Hi guys, Ive been staring at the Eovia checkout page for hours and I just cant seem to click the purchase button. Ive just about had it with Poser 6 or This Program Is Not Responding as I like to call it. Dont get me wrong, I love Poser, but the constant crashes and memory issues are just killing my workflow. Ive read through some threads and It really seems like Carrara is the way to go. Can I get some opinions here? How is Carrara with multi-figure renders? (Several clothed Unimeshes) Is the Poser Import utility fairly easy to use? (It doesnt appear to be in the Carrara demo) Ill probably buy the damn thing anyway, unless somebody can talk me out of it Sheesh! I should have taken up ceramics instead of 3D, I'm going broke! Thanks guys, JT

I don't know..I've only got version 4, and trot it out each December for 'anniversary' pics. There should be a Carrara forum here that could tell you a lot more about it. Failing that, the only Carrara person around here I know is Tallpindo, and, bless his heart, his answers can be circumlocucious (sp?) in the extreme..;)

Carrara 5 Pro has two Poser importers, the native imorter and TransPoser. I only just got Carrara a few days ago so I haven't had time to try any complicated stuff like multi-figure renders, but the Poser import seems to work pretty well. (TransPoser sometimes freezes trying to import dynamic hair, tho). Render speed is definitely better than Poser's renderer. An added plus id that you can also import cr2, pp2 and hr2 files directly.

I got it a month ago and it's great! Renders beautifully but I'm getting re-hooked on Poser 6 after messing with the material romm and toon shader nodes!! I am however really impressed and pleased with Carrara 5 Pro!!! G

havent had C5Pro very long either, mostly only played with lighting and materials, it can also model though the render speed is greater, supports dual proccessors, along with network rendering, which is nice, and global lighting is nice P6 and C5P both have ups and downs with materials though in P6 you have slightly more control of what goes where whether it be driven by stupidity or not :P while C5P seems just a bit more "it doesn't belong there, so not available" and it also lacks (as far as i can tell) posers N node which i use quite a bit in doing things C5P does however have a "formula" node, to allow you to program in endless math formulas, with the same language as VC++ so you can replace endless poser math nodes, huge plus overall you get more power, and just lose a few minor things i love it, i just want my damn N node >.< oh and haven't tried dynamic hair in it, but people keep saying they're having problems with it, and i'm moving into realism with my animations, so haven't pushed fully for C5P yet due to that

The current patch to Carrara causes morph dials to be lost when using native import. The patch before it caused some parented objects to fly off and distort. They fixed the parented objects problem pretty fast though, so hopefully the second problem will also be fixed in the next patch. For now, if you get it, update only to 5.0.3, and stick to conforming objects. The last patch only took a week, hopefully the next one will also be quick.

Yeah, I noticed that. I tried to import a pz3 of M3 with sharkey's Angekyna wings, and ir imported with Mike on one end of the scene and the wings on the other end and about 1/4 the correct size.

That bug was fixed in 5.0.4, which sadly introduced the new morph dials bug. Possibly fixing one triggered the other, though you can never be sure with code sometimes, and I hear the Poser SDK is not a clean piece of code to deal with. All that said, once the bugs get worked out it promises to be an amazing tool... In the regular non-pro version alone (~$200) You get:

• a renderer closer in quality to Vue than Poser
• with a replicator like Vue's Ecosystem
• you get a professional level modeller good enough to have caused some cinema3d people to switch over
• you get a UV editor almost as good as UV Mapper pro
• you get tools designed to make morph creation easier (and they do, especially with curvy and roundish objects - which are the most popular things on a Poser model to get morphed [wink-wink]).
• You get a plant creation tool, something that requires a plugin with Vue, and which is better than Bryces.
• You can still pose figures.
• You can 'bone' figures (the Poser setup room).
• the native importer imports poser animation.

and more... I would like to ask anyone seeing the poser-specific bugs to report them at eovia3d.net... It would help to get a few others who see these things to speak about it there as well, where the eovia staff reads precisely to find and fix bugs. ;) The community needs more people who understand the needs of the Poser community to be vocal.

i only render in carrara5pro now - not in poser, love esthrer ps you can have terrains and suns and skies etc

go on get it - u know u want to!

AAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!! I just bought it! I couldn't take it. I played with the Particles Emitter in the demo version and it was a life altering experience. I'm downloading it now. Animations here I come!

now that you bought it, we can break the bad news to ya - has a memory leak bug worse than poser - crashes with more than 1 figure per scene - global lighting takes 2 days to calculate - importing obj files is bugged, crashes it - mirrors crash it - having more than 4 lights crashes it - maximum frames of an animation is 37 mwuhahaha we tricked you into buying it! jk

Plus side on the bug lists is that eovia is active in addressing those brought to their attention. Down side is a few people in the community try to deny any bug you might find actually exists... :)

I've use Carrara 4 pro an 5 pro and like both. I love the speed of renders especially for animations. The ability now to pose poser figure in C5 is really nice. It has good modeling capabilities (though I am exploring Hexagon presently for modeling). I heartily recommend it. HDRI rendering available, Ambient Occlusion, lights are good, and as it has an interface similar to Poser/Bryce I found it a good choice for me. I do all my rendering in it.
Having said that, I have not yet tried Poser 6. However, I am guessing that the rendering speed is still an issue and though it has image based lighting, not certain if it is as efficient ac C5.
Have you downloaded the demo?

for animations: Just my opinion from trial 1) Dynamic hair: if you intend to seriously employ it, Carrara does not have a native system, and the transfer of Poser dynamic hair is weak. 2) the animation slider is FAR more sluggish than Poser's on a given system. There is a 'lag' between every action, from about .5 seconds up to 5 seconds. This lag kicks in as soon as you load anything complex from Poser thru Natvie import, and accellerates quickly. Poser's slider will slow, as well, but not nearly as bad, nor as soon as Carrara's. This is a serious drawback for an animator. ::::: Opera :::::

Isn't Dyanmic hair weak within Poser itself as well though? Or did it seriously improve between Poser 5 and 6? I looked at it in Poser 5 briefly, and found it so taxing on my system for so little gain that I just went back to using hair props... I personally don't look to Carrara to replace Poser. I look to it to allow me to model content for Poser, and to hopefully replace my Vue needs. That said, if you look at it as an end renderer, which I am doing, then your issue over animation is a severe one if you are an animator. I am not, but that's only because I've never had the system-farm to take on animation in any serious way. :) These things said, I suspect the eovia team will be making a big effort to improve on this, as they seem to desire to try and enter the field of professional animation studios. Whether that gets addressed in a bug-patch, a plugin, or the next version though, is something to consider...

I find the dynamic hair implemtation in Poser6 spectacular. You've gotta put in your dues, though, to discover how to not get assassinated when you walk in there. ::::: Opera :::::

dynamic hair hasn't been very costly in poser, atleast for me simulations for it take about 1-2 seconds per frame, but i use a proxy (a very low poly mesh) for during sims, otherwise it can and does take time if you let it collide on high poly meshes

Did you use it much in P5? Is this an improvement or me not having tried to use the p5 version enough? I've been mildly watching the bug reports in the carrara community over dynamic hair import, but as I lack Transposer it's only been a mild watch... It seems to be a transparency like issue if I gather correctly. As it it is making it look like the old style poser 3 hair, before Kozaburo taught the poser community how to do transparencies right in hair props.

Ok, I've installed Carrara and have been messing with it for 45 minutes. First Impressions: I loaded a Poser 6 scene using the TransPoser utility. 2 Clothed V3's, 2 HR2's, the Ballroom Set form Daz. I added 2 spot lights and one bulb light in C5. At 800x600 the render took 5 SECONDS to complete. I turned up the render settings, added raytracing and the same render took a whopping 7 seconds. (I had Poser open at the same time) This will take some getting used to, but so far I'm fairly amazed. I just need to figure out how to set the active camera to the rendering window...

hair seems a little better, more "stable" i think but opera is right, and few may ever master it :P

"I turned up the render settings" --- did you get the quality back to the same as if you had rendered it in Poser to your standards and likings? I'd LOVE to see both images, and the render time. We need more of that kind of real apples/apples comparison. ::::: Opera :::::

arcady, I did not try dynamic hair in Poser5. Did you try dynamic hair in Poser5, or did you mount a full attack on the learning curve? It is very very easy to get poor results and the "threw up my hands" syndrome with anything less than a determined assault. ::::: Opera :::::

is anxcon kidding? or is 4 lights really the max? that kills my consideration, if so. also, i've gotten used to using IBLs and point lights in poser 6. are there equivalent features in carrara and if so, how well do they work? how well do the materials translate? do you have to set them up all over again, or can it translate to some extent?

operaguy - i'm glad someone finally said it. not that i've had the chutspah to attack it, but i've seen so many people saying how much better transmapped hair looks when about 1/100th the communal effort has gone into making dynamic hair look good. for instance, people keep complaining about the lack of short male hair. olivier's pic at rdna back when p6 came out makes me think that dynamic hair styles could be the answer.

Message edited on: 02/13/2006 15:03

The most recent image in my gallery has at least 7 lights that I remember placing. It didn't crash. If dynamic hair is an answer, is there a tutorial on such that is legible?

i'm not sure what your standard of legible is - most of the tutorials i've come across have been understandable, it's just that they only cover basic mechanics. but you might request it of olivier at rdna. they seem to be the forefront of poser 6 use and tutorials.

Lets put it this way then - Easy to use for someone who understands Poser, just not dynamic hair, and gives attractive results in the actual examples shown. I'll look through rDNA, see if something meets the above for me. I've never spent much time there.

Attached Link: http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=132463

My opinion: There are two approaches to Dynamic Hair in Poser: 1) go in there and learn to create hair from scratch 2) go in there with a hair 'model' already posed and tweak I am definitely of the second school. I have NEVER attempted to build hair from scratch. So, my statements about dynamic hair are always made with that perspective. That having been said, I will also say I learned by doing. I just opened James (not casual James) in a brand new pz3 and kept him in default position, then loaded one of the hair models, such as Messy, onto him. I reccomend not starting with a 'long hair'. Just a simple Messy or Short. Your intention is not to learn to make long hair fly all over like something from a Breck commercial (at least not at the beginning!) but just to get the hair to move and wave a little when the head moves around. I made a simple 60-frame animation of him turning his head; I only used one dial to make the animation, Twist, and I made him stop dead at the 15th frame. That way, you see what the hair does after motion of the head stops. There should be NO movement of the head between frames 15-60. AnimationMenu --> Recalculate Dynamics --> All Hair Render The hair will drape and then it will step thru the simulation rather quickly. For one thing, no colision is on. I highly reccomend you do NOT attempt to use collision for a goodly length of time. Make one small adjustment to the settings from either 3) Styling Controls 4) Dynamics Controls Keep the Poser manual open to the Hair Room chapter; it does not train you at all, but as a reference it will at least tell you what each dial does. BEST NOT TO CHANGE TWO CONTROLS AT THE SAME TIME in the early stages of learning, because then you can't exactly be sure which of the two caused what part of any observed changes. That's a few ideas. The tutorials are good, too. ::::: Opera :::::

Ok. Talk about topic drift.. Did anyone address whether C5 handles p6's material nodes adequately? I use Faceoff's Unimesh Realism kit for a lot of my characters and I'd hate for that to go out the window if import them into C5. Also has anyone played with teh Ambiemt occlusion in C5? I usually have to do a separate render in p6 so that I can play with the effect in Photoshop. Would be interested to know if C5 handles it better. David

I have Poser 5 and not 6, so I don't know if I am able to answer your question. Suggest some material settings and I will put them on a Poser item and try to import it into Carrara. I haven't played with Ambeint Occlusion yet. That's the through-skin thing right?

No that's subsurface scattering. AO is when it adds shadows in the nooks and crannys of a scene. I'd have to search for an example of AO to show. I think there have been some postings on the subject though. David

Me earlier: That bug was fixed in 5.0.4, which sadly introduced the new morph dials bug. The Eovia team has already figured out the bug I mentioned here, as you can see from my previous post. It is due to be fixed, but they have also identified how to avoid triggering it. Apprently it only triggers when you 'import' a poser scene, rather than 'open' a poser scene, and only if you stay on frame 0. Move to any further frame and the bug self corrects. That's just an indication that yes, while Carrara has bugs, because it is a major new release, they are very active in addressing those bugs. Which in my opinion bodes well for the future of the app.