But An Open GL preview would be invaluable for previewing before exporting to another app.

I'm no programmer (I know some of you are) but Carrara does have curves (has a spline modeler) and although we have a fur plugin (anything grows) I do wonder if its possible to do the curve implementation in there too for exporting and importing strand-based hair? food for thought anyway. anyway, Open GL would be nice, if just to speed up previewing. I love Open GL in Carrara... I can do test renders by just rendering a selection of an area in the assemble room, don't even have to render out the entire document... wonderful if all you want to see is how a shader for an iris turned out g

Carrara does have curves Is it able to render and especially import them (e.g. Cinema won't import the line primitive from OBJs)? I don't own Carrara, maybe I should give the demo a try. Will you buy me a full version if I write a P5 hair importer? ;)

The whole initial point of this thread was that Curious Labs has claimed that DAZ|Studio will not be compeition for Poser... so, getting back to that..... In the case of DAZ|Studio, you have to consider that it's not just a bunch of programmers making an application that will be sed by artists or even a bunch of artists who have a little bit of programming knowledge. DAZ HAS programmers on their staff who work closely with the designers/developers at DAZ of the DAZ Original products. DAZ's main source of income is the models they produce.. add onto that the models that their brokered artists produce. You are not keeping in mind that DAZ has eluded that they plan to use D|S as their primary rendering platform and the tool they will eventually use as the primary platform for their 3d model development. This means that their programmers have to work very closely with the art team to ensure that these goals can be met. Curious Labs, in contrast, is a software development house. They work with 3D applications but as the application itself, not the artwork produced with or for it is their main source of income, the functionality for the end-user, the artist, is not of as high importance as it would be if their primary income was from content for the software. Namely, they don't have to use it themselves, they jsut have to make it work well enough to sell. DAZ on the other has to not only make it work, they will be using this application themselves. Their artists will be using this application to do animations, product pinups, and I'm certain eventually, product development. Now, considering this, which company do think in the long run will be putting out an application that does more for the artist? Why the ones who have to use the software, of course. I think I'm going to place my chips on DAZ. However, in the long run, it's not necessarily the better product, but the most popular that ultimately wins over the consumers.... and in cases like that, a company's track record comes to mind. Regardless of whether or not they have any experience with DAZ as a software development house, customers do, however have bad experiences with Curious Labs as one. Thousands of dissatisfied customers, who will never forget everything that occured with the Poser 5 release, will look to DAZ's new application and decide that they'd rather support DAZ in hopes that in the long run, D|S delivers for them all the things that Poser 5 was supposed to, whether or not D|S actually does or ever will. Because when they think of DAZ, they think of quality and great customer service, and when they think of Curious Labs, they feel only betrayal. [Damnit, I need an EDIT button, this is the second time I deleted this post] I think considering those things it'd be incredibly naive for anyone to think that DAZ|Studio will not be compeition for Poser in the long run. Once it no longer requires Poser to function, I think that Marc Keohane better watch out, because i'll bet you anything that the masses will flock to it as their new salvation.

Having worked all sides of the fence in the 20 years I've been mucking about with computers, I think we can safely surmise the following: DAZ make models, if poser goes tits-up they stuck with a shrinking market with no way to display thier goods. So they need to create some kind of app that they can give away free to show off thier buyable content. At the very least this will need some kind of industry standard renderer, the better it makes the models look, the better it serves the purposes for which it's built. Daz have stated publically that Studio will load .obj and .pz3 files, so unless you have another tool to manipulate .cr2 & .pz3 files, etc. You'll still need poser. The interface won't look like poser's if only because they could be busted for "look and feel" (copying an interface) and most people outside of "the family" think poser's interface is "quirky" if not downright unprofessional.. It will be smaller and faster, and wont do everything poser does, (and certainly not the way poser does it :) This is because it's being written from the ground up and it uses OpenGL which can be hardware accelerated. In doing so it can avoid the "cruft" that is the codebase that both CL and poser are wedded to. It won't be as easy to use as poser, (nothing is) but if they want to carry thier current user base with them it will be simpler, on a fundamental level, than most professional 3D apps, becuase what really hurt P5 was not so much that it didn't work, but that it was hard to get it to do things that didn't work. At least harder IMO, than the equivalent function in poser4. It'll be modular, (because all modern 3D programs are) and the plugins will be more complicated than the base program, because people who buy extra bits will be expecting bells and whistles, with the emphasis here on the word "buy". It will have bugs, all programs do. Whether it the second comming or a fossilised turd is something we'll only be able to tell once we get our mits on it, and then opinions will differ as to the state of the emporers clothes... :) later jb

Seems to me the two apps have the potential of being complimentary, not merely competition for one another. As Kelderek indicated so well, we won't know until we can assess the advantages of DS, but lets say, for example, that its rendering engine will be superior (or in some way more appropriate or attractive for some renders) to Poser's, but Poser will remain the preferred app for posing and setting up scenes. Not unlike how I view the Poser/Vue or Poser/Bryce relationship. In such a case, it would be great to have both apps. Just one scenario, admittedly speculative. In spite of whatever valid complaints there are about CL/P5, I see no need to make a big stink about one's affliation to one company or app over the other. Yes, I'm having a "can't we all just get along" moment. :-)

Three screen shots and it's supposed to be the cat's ass? Damn. Seems to me we saw a lot of those when P5 was being hyped, and the drool factor around here almost hit the knees. Then P5 comes out, and it ain't what it claimed to be, and the pitchforks and torches followed. Now this Studio thing is being hyped with a few screen shots and a lot more drool. You people ever learn?

Stop chewing stuff until you get indigestion. Its bad for you. No one said one way or the other what/when/how and why. The only thing I said was: that the CL CEO did not have any inside info related to DAZ, or Daz|Studio. Lets all discuss this when the time comes.

::Will you buy me a full version if I write a P5 hair importer? ;) :: no, but I'd buy the importer g you can write off the purchase from your taxes as a business expense yanno, or better yet... your company could actually ask Antoine for a copy ;) anyway, the CEO did mention Carrara importing as being worked on, or did I not read correctly?

BTW, I'm not drooling over a few screenshots. Those screenshots tell me nothing other than that I like the color of the interface and that it apparently supports hardware accelerations and turning of parameter dials. As for the release of DAZ|Studio, I have faith in DAZ to release a good product in the long run, and I'm quite confident that it will eventually give Poser/CL a run for their money. Does that mean that it will be a great application? No. Only time will tell that. But I have faith in DAZ as a company to try very hard to bring us a great application. The point is, however, that the masses will see it as the new mecca, as a salvation, because that's what masses do, and hence this makes D|S competition for Poser in the long run whether the CEO of Curious Labs wants to admit it or not.

This is the kind of stuff I love to hear from programmers of a company. Honest answers, yes and no, why and why not, and listening to people's requests for future plans of the product, without being condescending or snotty. Its why I have bought the program Carrar twice, preordered it even, and am happy with it, even though it still doesn't do 'everything' I want yet. They listen and they deliver, even though it takes time, and I do understand it takes time. They even deliver an honest polite answer if it can't be done right away. I can't ask for more, really. I'd like to see more of that kind of conduct here. take care, Robin .. Hi, there is no plan to put animation in the background or anything like this. We simply cannot work on everything at the same time ! So each version has to focus on a number of issues and this time animation was not the main focus. Actually we had planned some animation features for Carrara 3 (bones, physics and particles) but eventually it did not fit in the schedule. Our goal is really to turn Carrara into an all purpose application that can do everything from stills to animations... Of course it is all a matter of resources, the more people buy the upgrades, the more resources we'll have to invest in the product and the more features and improvements you will get in the next version... Since there are so many people asking for animation improvements, I'll make sure to make it a priority for the next release. Charles

Um... bijou, what's that have to do with this thread?

no, but I'd buy the importer g you can write off the purchase from your taxes as a business expense yanno, or better yet... your company could actually ask Antoine for a copy ;) My company...? I'm an unemployed student... But it wouldn't be worth it, with that plugin that is (hopefully) coming soon from reiss-studio, right? BTW, if you like the support you got from Eovia, you'd love Pixels - their programmers are among the most active posters in their web forum.

Regarding Hype. Answer me this: Who is doing all the hyping about D|S? Is it DAZ, or is it Us? It seems to me that this community may very well be shooting itself in the foot with all of this speculation.

I don't think it's us building up hype, but rather us being dramatic about it, as we as artists tend to be. ;) Half the time we don't take anything seriously at all and the other half we take things deadly serious. Point is, yeah, all this "hype" that is being mentioned about D|S (or that you claim is being mentioned) is by the community, not by DAZ. However, consider this... how much real hype has been made? People have said, "I hope D|S does this" or "I hope D|S does that" but no conrete claims have been made as to it's advanced capabilities, everything is speculation, and interpretation of the few official statements that have been made by DAZ. I have faith that DAZ will put out a good product, but do I know for sure? No, I don't. I do, however, feel confident in saying that D|S will eventually give CL/Poser a run for their money, given the way people feel about DAZ and Poser as a general whole. But again, that doesn't mean that the competition will last, and it doesn't mean that it won't. The point is just that there will be competition.

Until one company buys the other, that is.

Wolf359: Regarding your problems rendering a .rib file from Poser Pro 4 in 3Delight. This isn't really a good test of the renderer, because there are some problems with the .rib files that come out of Poser. To start with Poser uses the wrong path separator ( instead of /)...apparently there was some confusion with the Renderman spec around the time they were putting in the support. And the Renderman renderers I've used only want TIFF files, so you have to change that (and usually TIFFize your JPG textures). But even then there's usually some renderer-specific stuff in the file that needs to change. I've rendered .rib files from Poser in both BMRT and Aqsis. The files required minor changes for both renderers, but not the same changes. I think there is great promise in exporting Poser to .rib, and rendering it in a Renderman renderer, but it takes some work, it appears that not very many people successfully do it (or at least they don't talk about it), and I haven't gotten it right yet. So it may not be completely 3Delight's fault if it can't handle a raw .rib file from Poser. Be well... Lynn

To start with Poser uses the wrong path separator ( instead of /)...apparently there was some confusion with the Renderman spec around the time they were putting in the support. IIRC, this change is only required for BMRT. In any case, he's using the MacOS X version which is using Unix style paths where Poser exports Mac style paths as used by the original Mac version of Pixar's PRMan.

Question: Since D|S is a modular program and I seem to recall them saying that others would be able to make modules for it... might not Curious Labs decide that if Daz can make figures for Poser that they'll start making modules that would work on D|S? Thus allowing them to survive even if Poser goes belly up? There's always more money to be made from the add-ons than from the origional base product and it would keep the prices low.

Now there's a thought!

After reading through all these posts I wonder if it would even be legal for Daz Studio to write it's own PZ3, or CR2 files? Importing a file is one thing, but saving a file using Curious Labs' file format may be stepping over the line ... Would Daz need to license the file format, and could they?

There was some controvosy about this a while ago, when in the first P5 EULA, Curious Labs said that they owned the Poser file format, and therefore they owned any figures that were created with it (or something like that). That's why DAZ didn't create any content for P5, and only for P4, which didn't have that clause in its EULA. Anyway as other members pointed out, you cannot copyright a file format, and CL ending up removing that from the P5 EULA.

So, DAZ is free to give D|S Poser functionality, just as CL is free to give Poser D|S functionality. I am pretty sure that is correct, please correct me if I'm wrong. :-)

IMHO I think that when CL took over Poser from Metacreations the product went down hill. I was please with P4 and PP but after spending hard earned money on a product (POSER 5, bought it pre-release before I knew of the problems) that works but not like what was promised I don't think I will go any further with CL on Poser. I don't want to post any options on DS till I actually have tried it. BUt right now with the SR3 for P5 I think that things for CL will go down hill if the rush a release on P6. I personally won't buy it they would have to give it to me for free. Daz for a young company has been good to me with support, I think that them not rush DS is a good thing. I hope after they get DS out they start on other projects for the 3D world. IF CL goes as someone has said "bellyup" I hope a company like Daz or even Discreet picks up Poser.

No product stays around forever! If Poser goes belly-up, another one will come along and we'll get used to that one... As we have done for many years since the dawn of computers. Hell, I miss my old Commodore, too, but the world didn't stop because of its demise! DAZ, CL, who cares as long as we can work and have fun right now! It's only a tool, after all, not the second coming!

someone above pretty much summed it up... if (IF) poser goes tits up, then daz is screwed because most of their stuff is used by poser users. d|s has to be a competitor, or it's future is uncertain. i think that daz|studio is going to be a little bit of insurance for daz's future. my main point here was that any company who can see that another company who is about to produce a >similar< product, and doesn't see the possible competition looming in the future, is a company i probably wouldn't invest in. i love poser and what it does, but p5 pissed off a lot of people. that's going to have lasting effects no matter what cl does in their future. daz|studio may be just a beta soon, but in the future... poser had better look out. i'll bet you that if ford were the only producer of cars, then texaco would probably be developing one too, if you can dig that logic.