Voting and discussing new features and news on what's already coming!

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=129640

Kevin

Somewhat pointless exercise, because I am sure that DAZ has already decided what they are going to do, whatever the result of the poll is.

It's a good thing for some to let them air their ideas. There was a lot of frustration and drama over in the DAZ C-forum. As far as I could see, though, in the bug tracker last I checked, 64-bit and IES lights were the only new things completed, though they probably don't have some of the features in the tracker that they've been working on.

It would be nice if one of the DAZ (working on Carrara) would become an active member of the Carrara forum (if there isn't one lurking here already).  Jan

Seems like the ex-Poser crowd dominated that particular poll, since the one I voted for didn't make the list. (Not that their choice is a bad one, but that their priorities differ.)

I went with better animation stuff (the physics simulation is pretty meh), although the scripting or having CUDA support with some graphics cards to speed up rendering seemed like pretty nice options as well. I think those two would put Carrara in an even better light when compared to the big name 3D software.

Really though, even if they just went with one more thing, they should do it as bug-free as possible. Or perhaps do some things like fix a few stupid UI quirks. Like not being able to lock down various objects while keeping them visible. (It's annoying when you try to position one thing in relation to another thing, and the only way to keep from grabbing the wrong one is to hide it. But then when you do that, you have no reference for where to move the other object.)

But I'm laughing at the one comment. There's some truth in DAZ will do whatever DAZ will do.  But look at the bright side, at least they're doing something.

Sadly for Carrara, the Poser crowd swamps other users.

To me, releasing a C8 with 64 bits, bug fixes and Python scripting would have been reason to celebrate; instead, they almost surely will ditch scripting and delay the thing for months (end 2010?) in order to bundle a half-baked (partial pun intended) dynamic clothing solution (b.t.w., the usual Poser user does not need clothing, do they? at most a sophisticated sword-parenting technology :cursing:)

Bye...

Poser already has cloth sim.  I just use that for Carrara.  It's not like there are Carrara figures one can buy for Carrara that one can plop into a Carrara cloth room.  It's either buy figures for Poser or buy figures for DAZ Studio.

For DAZ to ever be one of the big boys, it needs to decide what kind of application it wants to develop to compete against the big boys.  Until then, expect more free versions included in 3D World, 3D Artist, and other magazines.

DAZ's big deal is content sales. The software is more like a hook or loss leader. And sadly, the Carrara user base is so small compared to Studio, it's amazing anything gets done. The justification, like they plainly said in the first post in that poll thread, to do more work on Carrara is if the user base grows. For the situation it's in, they have to keep Poser people happy because it's a safe bet that is the crowd where the new users are coming from. You can get that idea pretty clearly from the noob posts.

Thank goodness the Carrara base of users  is larger than the Bryce and Hexagon base of users.

Before I can comment on what I would like Carrara to have, I need to know the difference between Carrara 5 Pro and the latest current version.  Basically can you now paint on groups like you could in Raydream 3D.  It's really a pain to ungroup everything, select a part go to the vector room, get the uvmapper, get what you want export it as a .bmp, figure out what is the top, bottom, sides etc, applying the texture, checking the texture, etc.  In Raydream you drew on the whole model, clicked what you wanted and boom it was there.  Jan  

When more they try to make Carrara compatible with the Poser content, the software gets worst. A lot of features could be updated, like the Metaball Room (is the same since Carrara 1).
I'd like to see more animation improvements on Carrara, like fluids, fire, smoke, physics and particles. For modeling, Carrara's tools are better than 3DSMAX imho, but some NURBs are welcome. Dynamic Cloth? Maybe, but is not the major feature in my list.
I remember the paint tool in RDS, it's far easiest and better than C7. They could follow the same method.

Cheers!

My list is fairly simple but painful.

A major overhaul to the metaball modeler is way overdue.

I would like to see more Terragen like abilities (better distance haze/atmosphere, the ability to make great planets,  clouds of true greatness)

When I look at other rendering engines like the Vue renders or the lightwave renders, they have more realism in them (naturally when applied by a skilled user).  I wouldn't mind having a rendering engine that's on the next level up.

NURBS.  Can't say enough about NURBS (NURBS), nurbs.

No bugs (although things are getting better).  My favorite bug that I'd love them to get rid of that's been in the code since day #1 is updating the freakin camera list when you add a camera.  You put in a new camera and then when you go to switch to it by selecting it in the corner of the frame, your new camera has the same name as the camera you either inserted or duplicated from.  I've noticed the list in the render room is also dorked.  You have to close the file and re-open it to get the list fixed (This has been there since ever).  I started this mess with Raydream way back on version 1 of that too.  Somewhere, I actually have all my copies of Raydream and Carrara (Metacreations, Eovia, DAZ) (nurbs).

Well, that's enough for today (nurbs).

I'm with you on the cameras - it's a minor, ongoing peeve for me whenever I use C7.  And I echo the sentiments on the better landscaping, which is swamped by the likes of Vue and Terragen - maybe it's my newbish skill level, but I can't seem to get a decent-looking environment for the life of me, and for what I'm working on I'll be using landscapes more and more.

Dynamic clothing compatibility is always a plus, but it would still mean that I'd have to buy the content for it.  Maybe a way to create dynamic clothing is in order; I don't know how DAZ makes theirs, to be honest, so I don't know how realistic of a request that is.  If C7 can already do this... well then I'm a dum-dum - I've only been using C7 (almost) exclusively for about 6 months, and I'm STILL learning what it can do.

I just hope the update price isn't too hard on the wallet and doesn't set my computer on fire.  If so I may just stick with 7 for now.  There's no point for me to get mondo-upgrades for software if my current system can barely handle what I have.  ;P

C7 wasn't a significant impressive upgrade from 6 (and it was sort of a bug fix patch that we paid for versus got for free).

If 8 doesn't pack new features that are along the lines I've mentioned above, I might just not get the next version for two reasons.

1.)  I don't render anything that involves the human form.  So, I have zero interest in anything that has to do with people or clothes or hair or any of that stuff.  My needs are more along the lines of what I mentioned above.  I am guessing that  much of the upgrades will be centered around DAZ studio/Poser stuff so I don't have a need for it.

2.)  I've never received a clear and concise email from DAZ when they release a patch.  I only  have known about it from reading this forum.  Then going ot the DAZ website and retrieving the patch has only made me mad because of how they do it with your account being limited as to when stuff is available and having to reset stuff and yak yak yak (it's super stupid, when we were with Eovia, you just went and got the patch duh).  If they want to harden their security to get a patch, fine, log in and get it but don't screw around with all this reset the download 30 days what the heck business.

Carrara is all I use and I've squeezed an enormous amount of use out of it for myself.  I'm really glad that the package has survived (there's been times when I wondered if the code was dead).  For all those out there who bought Carrara via the metacreations flavor, we all thought we'd been abaondoned!

So DAZ is carrying the torch and that's a really great thing but maybe I need to take a break for a couple of versions unless some really great new features come out.

Biggest improvement you will probably like is 64-bit (done if I read the Bug Tracker correctly), followed by multi-threading of the most CPU instensive calculations, network rendering improvements, COLLADA import and export tweaks, and I could swear I saw IES lights as completed, again, if I read the bug tracker correctly. If true, improved lights will help get you to more realistic scenes as I always thought the color is wonky in many Carrara renders. I don't know if it's the artist or the product, but it's happened enough over the years to make me think it's the software or a combination of user and software going astray.

Kixum,

You had me at NURBS.  :)

Quote - C7 wasn't a significant impressive upgrade from 6 (and it was sort of a bug fix patch that we paid for versus got for free).

So I'd heard, but C7 was my first version so I can't really make the comparison.  Plus being new to the 3D field in general (2 years now) I really don't see the point in upgrading right away, especially in a program that I'm still figuring out.  Seems they just want to rush the new releases but that's DAZ for you... not really headline news there.  ;P  Not really complaining, 'cause they have DAMN good deals most days, just pointing out the obvious, I guess.

At any rate, in the end I'm really in no rush to get C8 - if anything my next step would probably be Maya.

It's a funny thing concerning nurbs.  The spline modeler is almost a nurb modeler and I don't know how much farther it would be to take it to full nurbs and have a full nurb modleing interface.

Amapi was a full nurb modeler but the interface drives me absolutely nuts so I haven't gone in deep with it.

I fussed with Hexagon for a few days but I haven't really tried it in earnest.  It's hard for me to get excited about a vertex modeler when we have one in C that I already know.  Hex is just Amapi reworked to be better.  What I don't know is why they can't import the nurbs whickamagoosa into Hex.  That would be quite awesome for me.  We would then have a living NURBS modeler that is hooked into C with a better interface (please?).

Maybe DAZ will make getting a patch a whole lot more sensible for people with tiny brains like me (I hate having tiny brain syndrome).

Strangely enough, I could care less about the modeling room part. (Other than some last moment tweaking, in those certain cases where things need rigging for animation. If I could change the object center axis orientation along with the position outside the modeling room, my visits there would even be more rare.) Having a modeler is nice (although it's Carrara's weakest aspect), but I still feel effort would be better spent elsewhere. Perhaps the fact that .obj import works great and the software mentioned in my sig has to do with that. (As long as Carrara continues to work nicely with other software, it doesn't have to do everything perfectly on its own.)

Would like to see faster renders, and physics simulation that doesn't take all day when there are games doing apparently much more complex things in real-time on the same computer. (ie: set up something fairly simple in Gary's mod, then try it again in Carrara...) Oh, and being able to interact different types of animated objects with the physics simulation animations would be nice too. That way I could do things like having my path or keyframed object smash a physics simulated brick wall w/o having to guesstimate the force that kicks in and when, etc.

Renders do feel mega slow (high quality)... At my rate, I can only render about a second worth of animation at medium/high settings... (with all my cores stuck at 100%) :(

Quote - It's a funny thing concerning nurbs.  The spline modeler is almost a nurb modeler and I don't know how much farther it would be to take it to full nurbs and have a full nurb modleing interface.

Amapi was a full nurb modeler but the interface drives me absolutely nuts so I haven't gone in deep with it.

I fussed with Hexagon for a few days but I haven't really tried it in earnest.  It's hard for me to get excited about a vertex modeler when we have one in C that I already know.  Hex is just Amapi reworked to be better.  What I don't know is why they can't import the nurbs whickamagoosa into Hex.  That would be quite awesome for me.  We would then have a living NURBS modeler that is hooked into C with a better interface (please?).

Maybe DAZ will make getting a patch a whole lot more sensible for people with tiny brains like me (I hate having tiny brain syndrome).

Hexagon uses some of the same code as Amapi and was developed by the same team for organic and character based work. However, when Eovia sold their software, Amapi and Hexagon went to different buyers (e-fronteir and DAZ respectively) - if Hexagon could be given the sort of tools Amapi has for product design, then Amapi would be a less attractive purchase, so the purchase of Hexagon was conditional on it not getting those facilities. So with regards to those kinds of tools, DAZ has their hands tied, ironically without need thanks to the death of Amapi.

There does seem to be some resentment of Poser users influencing Carrara's development - which really began under eovia with the introduction of native Poser import in C5. However, if Carrara is to be developed then it needs money and that requires a sufficiently large user base and, as I image eovia recognised, the Poser user base could be tapped for that money. Without Poser content, I'm not sure what place and future Carrara would have in today's market: who would own it and keep it either at this price point or keep it at all? Also, beyond the actual content import, just about any new feature added that will be of interest to Poser users will be of use to other users also - while some of you might not be interested in dynamic cloth, I expect users will be. (and do we really think that serious character creators and animators in Max or Maya wouldn't mind going without it?) The big question is, will DAZ go the same way with dynamic cloth as they did with Studio? - in which case, I agree, it would be of very, very little use - even to Poser users. However, if they allow users to create and set up their own cloth, then it's a good thing for all.

Supposedly along w/ 64bit, many processes are now multithreaded that were not and they have changed the way the render nodes process so you can render an image per pc and fixed some inefficiencies there. I am not really sure what the numbers are for D|S vs Carrara or any other package. Would be interesting to see. I wouldn't assume anything. However, those numbers are going to be directly reflected in how the sw is marketed, as well.

DAZ needs to update its 3D Render applications, to make better use of current hardware, but maybe their focus is too much towards content and the applications are simply used as a vessel to push content.

Bryce 7 is in beta at the moment and getting updated, but I'm not sure how much though was put into the Render Node part of the application.