Is this the end?

Seriously, it seems the carrara community is disbanding. Most of the greats from years ago are gone, not dead or forgotten about, just not active in the DAZ forum. Holly hasn't posted in quite a while. I haven't seen Patrick post in forever, as well as a lot of other names I don't see any more. 

3DAGE appears to have left the forum and even datenbeck has with drawn. 

Me? I don't have that much sence, I got banned.

The carrara cafe is dead, only 3-4 people post there. This carrara section seem fairly unpopulated, and Hivewire's is still new. But where have all the carraraests gone?

C4D? 3DS max? or just retired from DAZ?

Yes I am a pesimist, that is why I worry about carrara in the hands of DAZ. I fear if C8.5 doesn't sell well there wont be a C9. DAZ will write it off and breath a sigh of relef they don't have to worry with it any more. And you know DAZ wouldn't sell it just to keep itout of the hands of the competitors. Add to that DAZ's new policy of stringing people along and it may be years before peopel realize DAZ isn't developing C9.

2 years ago this might have been a glom and doom post, now I think it is more a glimps of the future.

Hi I am here! The problem is the Carrara users in some way, they dont post nothing about theyr work in forums or other medias, its a very strange thing. I saw an article in ImageFX magazine (may 2013) with images from artist John Charles (England) that use Carrara for his work but didnt saw any comment about him in DAZ3D community.

Others artists that use Carrara profissionaly also still using it, but with a lot of work dont have time to take care of free sites like CarraraCafe. I started the projedt with DAZ3D and still do the backup and other adjust in it, but really after sometime I cant take care of it alone and without money, so I called a lot of friends and I think they are faccing the same problem with time and money. Take care of a site like that take a lot of time to get information, write and edit texts, create videos and things like that, so time is money and theres no money there but we still need to feed ours families.

I think also that Facebook let people lazy, they only want to enter in a place, post an image and gone. Its a real problem when people dont want to have a little more work to talk to people in forums.

I think the same happen to video tutorials, I did a lot fo them for free, working for DAZ3D and after they dispense all colaborators about 2 years ago, I think a lot of "helpers" give up from doing things for free.

Well the good thing is that DAZ3D is still working in Carrara anyway, but I think that is a very slow development now.

Carrara need some very serious addons to back to professional hands again. For example, I am working in a short movie and I have to create a lot of VFX shots for breaking walls, particles for smoke (like wizards in Harry Potter) and I have to get back to my old Lightwave 9.6 (yes I couldnt upgrade yet) to get the work better.

But in other hands Carrara is the main application to create the storyboard, where I could simple create a basic scenario from te movie and set the actor position using Vic and Mic very easy to plane the shots.

But I really hope to see more development for Carrara and really dont know what DAZ3D plans to version 9 (I think they still dont know also).

I think also that the major problem at DAZ3D this last two years was the creation of Genesis, that is a very good idea but I am getting lost with this new installer and smart content yet with Carrara. So they need to fix a lot of things and Genesis 2 born to do that and when thngs are fixed and stable they will put more money in Carrara development.

Just really slow development + DAZ3D is a different business model than other 3D software. DAZ = software to sell store content for mostly hobbiests. Other 3D = Software to complete pro projects.

The work DAZ does is still really solid, but they have a very small team and four software titles to maintain/develop.

My personal opinion is that Carrara has a lot of hobby users that want a pro grade product for pennies on the dollar and are the first to complain about price increases and less then 'pro' performance and want all features to be automatic with no studying required – essentially being very negative and backbiting about everything DAZ does. That's a bad vibe that anybody visiting the DAZ forums can pick up. Combine that with quirky FBX export and it's tough to get Carrara content 'into' other applications disuading pro involvement.

You don't see that attitude or long development cycles for any other pro 3D software.

For me, Carrara is still a Swiss Army Knife because it can do so many things so well. However, for much of my pro work, I need to use other software to fit into pro workflows. The big killer for me is renders. While I have a small render farm in-house that Carrara can run on, for big projects, I need to send them to farms that have 100 quad-core boxes. 

I suspect we'll see a huge Carrara marketing push when DAZ is ready to release again, just as there was with v7. Heck, magazines were contacting me to do tutorials and articles about Carrara then. 

As for me posting work, 3D and creative services is my profession. When the day is done, I don't jump back into the chair to keep producing. As a result, I have a long, long list of personal images I want to produce...unfortunately.

With you there. I've had aquariums for most of my life. I know enough to write a book. Seriously, I got deep in to it and at one time had 6 fresh and 2 saltwater tanks going; yes one was a reef. Set up was costly, but maintance was fairly cheep.

Then I worked as the manager of an aquarium deptment in a big petstore/keenel, groomers; huge place. I did that for 6 years but I had to pack up and move. I haven't had an aquarium set up since; 15 years, but I still have the mid sized ones :D .

And yes, DAZ would be wise to release C8 to a mag; download code so there would have to regester at DAZ, about the time C8.5 comes out. C8 free and just a small upgrade fee to C8.5 and you can use Genesis O.O But if DAZ listened to me.... lol

But ya, this long development cycle is just tedious. It defenetly puts that extra o in soon. And wears on my nerves almost as bad as the issues and bugs.

Seriously dude, I hated the idea of DIM and CMS when I read about it here a couple of years ago. So no surprise. But DAZ is pushing it so hard a person almost gages on it. Realy, you don't need ether and may be better off with out them; till DAZ takes that next step. The only use I might ever have for DIM is not in it's feature list. Resting runtimes so mass downlaoding. But no pause, no restart, no use. One good thing, content is finally in zips WOOT.

CMS, not right now. My blood still boils, over it locking up my comp for 3 hours. Rebooting didn't work, CMS auto started and locked it righ back up. Finally had to set and wait till the task manager finally manged to load, to kill and uninstall it. {fire wall issue}.

I've always been a teach a man to fish guy. If a person can understand the interface of the app, installing content should be a breeze. Expaning how to do it is easy enough. So where do the issues come from? Maybe having a convoluted file system? Or the latest issue, changeing the name of the content folder, regular.

Now this is one of those things that perks my conspericy theroy side. Content zips are still packet in a content folder, not a "my library" folder, not the latest "my DAZ3D library" folder. Even new content zips are still packed in a content folder. Is there any purpose to this other thren to confuse people?

Now let me also point out, since the conspericy theroy side of me is awake lol Two years. Two years in not an arbitrary time. Two years is when the heart and solo left DAZ. Other people you wont find on the DAZ forum is several of the DAZ staff, or founders. It's only DAZ in name. It stopped being DAZ for me when Chris left, Dan stepped down, and policies changed.

Part of that notable change was when development came practically to a stand still. Even G2F is a PA item. Maybe I am wrong to take this out on DAZ, after all DAZ is just the name of the company, not the name of the person that makes policy.

Yes, that felt good.

And if phonics worked, all thsoe words would be spelled right lol

I have started posting my art again after a long time away from Carrara due to real life issues, but my work hardly gets views here or anywhere else so that is one reason I stopped posting here and removed a lot of my images

Plus not having a lot of money to spare makes it hard to get things, and so you end up using the same things.

As for spelling words right - get a spell checker for your broswer :D

Here is an interesting story of my views on the last 15 years of CG history that may shed a little light on the condition of Carrara.  I want to emphasize that this is strictly my opinion and that I am making these observations from a very limited viewpoint.  However, it might be interesting nonetheless.
I would classify the Computer 3D Artwork (C3DA) community into three general categories (for the sake of this discussion).
1.)  The BIG guys.  These are outfits like Industrial Light and Magic, Weta, Pixar, etc..  I'm not even going to talk about these guys because they're in a whole class of their own which is really outside of the Carrara community in most practical respects.
2.)  The private pro's.  I consider these people a group of people that are proffessional C3DA people but they pretty much don't write their own software.  This group comprises of advertising agencies, consultants, etc..  The vast majority of people like this use many software packages of which Carrara is just one.
3.)  The hobbyists.  That would be people like me who have jobs which are not part of the C3DA pro community but who dig C3DA, have invested a little effort, time, and money in it, and crank out some art here and there.
I will start this story in the late 90's.
Two things happened in the late 90's which had a BIG impact on the C3DA community.  They were,
A.)  Computer power got big enough and cheap enough
that
B.)  Affordable C3DA software packages could produce artwork that was starting to gel.
Earlier than this, computing power that had been used for artwork commonly comprised of large computer systems which were really expensive and C3DA software was also pretty spendy.  When 486 computers hit the street, we started seeing some things change.
New C3DA software really started to bloom like Bryce, Raydream, Terragen, Poser, and Blender (to name some).
I can remember Lightwave costing many thousands of dollars (well above $5,000) with plug-ins for things like fur costing $800 an up.  For an average dude, $5,000 software was NOT in the cards.  However, $300 for Bryce was a whole different story.
In the time frame of about (let's just say) five years, we saw a huge new C3DA community become born.  Before this, people just plain couldn't afford it and computers for home just couldn't take it but it all kind flipped over.
Back then, there were no college courses in C3DA, the number of people who were knowledgeable (I mean seriously knowledgeable) were few in number, and that meant that there was a gob of people who were sort of solo reaching out to the internet for communities of people to learn and get moving.
Websites like Renderosity were super important then because these places were some of the few living and thriving refuges where people could get information.  It was a pretty cool time.
Computer power was really growing on a yearly basis, the C3DA community was also growing a lot and the software vendors followed along.
Then, we saw was an interesting divergence in the C3DA community.
The people who were serious about it started turning C3DA into businesses and proffesions.  They became group #2 that I've listed above.  There is a pretty large number of those people around today.  Those people don't really involve themselves with places like Renderosity much anymore.  They have their own proffessional subcommunities.  There are user groups for proffessional Rhino people, 3DS Max, etc..  We've lost those people to their own professional places and we certainly miss them!
Some other people got tired of it, learned whatever they wanted, and sort of fell off the cliff (sorta).
And finally, some of us stuck with the hobby side of it.  The majority of the casual hobbyist though is more often interested in quick results that look amazing without a lot of effort.  Here is a recipe that usually produces great artwork.
i.)  A skilled user.
ii.)  A creative mind.
iii.)  Time and patience.
Most casual people lack in one or more of these three things and consequently, software developers have done their best to provide for those issues but it's not easy.
Before Carrara could import Poser and Daz figures, the artwork that people produced was quite diverse and spanned a lot of topics.  Now, it's mostly just renders of women (which is the vast majority of hobbyist C3DA).
Daz is catering to this obvious market.  It's quite black and white.  We (the Carrara community) should be glad that Daz has decided to keep Carrara alive in the first place.  It's just how the hobbyist world has evolved and what seems to sell.
I of course would like to see a lot of things added to C which aren't related to the human figure.  I don't render people.  I don't care for it.  I have no interest in it.  However, most people want to render women and that's what we have to live with.
When I look at Terragen and Vue, it would seem to me that there is a lot that could be done with C to improve the atmospheric modeling.  I would like to see some simple improvements in the metaball modeler.  I would like to see more controls for weather and clouds.  The texture engine is pretty major powerful but it could use a few more things.
Luxrender is an interesting addition.  I would say that I still haven't really seen things out of it which really show it's value yet but it's there.  I think the REAL power in the luxrender engine involves transparencies and caustics which I haven't really seen a lot of rendering that truly shows it off just yet.  It's there though and it will come.
In the meantime, people in the Carrara community come and go.  Those that have needs which stretch out beyond C leave C for other horizons.
How would we keep those people?  It's a gigantic question.  Here's an interesting example of how people fall away though.
I finally decided a couple of years ago to do a serious outdoor scene.  You can see it in my gallery (titled scout).  In my journey to figure out how to render that scene, I had to do a lot of learning on my own.  If I were a newb to Carrara, it would have been a pretty steep learning curve.  Compared to packages like Vue, I consider my result still lacking in a lot of ways.
However, the outdoor scene people can buy Vue for cheap (to start anyway), they can get Terragen for a nice price, and they can crank out renders of outdoor stuff which is very impressive.  Can C do it too?  Yeah (sorta), it can but you can't figure it by the manual.  You're very likely going to have to get some help to get C to really crank out something.  When you do get help, it doesn't take too long to realize that it takes a lot of little tweaks and dials to get C to really get into a condition to render what you want.
Carrara's true strenghth is that it can do everything.
Carrara true downfall is that it can't do one thing super well.
All of what I've said here is arguable to a large degree but it's just my viewpoint.
What is it that we need out of C9 anyway?  What my gut tells me is that it's going to be some bug fixes with the Genesis stuff in it and that's basically it.  I'm not losing sleep over it.
I can remember when GI was announced as a new rendering feature in C and we were seeing litst release preview renders with it.  It was SO cool to see those big changes coming and we would chew our nails waiting for the release.  Now, I don't know when C9 will come out and I'm not concerned.  It's not very likely to change what we are rendering now.
I think ultimately, what people really want is photorealistic renders and C needs some pretty big new changes to drive to that.  Luxrender is a start but it's not enough.  If we saw C developing towards those sorts of ends while also including all the Daz figure stuff, I think the C community would grow substantially.  Will that happen?  I don't know.  We'll see.

I don't do photo real. I like realistic, but photo real takes a lot of work, hipoly figures, hirez textures, and a much deeper understanding of the render engine then I have.

But I don't like having a lot of stuff done for me. The more you have done for you the less of you there is in the end. This is one of the bad points of premades, clone art. Just watch any CG gallery and very soon after a new character or artical of clothing hits the market you will see dozens of renders using it. I don't buy characters, I dial spin up my characters so they don't look alike or like anyone elses character. Skins on the other hand can easily be touched up or toned up in a photo editor. I like to get hirez skins and do minor edits to them to avoid clonieisiam.

What I really love is staging, so I like premades. I can model, but I don't have the patience to model everything in a scene. Not to mention the skill.

If you could go back and look at my wish list for C6 you would see it is still pertenet. As carrara has gotten little on it. Much better atmospherics is at the top of my list, having used TG before I got carrara. Most of carrara's atmospherics are quite weak and have gotten very few updates over the years.

Next on my list from C6 was dynaimc clothing. I was doing dynaimc clothing animations in Poser then using transposer to get it in to carrara to finish staging. Then DAZ axed transposer; can't have carrara users from DAZ using Poser dynaimc clothing. Or the BS excuse DAZ gave us of carrara not being poser compatable after 7. Funny, I can still open poser PZ3s in carrara. There was no reason to ax transposer aside from severing the carrara/poser link.

When I had DS3 it was easy enough to do the dynaimc clothing sims in it, then send then to carrara via collada to finish staging. DAZ broke that then spent 2 years try to duplicate it with DUF. I can get them in to carrara now, but optitex dynaimc clothing does not work as well in Studio 4 as it did in DS3. I've done 20 some odd sims in Studio 4 and have yet to get one worth rendering in carrara. I did one with M4 the baggy pants and hoody, by the end of the sim it looked like his belly button was eating the pants and hoody.

With C8 DAZ managed to shoehorn in a 3rd party physics engine. Bullet physics, and with the tweaks in C8.5 you can now drape most clothing; yes that includes conforming clothes. It's not dynamic clothing yet, although I have seen some animations done in carrara with bullet of dynaimc clothing, I have yet manage duplicate it.

C9 will suposedly be out first quarter next year. I don't see that happening. So far DAZ has been so closed mouthed about it. I have yet to hear anything about what may be in it, if anything. And with it's suposed release in a matter of months I have to wonder why DAZ isn't giveing a hint of what may be in it, let alone why it would be a full release. Personally I don't see DAZ managing to get anything in it in that amount of time, that would warent a full upgrade release.

I also have to wonder why any company would spend 2 years developing a .5 just to release a full upgrade in a matter of months. One will surely kill the sales of the other. People will ether get .5 and blow off C9 for a while, or just skip C8.5 and wait for C9. Unless C9 has some out standing new features, people that get C8.5 more then likly will wait for C9.1 or .2 and still may not get it for a while after release.

And my train of thought has been derailed; my cat is demanding food other then what is in his dish, and mom's Oring is leaking on her upstares toilet. So chors to do.

Edit to add. I have a spell checker in Firefox, but it has never worked on this forum.

Hey :)

Well I was speaking with a Daz pa the  other day. The is a rough version of my thoughts after hearing his thoughts. He is quite succesful as a daz pa - so he has a feel for the subject.

Basically we have to look at Carrara from Daz's perspective.- not our own persepective.

DAZ are obviously in it for the money - that's a given. So why should DAZ waste time on Carrara if it's big bucks are coming from Content sales?

Answer: they would be crazy if they diverted their workforce from something that makes them money to something that is an anchor around their necks. Heck, they can't even give us a new manual.

So to get Daz to spend some love and  tenderness on Carrara, you need to make it worth their while economically.

You have to show them how much Carrara users spend. To get more Carrara users spending money at Daz you have to help expand the Carrara user base. Also you have to encourage Pa's to make Carrara specific items as well as their Daz Studio items.

The self fulfilling prophecy. The snake eating it's tail in a way. More Carrara users, means more Carrara users buying content, means more Pa's marketing products for Carrara, means better renders, means attracting more users, means Daz will sit up and start marketing and improving Carrara so they can  make more money.

One sure way to get DAZ unhappy and leave a bad taste in their mouth is to constantly whinge and moan about how Carrara is undernourished, that we have waited x years for an update, that we never get what we ask for etc.

I'm not saying those things aren' true , but DAZ has historically shown that they have no concience as far as giving consumers what they should be  morally entitled too.

The way to get Daz to bend to your wishes is to show what is in it for them.

It's all about money.

I have a feeling that if you look at the money Daz is putting up to sponsor the Carrara monthly challenge that it is probably the most generous challenge they have going. Now don't quote me on that because I could be wrong, but it just means to me that DAz does have some good points, we just have to be nice to them that's all :)

Oh I'm sorry you got banned ManStan, they must have it in for you? I've never seen you post anything which should have resulted in a ban. :(

oh I post Carrara stuff on my blog. I've had 80,000 plus visits to the blog. I never tell anyone I use Carrara cause I don't want people to know how I did it. Even an amature magician never reveals how he does his 'magic' otherwise that magic becomes nothing but a 'trick' :)

err the bog is here, I mean 'blog' http://andrewfinnie.blogspot.com.au/

some of the work is okay, some I screw up severely , but that's okay too

head wax. One of the issues with DAZ figuring what carraraest spend at DAZ is they don't count Studio/Poser content sold to carraraests, they only count carrara content sold. So DAZ isn't getting good figures for content sold to carraraests.

We talked about this on the DAZ forum quite some time back. The conclusion was that if a carraraest uses DAZ content they bought as much as your average Studio user. But that isn't the way DAZ sees it, if you buy studio/poser content it must be for studio/poser.

Which is rather rediculess considering how hard DAZ has been working to get carrara DAZ content compatable. Up to a couple of years ago I was spending what I could aford to at DAZ; $200-300 a year. Of corse every bit of that content was for use in carrara.

"So why should DAZ waste time on Carrara if it's big bucks are coming from Content sales?"

You can't sell me gas if I don't have a car. You can't sell me gas if that car is broke down or undrivable. Yes for DAZ and content that is a bit of a simplistic analagy. None the less, if the app doesn't work right, doesn't do what it is suposed to, I'm certainly not going to buy content for it. How often when some one on the DAZ forum has gripped about an issue with carrara; as in missing needed features, has some one pointed them to Blender, or 3DS, or C4D? {ya, those posts stay, gripe about the quite apparent lacking of any development of G1 and your post gets pulled and you get banned}.

"I'm not saying those things aren' true , but DAZ has historically shown that they have no concience as far as giving consumers what they should be  morally entitled too."

To true, but there in lies the issue. This is presisly why DAZ is losing carraraests to other apps. The issue is we can't get it through to DAZ that carrara is not a dolly sales gimmick. Yes it is nice we can use DAZ content in carrara, but most carraraest are expecting far more then that and DAZ fails to deleiver. Aside from dolly compatability and bullet physics DAZ hasn't added a major new feature since it has had carrara; ok I'll give them 64bit too. Where as Studio has advanced in leaps and bounds.

Remember dynaimc hair was in the works before DAZ bought carrara. Then DAZ turned around and borked it in C7 and flate refueses to fix it. The issue is dynamic hair reacts badly to reverced normals on an object. Now I don't have a clue why a reversed normal on a lamp across room effects the hair on a figure, but it does. Didn't in C6. DAZ's fix? You go through your scene find what has the reversed normal and remove it from the scene. That amounts to "Doc it hurts when I do this", "so don't do that". Not realy much of a cure is it.

The biggest issue right now; once everything is said and done, it the now ludicressly long develpoment time. As in DAZ releases soemthing, it is borked, it may be 3-6 months before it gets fixed, so for that 3-6 months the new features doesn't work or doesn't work correctly.

Seriously, I'm not the one giving DAZ a bad name, they are quite capable of doing it all on their own. DAZ doesn't want me to gripe, don't give me an abundence of reasons to gripe. Removing posts does not fix the issue, it just hides it.

Lets look at G1. Nice figure, I love that DAZ has gotten in to the next step in figures. But DAZ maintanes the G1 is still being developed, yet G1 hasn't had an update since release 2 years ago. A PA has released G2F that fixes many of the issues with G1, and we have yet to see DAZ release a G1.1 with these fixes, even though DAZ continues to say G1 is still being developed. Why? because G1 and G1 content is still selling. The real issue with that is peopel are buying this content with the mistaken belief that G1 is still being developed. Since when has DAZ ever continued to develope for a figure once the next generation is out? Never.

Another thing is DAZ seems to have forgotten about the KISS princeple, DIM and CMS are proof of this. All they are acompleshing is making it far more complex to download, install, and use content. They don't make it simpler or easier to use content, they just introduced more ways to encounter more bugs. Go to the DAZ forum, check the Studio subforum, I'd bet 5 of the first 10 threads are about issues with DIM or CMS. These do just as much to push people away from studio as encourege them to use it. It doesn't help that rather then explane the comparativly simple procedure of manually installing content, they expect a newbie to become a comp tech to track down and solve the issue. If newbies run in to major complications just trying to install content they are not going to go through some multi step comp tech procedure to fix it, they will go to another app. DAZ's attempts to make this easier has done little more then made it far more complex.

As Scotty said "the more complex the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the works".

Now I certainly am not trying to drive people away from carrara, it simply blows Studio and Poser away. Nothing I can say will drive peopel away from carrara the way DAZ's excusiatingly long development time and lacking in common CG app features has. People will give up waiting and just go to a different app with the features they want, that is activly being developed. This prolonged development; pratically stagnation, of C8.5 has cost DAZ far more carraraests then anything else so far.

I am amazed DAZ doesn't realize this.

Hey, everything you say is true.

I think that step one should be for you to send a letter not an email to whover runs Daz and pointg out what the problems are and what the solutions might be.

An old fashioned letter bears/bares more weight than an email  in my humble opinion.

If you phrase it correctly I'll wager that they will sit up and take notice.

let me know!

cheers

Oh I didn't mean to say that you are turning potential or existing Carrara users away from Carrara by the way.

I'm going to withhold my gloom and doom for a bit till I see how C8.5 plays out.

Wish I was on the DAZ forum for it, but I ain't crying about it

^^^ lies, you will never be able to withhold your doom and gloom :tt2: never have, never will, but thats why we like you  :laugh:

Years ago when I used to run the rodes with freinds, when there was a plan to do something for the weekend, they always asked me what I thought of it, then preped for the gloom and doom I predicted. Can't say we were ever caught in a situation we weren't prepared for

If you expect the worst you are never disapointed, it's ether good, or as expected 

I don't follow the "in" crowd.  Carrara is Carrara.  Plain and simple.  Don't care about any "greats" that may have used Carrara.  If they stopped posting in this forum, it doesn't make Carrara dead in any way.  New people discover Carrara all the time.  I suspect a lot of people use Carrara in their workflow still.  It's just not the only app they use.  I use Carrara for illustrations only, and rarely for rendering.

I see what people are saying. Carrara is a tool for them, coming on a forum and posting reguler would be about the same as me coming on the forum and posting about my blackNdecker drill 

But for many of us this isn't so much a hobby as our art form. As in I'm a bit more involved with carrara then my drill.   No less concerned about it working right though.

Just had an image of michelangelo walking in to a blacksmith's shop and going in to a rage over the case of bad chisels they just delivered

Or leonardo storming in to an art supply shop demanding to know what happen to the brushes he ordered 6 months ago.

For me, Carrara is like "I use these brushes for this kind of paint."

Carrara is (so far) thi only tool I really know.  I've purchased rhino but I haven't learned it yet.  Fortunately for me, C is powerful enough to keep me satisfied.

Snice I don't make a living doing 3d, it's ok.

When Eovia offered Amapi Designer 7 with Carrara, I thought what the heck I'll get the Amapi modeler as well.  The Amapi CD sat on my shelf for about a year before I got around to trying it.  I thought I was going to model in Carrara.  But my brain never could wrap around Carrara (or Ray Dream Designer/Studio before that).  Then I watched people doing polygon modeling and thought how easy/cool that looked.  I remembered the Amapi CD and installed it and read the hell out of the PDF.  In two weeks, I was polygon modeling and importing OBJs into Carrara.  My very own OBJs for a change, rather than some library OBJ.