Yes I see the requests for C9 and suggestions for C9 but considering it is suposedly going to be out first quarter next year; although we are all painfully aware you can't go by what DAZ says, the question is, just what if anything can DAZ do with carrara in that amount of time, considering how long C8.5 was in beta and how bad the release finally was.

So lets start with simple things like, remove all the strings. I don't think the functionality of anything in carrara should be dependent on if you have an external app running. So cut all CMS dependent features, ether make them function indapendently or just drop them. Yes, I am pointing to autofit and genesis posing.

Fix reatures that genesis/autofit screwed up. Some times DAZ reminds me of a little kid that likes to show off his toys yet not let anyone else play with them. As in not being able to simply duplicat figures{cr2/DUF}. Carrara can do it, DAZ just wont let you.

Like modeling autofit items in the assembly is so protected that you can't do the one thing that can easily fix poke through; which is something I use modeing in the assembly room for a lot with the mil4 figures. Not only do you have to turn off protected topoligy, you can't; or atleast I couldn't, make the necessary morph to make a fit morph to fix the poke through. I don't know what DAZ is so pariniod about but apparently DAZ doesn't want us playing with DAZ's toys. I can only assume that some how doing this brakes the DUF figure.

New features for C9 are easy enough, Like I have said just check my list for C6.

The 2 new featues I like to see are what everyone else wants, dynamic cloth, and softbody figures.

But more then anything I'd like to see some buff and polish. Fix all the little annoying bugs; or as many as posable. Make exsiting features run smoother and update them. Do a rework of the interface; nothing drasic or Studio like. Just changes to make the work flow smoother; like moving the 0morphs, 0pose back to the general tab. Just make it another drop down like paramiters, view, general. That way it would be a more carrara like change and less like studios menu, burried in a menu, burried in a tool bar, that you don't have turned on.

Despite the requests from some folk DAZ please, I beg of you, keep your hands off the render engine.

Agree.

Dynamic cloth and soft body figures would be great!

Also, I want improved subsurface scattering and dynamic hair in render passes.

Also agree, don't mess up Carrara's renderer. Just give me more avenues to use external render engines.

I'd love to see a more Hexagon-like modelling room. For me, Carrara's current modelling room is very user unfriendly.

Be nice if you could set render demention by camera. Say 1 at 600x600, 1 at 300x300, and 1 at 1200x600. And not have to change the render demention per render.

That would come in handy.

Carrara 9 has to have dynamic cloth.  I just don't see any way around that.  If 9 comes out without dynamic cloth, well then what the heck is the major feature that justifies a whole point upgrade release?

I would like to see them fix the subsurface scattering to accept maps and allow for more human-skin like sss settings.  That ought to fit right in with Daz's wishes to make Carrara more content friendly.

In the same vein, they should also fix dynamic hair so it's not so light sensitive and works better in animations.  Again, this fits in with their thrust of making Carrara more content friendly.

Every upgrade so far (that I've been a carrarist, which is since 7) has included a render speed increase, that wouldn't go amiss.  I don't want them to mess up the renderer, but making it even faster would be a good thing.

Improve atmospherics and landscaping tools.  Make Carrara the Vue-nemesis it can be, and make it so that regular users not named Howie Farkes or Patrick Tuten can more easily put together excellent landscape scenes.

It's time to put all of the tools and features in Hexagon into Carrara. As I understand it, the two programs use the same coding so this shouldn't even be all that difficult.  Hex has some great tools, but crashes for me every 5 minutes.  Carrara never crashes on me (so far) when in the modeling room, but is missing some simple tools that would make life easier.

Fix blurry reflections so that they are a viable render option and don't take forever to render.  I don't understand why regular reflections get rendered lickity-split but blurred reflections take forever.

I'm trying to think what else there is to add but I'm blanking cause I'm a bit tired at the moment... 

I don't know what to expect though because it's odd that after the 8.5 development cycle took so tortuously long, that 9 it announced for first quarter of next year.  That seems like one of 3 options is going on:

1 - Daz has already done most of the development for 9, it just took them forever to make Carrara Genesis-friendly (sorta) and they held back all the rest of the 9 features/development they already did for the next major upgrade cycle.

2 - Daz is shifting gears and putting some real development muscle behind Carrara, and shifting away from endlessly upgrading their free Studio app.

3 - Carrara 9 isn't going to have much in the way of fixes and new features at all, but hey it will come with a shiny new Carrara 9! sticker we can put on our notebooks to show our fandom, and will only be a 'nominal' fee of $599.99   :)

But then that gives rise to the question what part of C8.5 made it more valuable the C8?

The actual cost of the upgrade from C7 to C8 was $200 and we got 64bit plus new features. In C8.5 we got genesis and, and, and help me out here what other new features was there that gave C8.5 the $285 value?

None the less I expect to get all the new features DAZ has told us so much about in carrara 9.

Ya feel me 

I will not upgrade to 8.5 and hope Carrara 9 has all the features and fixes you are talking about but for now the 8.5 upgrade is bit to overpriced and not really interesting for me.Iam a Carrara user since version 3 and this is the first time that iam really not interested in upgrading.

I've been a Carrara user since version 5. I jumped to Pro very soon after that. I've upgraded consistently until now. You are right, C8 is overpriced for a point update and its major improvements offer nothing for me. I don't do Genesis.

If even half of what's been mentioned in this thread is in the upcoming version 9, I'll jump right back on board (provided it doesn't break the bank), but until then no thanks.

Actually "soft cloth" is something I could use now. I'm using an overlay of foot prints. the plane doesn't match the terrain, soft cloth could be use to form fit the overlay plane. 

My problem with coming up with ideas for C9 is I don't know enough about carrara to make suggestions. As in I'd like to be able to auto move figures to where I am working, like selecting a chair and makeing V4 snap to it from where ever she is. May be doable now and I just don't know how.

I have heard nothing about what is proposed for C9. But from the mumness I'd figure not much. If it had something great I'd like to think DAZ marketing would be working it to create a void. But then, I really have to question DAZ marketing staff, seems they blew it big time with C8.5.

You know, that version of carrara that can use Genesis. You know genesis, that last great advancement made by DAZ.

I'm not upgrading to 8.5 and if 9 is one more (another) evolution designed to make C more like poser with basically nothing else, I'll skip 9 too.

C hasn't offered me personally hardly any new value since 7.  i haven't even started arguing the cost with myself since there isn't anything for me to buy.

i can setup my own light avatars without paying for the upgrade.

I've been working with C since the beginning of forever but maybe it's at the limits of its coding structure.

I upgraded to 8,5 and am sorry I did. Can't see any benefit apart from it slowing down my workflow. Unless C9 gives me what I want then no  more upgrades for  me.

The way things are going at DAZ; as I have said before, don't be surprised if carrara is owned by another company before we see C9.

I don't know what is going on at DAZ but it looks like the patients are running the asylum. It seems DAZ has went from a family run niche buisness, to the nephew running the store.

I gotta jeep, I got gas money, I can drive up there because someone needs a big slap reality check.

Definitely disappointed in how things have turned out. I wasn't thrilled with what was in 8.5 from the beginning. I just don't play with Genesis, so upgrades to make Carrara more compatible with Gen mean very little to me. The autofit sounded nice until I found out its limitations. Not so nice since, again, I don't play with Gen. And Kixum is right, light avatars are not that big of a deal.

I also don't see new Carrara buyers flooding the DAZ Carrara forums asking about how this or that works in Carrara, or help! how do I do this in Carrara? The sticky thread for the announcement of 8.5 on sale is all but dead. Makes me sad.

DAZ advertising team really needs to go back for a refresher course or something. They totally dropped the ball on this one. I don't think I saw any announcements anywhere about the upcoming/finally released NEW Carrara 8.5. All I saw was the odd post here and there in a couple of other forums posted by, well, us.

Carrara is a great software, and it will last me for a while longer, but seeing what DAZ is doing to it is just sad.

Quote - I gotta jeep, I got gas money, I can drive up there because someone needs a big slap reality check.

Stan is banned from Daz

Soon to be banned from Utah

LOL

Quote - ... someone needs a big slap reality check.

Maybe on your way back you can get to DC. There's a few there that need some fixin' too.

Quote - > Quote - ... someone needs a big slap reality check.

Maybe on your way back you can get to DC. There's a few there that need some fixin' too.

 

Heh, heh. He'll need plenty of help for that job. Not a lot of reality going on there for sure.

That is why I don't argue politics. That is it's own little world, with it's own populess that exist out side of reality.

You know we have the master light option in the edit menu, isn't it about time we had one for shaders? I know I am not the only one, and a lot of people have wanted this for ages, a master shader where you could a set spicific channel on all shaders. Solve the color in the highlight channel real quick. I'd love it to turn off SSS  or displacement on all the shaders in a scene. That would be a big help to getting fast renders from a Howie scene.

I'm on this because in this scene I am working on I have one shader on one character with SSS on and it brings my render to a scretching hault when it hits it. So now I have to play blood hound to find that one shader. But yes, it is a PITA when you have 40 shaders to reset. Then you have to deal with the shader list role back, an issue that should have been solved long ago.

I mean really how difficult is it to stop the list from jumping back to the top after you select a shader to work with? Just one of those minor things that can get aggrivating fast when you are working on something with a lot of shader domains.

I hope they fix network rendering with volumetric lighting.

I raised it as a bug and it's been acknowledged.

This might sound like a trvial matter, but for someone who spends all his time in Blade Runner style environments it's a killer - I'm working in the snails lane when I have a network waiting to be used.

We live in hope.

Quote - That is why I don't argue politics. That is it's own little world, with it's own populess that exist out side of reality.

You know we have the master light option in the edit menu, isn't it about time we had one for shaders? I know I am not the only one, and a lot of people have wanted this for ages, a master shader where you could a set spicific channel on all shaders. Solve the color in the highlight channel real quick. I'd love it to turn off SSS  or displacement on all the shaders in a scene. That would be a big help to getting fast renders from a Howie scene.

I'm on this because in this scene I am working on I have one shader on one character with SSS on and it brings my render to a scretching hault when it hits it. So now I have to play blood hound to find that one shader. But yes, it is a PITA when you have 40 shaders to reset. Then you have to deal with the shader list role back, an issue that should have been solved long ago.

I mean really how difficult is it to stop the list from jumping back to the top after you select a shader to work with? Just one of those minor things that can get aggrivating fast when you are working on something with a lot of shader domains.

I fully support your both requests. I continuously run into the shader list rollback and it's a real annoyance. The global SSS enable/disable was also a feature request I posted on the old Mantis bug tracker.

These are simple features, or actually featurettes, that souldn't take more than a few hours to implement, yet they are ignored in favor of a multi-year port of Genesis into Carrara.

That is just it. DAZ could go a long way in polishing carrara and making the work flow smoother and easier, just by addressing all these nagging little issues.

It seems there has always been 3 lists for carrara, the list of what we want, the list of what DAZ wants, and the list of what the devs can actually do. It would help us to make better suggestions if we new what the devs can do and what DAZ wants. Other wise it's like blindly gropeing for that bra catch, with gloves on.

With C8.5 DAZ has taken carrara another step further in to Studioland by starting to hide tools you use a lot, in some unrelated submenu. One of the things I have always hated about studio is the tools you need to "work" the scene are burried. Carrara isn't studio, it was never meant to be load&shoot. And even though I may use a lot of premades, I am certainly not a load and shoot artest. As I've said, my favorite part of this is working the scene, so please don't hide my tools.

I know we have been on about the shader list role back since DAZ got carrara, yet here we are, years later, after having who knows how many developers working on carrara, and this simple little annoyance has yet to be addressed. It's the little things that let us carraraest know DAZ is listening. Like the light shapes, something easy to do; relativly, but means a lot.

I have to wonder about that 2 year beta; especially after seeing what you got ;) I don't know if it was really that hard, or if DAZ is just seriously understaffed.

Quote - I have to wonder about that 2 year beta; especially after seeing what you got ;) I don't know if it was really that hard, or if DAZ is just seriously understaffed.

I personally think DAZ is just following where they think the money is or will be. I don't believe they really care one bit about making their customers happy beyond getting them to spend money. It's painfully obvious that DAZ is trying to make Carrara more like Studio. I'm beginning to think that the developers for Carrara are also the same ones working on Studio (at least to some extent).

I do not like Studio. It's probably a great piece of software, but I absolutely hate the interface and also the fact that every major (and sometimes minor) update screws some or all of its plugins. To me, it's a clunky piece of software where everything has been done to make it hard to use let alone understand.

The closer Carrara gets to being Studio, the farther away I will go from Carrara. That makes me sad.