread and other threads, the mis-information spreads, and what becomes idle speculation about the status of Carrara, suddenly becomes fact in some people's minds that DAZ has abandoned Carrara, or that Shade is meant to replace Carrara.
Again, no real facts. No real evidence beyond circumstantial evidence. Yet the discussion goes on and on repeating the same old unprovable arguments, giving new users and potential new users the false (as far as we know) impression that DAZ has killed Carrara. Which, I might add, can scare away potential users and hurt or further degrade the user base, which is needed to encourage continued support.
By the way, for those not familiar with "corporate-speak"...
When a company shifts focus away from a product, and doesn't take an opportunity to address the public and generate excitement about that product, then what does that mean? It likely means they don't want their customers or prospective customers to expect much, if anything, from that product in the future. When someone hands you a microphone and gives you an opportunity to address a large audience and say whatever you want, you take the opportunity to further your goals as a company. And if one of those goals is to generate excitement for upcoming development for Carrara, you say "I think our customers will be pleased at what's in store for Carrara", or "we have plans to continue development of Carrara", or as they've said before "Carrara 9 is due to be released this quarter".
But instead he shifted focus solely on DAZ Studio.
Now, you're free to shift blame to "other users" and their negative comments, but it is DAZ who has made these comments to the public, and has never addressed negative speculation about Carrara and Bryce and Hex, and not given a single indication of future development of Carrara in the last few years.
Again, it is up to DAZ to assure potential or new users of upcoming development and support of Carrara. Not forum members. But they don't. And if they wanted to quash negative rumors, they could with only ONE post to this or other forums. But they haven't in how many years?
And you blame forum members for rational speculation? They didn't even respond to the email sent as a result of the survey in this thread with anything whatsoever that would address the concerns.
Let me ask you Mr. Evil...what makes you think they WILL develop Carrara in the future, even a little bit? What has been said by DAZ? "Plans for their other titles" is meaningless, just like "plans to have a new Carrara 9 in 1Q of 2014" was meaningless. For all we know that could mean they're going to scrap the other titles, or sell them, or whatever. Never a mention of development, or support, or anything like that. Just "plans".
If you want to believe that means development then go ahead. But again I ask you why you infer that's the case?
I think they've been burned so many times by complaints about missing deadlines or about specific features not working in Carrara that they indeed don't want their customers to expect much. Given that they've gone to the effort to get Genesis 1 (and .duf in general) working in Carrara, I would be surprised if they aren't at least trying to get G3 working. It probably doesn't have the priority of their other software development projects, and they don't want to set any expectations about when or if it will happen, but given the lag between DS4 and C8.5, I'd be surprised if they had already given up on it. I doubt that adding dual quaternion weight-mapping to Carrara would be as much effort as adding triax was.
I agree that DAZ, like other companies, is somewhat hesitant to over-promise.
But keep in mind what they have publicly said about DAZ Studio in that same interview only 5 months ago:
Come on guys. Not even a mention of the name "Carrara", but lots of excitement generation for DAZ Studio.
Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe Carrara will have another update. And maybe it will have more than just content tweaks. But if so, why didn't they tell us it's coming or "on the roadmap" at least? The answer seems obvious, doesn't it?
You have no more facts than I do, as you are well aware. As to what I can infer, well, ignoring all the complaints about what was included (or not included) in the last update, many people were lining up with their shovels to bury Carrara prior to the update because Genesis 2 had come out and Carrara was incompatible with it. Then lo' and behold! Carrara was updated with Genesis 2 support and some other minor bug fixes. It would have been nice to see some more done, but it was developed.
So, my inference is that it may be the same with this situation, in that there is a small update to squash a few bugs and add the latest figure compatibility. I'm hoping for more, but I'm inferring from past events that we will at least get something similar to the last update. Since the announcement of Carrara's death has not been made by DAZ in the past or the present up to this point, I'm going to say that my inference has a higher probability than yours. I may be proven wrong of course, because as I said already, I don't have any facts. But then again neither do you- only inferences.
Because there was no danger of people NOT seeing major new developments with DS. The landscape/rock/tree generator "on the roadmap" is the only SPECIFIC enhancement listed, so it might get some complaints a few years down the line if it doesn't materialize, but everything else there has in fact occurred -- adding Iray alone is a major increase in functionality that shocked people.
Evil, you don't always need a list of facts that tell you an answer. Sometimes you can use limited facts, together with knowledge and experience and rational deductive reasoning, to figure out the truth. Or at least a reasonably likely truth.
Did you ever watch Columbo on TV years ago? I love that show. Peter Falk was a detective. And the show would start off with the audience watching the criminal do his murder or whatever, and then Columbo would come on the scene and the rest of the show was watching Columbo figure out what the audience already knew happened. I loved that show.
And what was so interesting was that Columbo could take seemingly minor or unrelated bits of information and deduce something that turned out to be obvious. It's just that the folks around him never made the connections that Columbo could make. "But the flowers and ground outside the window were wet from rain, so if the murderer climbed in the window shouldn't there be mud on the floor?". Stuff like that. Obvious when you think about it, but you have to use your head to think about it in the first place.
Deductive reasoning.
Now for example, the VP of Marketing of DAZ said they have 50 employees. And I recalled that there were about 10 developers on the Carrara splash screen.
Fine. 50 employees, about 10 developers. So what?
Well, deductive reasoning, if you have a feel for corporate salaries and expenses, lets you deduce that DAZ needs around $5 million in revenues each year to pay employees and related expenses. And $1 million per year for 10 developers. And that means they need to sell 100,000 items at $10 per item to cover developer expenses. And that can tell you a HUGE amount about what DAZ is facing for revenue requirements and business strategy. And it tells you a lot about how difficult it is for DAZ to pursue software development, and why it might be reasonable to assume that it's something they might be hesitiant to pursue. As long as you can make the connection that a wet ground outside the window means the carpet should be wet...
Now, is that "wrong" or should it just be dismissed as "irrational inference"? Well, if you don't buy the numbers that it's reasonable to assume $100k per employee, then yeah I suppose. But deductive reasoning like that can tell you a lot. And it's all based on knowledge and experience and rational analysis.
Now maybe that seems like crazy handwaving to some. But to others who have a background in stuff like this it might seem obvious.
So please, don't be so quick to dismiss and discredit what others say just because you may not have the same deductive reasoning behind your beliefs.
Yes, I agree that $5M/yr is a reasonable estimate of the cost for 50 employees. However, 10 developers listed on the Carrara splash screen doesn't mean they were concurrent, or that they are all presently working 100% on Carrara. About Daz Studio lists 6 software developers, 5 content developers, 3 QA, 2 documentation, and 4 customer support, and those 20 people are definitely not working 100% on Daz Studio. I don't have a recent version of Carrara, but C7 Express in 2008 listed 9 developers. I don't know how much overlap there is in the lists, or how many of those 9 people are still at Daz3D, and what fraction of their time is devoted to Carrara. So I doubt that active Carrara development accounts for 20% of Daz3D's annual costs.
Yeah, like I say my numbers are likely off, but keep in mind there are related expenses...office space, utilities, benefits. Contract developers working off site don't need those expenses, but you're probably paying extra for that in their contract to some extent. On the other hand there are QA guys like you say and support/admin personnel that add to the costs.
The point being, it's expensive for the development of software. If it isn't $1 million per year, it might be more, it might be less. But I think that's a reasonable ballpark, and it tells us that they need to sell a lot of copies of the software, or a TON of $10 content items just to cover those costs.
Anyone here is free to plug in better numbers and see if you come up with a different conclusion.
OFF TOPIC:
Since Hexagon was mentioned here in a post above, I just thought I would refer to Gigi_7's post on August 9th 2015.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/879521/#Comment_879521
QUOTE:
DS Creative 9 (march 2015)
http://issuu.com/philatdsc/docs/ds_creative_09
Page 21, question 13 to 15.
END QUOTE.
I think corporate speak aside it is pretty clear Hexagon has been shelved for the forseeable future.
I believe (and I may be mistaken), but the main problem for the future of Carrara and Hexagon is their interface were built with tools that were proprietary and may no longer be avaliable so any update would mean a complete re-write of the interface. Plus to make Hexagon 64bit would mean starting from scratch for everything because it is more than just changing data types. You also have build for the new windows paradigm including how you handle multi-threading.
These programs were designed before the Windows 2000 era. They may have been updated but the original design framework would still be there, even for Carrara. Really to move forward to the Windows 10 world they would have to be rebuilt from the ground up, so that kind of investment makes sense if your main business is selling 3D software but it in my opinion it doesn't make sense as a secondary product. Your best to just keep milking the Carrara cash cow with tweaks and de-bugging. Although I still contend adding Genesis 3 would not be as difficult as when they went from V4/M4 to Genesis so I think they will do it if they do anything.