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Carrara F.A.Q (Last Updated: 2024 Sep 29 9:32 am)
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Subject: Should Daz Sell Carrara And, If Yes, Who Should It Sell It To?
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It has been my opinion DAZ bought carrara; or part of the reason, to get their hands on the Poser SDK{?} that came with it. That is also why Poser released P7 way early and buggy, because it changed the poser format just enough to be not so compatable.
That is also why DAZ dropped transposer, a once great plugin for getting poser dynamic clothing animations in to carrara.
Seems both DAZ and whom ever owned/s Poser at the time, are more then whilling to sacrafice customers to keep their apps as incompatable as possable. As in DAZ was not at all concerned about genesis's complete incompatability with Poser till they saw just how many customers it was going to cost them.
But then it's not like the Poser devs were any more concerned how the new Poser weightmapped figure worked in Studio.
I tend to think DAZ would rather let carrara die a long, lingering undeveloped death then sell it to what could be yet another competitor.
None the less, this battle between Poser and Studio has no winner and only costs us customers in the end.
Very interesting post, dr_bernie.
I didn't know much about Shade other than the name, but for some reason I thought it was solely for modeling. I hadn't realized it had become an all-in-one app. Price range seems to put it between Modo on the higher end and Carrara on the lower. I also didn't know that it could use Poser characters natively, though you mention it needs a plugin to do this? Is it a bit like Vue, where both Vue and Poser need to be installed and running, before you can repose the Poser characters inside the Vue scene?
As Shade does seem to be an all-in-one type app, I'm wondering if efrontier would view Carrara as a competitor app instead a of a complementary one, and if they bought it seems they might just want to take it off the market. So that's a possible downside to consider. Also their pricetag on Shade is a lot more than Carrara, so if they acquired Carrara and started developing new releases, I can't help but wonder if the upgrade prices might knock me out of the customer base (I'm a hobbyist).
It's weird that you're experiencing slower render times with 8.5, since I'm getting slightly faster renders, but then again I can only dream of rendering with a system like what you've got (I'm using a I5 laptop only 4 threads rendering at a time).
Stan, that's a really interesting theory about why DAZ bought Carrara to begin with, I had never thought of that before but I think you're on to something and that might explain why DAZ seems to have no real coherent strategy for how to develop Carrara. If so I'm more worried about the supposedly right-around-the-corner release of Carrara 9.
I bought 8.5, mostly because I had the extra money to do so and wanted to play with Genesis (when DAZ restructured the forums and store on their site it locked me out, so I never got to try out any of the betas except for the very early one that deleted your runtimes and in which Genesis didn't work at all). I had the extra scratch to buy it and I got to play with Genesis for the first time, fine, but $85.50 is much more than just a nominal fee and for what was part of 8.5 (Genesis, some bug fixes, a tiny bit faster rendering and assembly room, a few new animation controls), I think it was very steeply priced.
I'm finding Genesis is intriguing but even the full 8.5 release still has some hit or miss things with Genesis, like Genesis 2 doesn't appear to autofit at all, there are some kinks with Genesis autofit, and as another poster in the DAZ forums mentioned, the geo-grafted genitals don't work right at all, just seems like even though there were bug fixes for 8, they've added some all new bugs to 8.5, and for the price of the upgrade that's not cool.
I don't think DAZ will sell Carrara, but the fact they are still charging (heftily in the case of the 8.5) would seem to indicate they have some plan to develop it further, especially as they've announced that Carrara 9 will be sometime 1st quarter of 2014, but it's anybody's guess what exactly that plan entails.
Of the choices you've speculated about (jumping back to dr bernie's original post), I would think considering the prices many of those company's charge for there existing software we as users would be looking at a much more expensive Carrara (possibly worth it if the development increase is substantial, but since Carrara is priced for hobbyists now I wonder if much of the current user base would be priced out of the market). From the perspective of those companies though I think it would be a worthwhile investment, if they can get DAZ to sell.
Thanks Jon for your comments.
Shade is an all-in-one 3D app, just like Carrara. Its UI is a bit quirky and does not offer the 'level of comfort' that Carrara does. Its modeler is certainly better than Carrara and I would rate it a notch above Hexagon. Its texturing system is very easy to learn and use. But what sets Shade apart is its absolutely breathtaking jaw-dropping super-fast renderer which surpasses anything that I have seen, including Lightwave, Modo, C4D, Maya and alike. You can see an example of Shade's renderer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D0HyVyd0Thw
Shade Professional is currently priced at $499.- in the US, which sets it in the same price range as Carrara. Shade has a very limited audience outside of Japan, and that is precisely why I think a 'marriage' between Carrara and Shade would benefit both products without them competing with each other in the same geographic area.
I would really love to see a renderer like Shade's in Carrara. I don't believe that Genesis contributes the slightest in making Carrara a world-class product. While I do seriously think that a renderer like Shade's will propel Carrara into the rank of Big Boys at a fraction of what they cost.
But enough of this talk about Shade. I don't want to turn this thread into a Carrara vs. Shade debate.
I think Carrara has very limited time to 'make or break'. The reason is simple: Poser Pro 2016 is only 2 years away. Already Poser Pro 2014 introduced some very significant functionalities and improvements, including (among other things) a surprisingly bug-free implementation of Bullet physics engine, and significant speed boosts to both its OpenGL preview screen and its FireFly renderer.
What Poser lacks to beat Carrara is 1) Even faster preview and renderer, 2) A true scene tree instead of the simplistic mile-long list of objects, 3) Get rid of those non-sensical 'left-hand right-hand posing face dolly' cameras and 4) A particle system.
With the features I mentioned PoserPro 2016 will be more than a match for Carrara and will even surpass it. I don't consider the lack of a modeler in Poser to be a handicap. One can always use an external modeler like Hexagon and import the model in Poser for texturing and rigging.
To sum it all up, Daz3D has now 2 choices: either add some functionalities in Carrara to make it a world-class product worth using, and do it fast, or just kill Carrara.
Because otherwise Poser Pro 2016 will pack enough punch to send Carrara into oblivion.
I initially purchased Carrara (5) as a Poser substitute of sorts. I found Carrara easier to use and I really liked Carrara's ablility to generate landscapes, trees and volumetric effects as well as it's shader system dynamic hair. I've used Carrara almost exclusively until Poser Pro 2012 came out. I bought 2012 mostly to make use of its SSS abilities as well as the ability to use luxrender via Reality. Starting with PP2012, I've been going between Carrara and Poser for my work, choosing the software that better suited the render's purpose.
When PP2014 came out, I was most excited about the new Fitting Room. Between the fitting room and the morph tool (and also the included Wardrobe Wizard) I never have to worry about clothes fitting anybody again. There are other little things in the new Poser that are nice, but those are the ones that make the most difference to me.
If Carrara had even some of the features that Poser has developed that would be great. A real clothes fitting solution that works on any figure from any generation, improved SSS, improved (simplified) communication with luxrender (I realize this is a plugin and up to the developer, but it wouldn't hurt if was built in to Carrara), along with all the other little things we all want to see added/fixed would make Carrara much better than it is. I think focusing only on DAZcentric things like Genesis is more a detriment that a good thing.
My opinion only.
Quote - Oh, and I really like what Shade can do, but the few times I've tried to come to grips with it, the interface just kicks me right out. I don't know how the newest version stacks up as far as interface improvements go.
Thanks for your vote of confidence for Shade.
Shade UI is a bit clunky but it's still quite good, compared to Lightwave's for example, but this is a matter of personal taste. I looked at a Shade Pro 12 trial a couple of years ago. I might get a trial license for the newest Shade 14 to see how it has (or hasn't) improved.
As I mentioned above Shade strongest point is its absolutely kick-ass renderer. Shade's renderer takes no prisoner, to say the least.
My greatest wish for Carrara is to have a renderer like Shade's and I am sure if Daz3D has the smarts to spend a year or so to design a renderer that matches Shade's, then customers will line-up at Daz's store to buy Carrara, so much so that they will even fight for their turn.
Quote - Shade is an all-in-one 3D app, just like Carrara. Its UI is a bit quirky and does not offer the 'level of comfort' that Carrara does. Its modeler is certainly better than Carrara and I would rate it a notch above Hexagon. Its texturing system is very easy to learn and use. But what sets Shade apart is its absolutely breathtaking jaw-dropping super-fast renderer which surpasses anything that I have seen, including Lightwave, Modo, C4D, Maya and alike. You can see an example of Shade's renderer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D0HyVyd0Thw
Faster than Modo? I had always heard Modo was the king of the biased render engines for speed, very interesting to hear that Shade surpasses it. Also a very cool vid, the clock looked very real. Hmmm, maybe I should look more into Shade. The site I pulled up had like a $750 pricetag, which is out of my realm for sure, but I see that if I go all the way to the actual purchase page it's showing Shade 14 pro for $499. That's still out of my range, but closer. I did shell out $400 to buy TheaRender, but that was the most expensive purchase I've made so far in pursuit of this crazy hobby. I agree that the discounted pricetag is much closer to the un-discounted pricetag of Carrara 8.5 pro, but it's still far higher than what customers actually pay for Carrara by far, since there are ways to get it at much steeper discount than the sticker price.You mentioned Shade plays well with content too, right? Is that specific to Poser content or can Genesis be used in Shade as well? I do also absolutely agree that if DAZ poured some dev muscle into making Carrara's renderer faster to a level that would be comparable to what you've described in Shade that customers would definitely come flooding to Carrara.
What I can't understand is why DAZ felt they had to develop DAZ Studio in the first place. Its a much inferior product in terms of rendering power compared to Carrara. I know DAZ is about selling content and they probably created Studio as an alternative to Poser to house their content but if they had put that effort into developing cararra, imagine what it could have been by now!? They could have then offered three Carrara versions (Free, Standard and Pro), the free one allowing them to load their content and provide the features Daz Studio provides now and going all the way up to Pro with dynamics and advanced rendering etc.
Studio is, and always has been a sales gimick. It's a tinker toy app that fairly usless to me with out the addons. Till studio 3 got the figure set up tools, studio was strickly a load&shoot app to sell you content.
If you go back to the zygot days there were 2 camps. One wanted to make a great app to use and make content. Poser was not in buisness to sell content, they were in buisness to make/sell an app to use and make content, and left content production and sales up to the users.
The other saw the profit in selling content so made an app that did little more then use it, then gave the app away.
The thing to look at is just what has DAZ developed lately? C8.5 sure enough, but look at the shape it is in, it's hardly what I would call a release version. Or the protracted time between beta builds. I have beta tested apps for years, I have never seen an activly depeloping beta that didn't get monthly, or even weekly updates. C8.5's seem about 6 months between builds. This leads me to beleve DAZ no longer has active developers.
Lets look at the eveidence. Genesis was realesed over 2 years ago and never got a update. Studio4 was of coarse released at the same time and has gotten 2 updates{?}. Anyone remember when studio3 was getting monthly updates? Look at the DAZ store, how many of those apps have gotten an update in 3 years? Or since they were updated to be compatable with studio 4.
I've come to the conclusion DAZ is out sorcing it's development, and out sorcing to the slowest cheepest company they could find.
What I am saying is it's highly doubtful DAZ will be able to do what it would take to bring carrara up to date with other like apps because they don't have the develpomental staff to do it. When even free apps are better developed you have to ask just what are you paying for. The carrara 8.5 beta went on for over two years, yet most of the issues that were in the second beta release have remained unchanged, and if anything the release version was bugyer then the last beta release. Note to DAZ, release versions are suposed to be better then the beta.
Yes I would like to see carrara go to a company that would actually activly develop it. But as I said I don't see DAZ selling it, or if they did, genesis and poser compatability wouldn't be part of that deal.
As I mentioned above Carrara's Genesis functionality is of no use to me, but Poser compatibility is essential. If Daz sells Carrara without Poser compatibility I will just stop using it.
Look at this app: http://www.cheetah3d.com/ list of features. It is priced at $99.- (Occasionally discounted to $69.-). In every respect it beats Carrara, but it's Mac only and does not have Poser compatibility.
If you're a Mac user and don't need Poser compatibility, Cheetah3D is a far better value than even a heavily discounted Carrara.
What is difficult to understand is that Cheetah3D is essentially a one man development, yet it has all the features that you could wish for in a well-behaved 3D app. So how come Daz with its quite large dev team can't do what a one man team can?
I'm not a Carrara user, but I do find this thread interesting, as I have had recent experience with the software. I recently encountered a situation where I needed to use Carrara, in a collaboration effort with another artist, who had been using it for many years. He gave me a crash course in the workflow and overview of the tools. We worked together on a project he had started in Carrara, and I used the package extensively over the course of two months, for both modeling and rendering output.
To it's credit, I found Carrara was very easy to learn, and I found the workflow very intuitive. I found the shader system to be a little old-school, compared to what i am used to in 3dsMax or Maya, but it's deep once you get into it, and I could see the potential of some serious procedural power there.
I didn't do much animation with the software, so I can't speak to the tools and workflow there, and I'm somewhat glad for that, because if they were anything like the modeling tools, it would have been an ordeal. The real issues with this package were in the modeling tools (or lack thereof). Modeling in Carrara was a slow process at best, and I found myself firing up Max on more than one occasion just to kit-bash and export objects really fast. Even under excellent tutelage from another artist, who seemed intimately familiar with Carrara, it became painfully clear it just didn't carry a robust modeling toolset. If Iwere a hardcore Carrara user, I'd be fighting for a much more robust modeling system, with more edge loop control, and better selection tools. Even the artist who used Carrara as his primary production package turned to another modeling package to do most of his polygonal building, because he freely admits there's a few shortcomings to Carrara in that regard.
Carrara's modeling system is very poor and limited. I'm not even sure why it's there. I would say if users have any hope to get Carrara into a positive light in the 3D world, that's a good place to start improvements. Literally, I felt as if I was using a modeling package from back in 1996. Has it been updated at all over the years?
As for the render engine... do you have benchmarks to prove that Shade is as fast as you are suggesting? I rarely hear of it's use in the VFX or architectural industries, where fast, reliable rendering is a must. Just viewing one very good example video rendered with the software doesn't prove anything at all. That's a work done entirely by one excellent artist, who probably could have done the same level of work given any above average render package. I don't see evidence that Shade's render system is any different, let alone better, than any of the cutting-edge packages out there today. I looked at it's specs, and it uses most of the same algorythms (radiosity/path tracing) and data structures (photon mapping) to render it's scenes as other render packages, like Vray or MentalRay. I think unbiased GPU render systems, like Octane, are probably faster, but it's hard to benchmark a GPU engine against a CPU I would think. Then there's the Corona render engine for 3dsmax, which is undoubtedly the fastest render engine that i'm aware of today... it's still in Alpha dev, but some of the benchmarks are unbelievable, and it looks more than promising.
I think the engine in Carrara is fine, but it simply needs to be updated with some more enhancements, and include some newer rendering technologies and algorythms, if possible.
Tools : 3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender
v2.74
System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB
GPU.
Thanks maxxxmodelz for your comments.
I can understand your frustrations with Carrara's modeler. I agree it is somewhat limited. It's certainly adequate to model a chair or a desk or a sofa or a simple building. But if you want to design a realistic model of the entire US fleet in the Persian Gulf you should look at something else.
I'm surprised that your associate did not use Hexagon. It certainly is a lot better than Carrara's modeler, and has support for native .car file format, so you can model in Hexagon then texture, rig, animate and render in Carrara. Hexagon is not in the same league as, say, Modo but at a price tag of $19.95 it is a very good deal.
Carrara's animation tools aren't that bad. The timeline and graph editor are quite capable and its NLA clip system is surprisingly well-thought and bug-free, although the blending between 2 clips is occasionally problematic. If you use Daz Studio's Animate 2 plugin (which is often referred to as the poorman's Motion Builder) then you can create some very believable animations in Carrara at a very low cost.
I don't have benchmarks for Shade's renderer. I only compared its speed visually against the render speeds of trial versions of Lightwave and Cinema 4D on the same Poser scenes and it holds its own against these two particularly fast renderers.
Shade is currently priced at $499.- in the US. At this price its renderer is a solid match to renderers in $5,000.- 3D apps, and this is what makes Shade a remarkable product.
As I mentioned in my previous posts, the best thing that could happen to Carrara is a renderer like Shade's. If Daz is smart enough to implement such a renderer, it could boost Carrara's sale to a point that Carrara could well become Daz's main source of revenues.
The question is would a different company do any better? So another company gets it, revamps it, brings it up to date, adds the features it's missing and charges $2500 for it; 30% off for previous owners. If that happened; optimistically, it would only loss half it's users.
So changing hands could just mean a quick death, rather then a slow one at DAZ's hands.
Personlly I'd like to see DAZ put some real dev time in to carrara, feed them DEVs lots of fish, make sure they get plenty of sleep, and get the job done right. It would really be most beneficiall to all those involved, from DAZ's profits to us users. But I just don't see that happening.
That is why I think E-Frontier, the maker of Shade, is the best candidate for a Carrara acquisition, for the reasons I stated in my original post:
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Shade has a large audience in Japan, but its user base outside of Japan is mostly negligible. Therefore Shade and Carrara will not compete with each other in the same geographic area.
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E-Frontier is the former owner of Poser. Shade has the Poser Fusion plugin built-in. Therefore Poser compatibility is part of their corporate culture. The acquisition of Carrara by E-Frontier should therefore not hinder Carrara's Poser compatibility.
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E-Frontier has been able to remain profitable with a relatively low-priced 3D app, therefore they should be able to keep Carrara's price unchanged and still manage to be profitable.
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E-Frontier has the technical know-how to design a world-class renderer that can hold its own against the likes of Mental Ray. Incorporating such a renderer in Carrara will add a tremendous value to it and boost its sales, while Genesis brings very little value to Carrara, and I doubt Carrara's sales will improve the slightest because of Genesis compatibility.
E-fromtier, the company that lost so much money with Poser they sold it?
Not meaning an insult, this is something I read a while back and the line pops in to mind any time I read something about what is popular in Japan.
"Japan, responcable for half the worlds wierd #$%^ since 1952".
Meaning a lot of things do well in Japan that can't/couldn't make it any place else.
Metasequoia is a great base modeler, easy to learn, easy to use. Been very popular in Japan for quite some time. It's the modeler I learned to model with. Ever heard of it? It's been around as long as Poser or Studio.
But I see this as one of those "grass is always greener" things. Climbing over that fence useually gets you little more then pulled muscels and splinters. If the lawn looks greener on the other side of the fence, do some yard work. As I said I'd rather see DAZ put down that beer, get out of the easychair, turn off the TV, and do some yard work other then mowing the lawn every other week. Pull them weeds, trim them hedges, fertalize that lawn. The best way to a greener lawn isn't always jumping fences.
Quote - Look at this app: http://www.cheetah3d.com/ list of features. It is priced at $99.- (Occasionally discounted to $69.-). In every respect it beats Carrara, but it's Mac only and does not have Poser compatibility.
Thanks for the heads up on this dr_bernie - I just downloaded the demo and it looks fantastic! I had no idea this package existed before today. Looks like I'm going to have to get my wallet out and buy yet another 3D package :-(
I'm quite impressed with maxmodelz post. I have done an enormous amount of modeling in Carrara and find it ok but significant improvements (many are present in Hex) should be brought over.
lets not forget that there is a pretty big sector of 3d apps out there devoted to outdoor landscape rendering (Vue, terregen, etc.) which command some serious market share. I would very much like to see some serious effort put into Carrara for that kind of output.
i get that Daz needs to pump up Carrara to sell content. I also agree that we need more than just content import and content manipulation tools. Carrara is not Poser or Daz Studio. If Poser is what people want, then please go and use that.
Carrara started as an app that couldn't import poser figures at all and there was a user base that rendered a lot of stuff outside of the Poser universe. I'm one of those people. I'm ready for non Poser types of improvements because I want to use an app that's beyond poser which can do a lot more.
im ready for more.
-Kix
Quote - Thanks for the heads up on this dr_bernie - I just downloaded the demo and it looks fantastic! I had no idea this package existed before today. Looks like I'm going to have to get my wallet out and buy yet another 3D package :-(
Thanks StealthWorks. With your comment 'I just downloaded the demo and it looks fantastic!', you just made my day.
Because your comment is a reminder to Daz that there are 3D apps out there that costs less, actually much less, than Carrara Pro and they perform a lot better.
What amazes me is that Cheetah3D is mostly a one man project. Yet every major or minor release since version 5.0 contains some significant improvements including a full implementation of the Bullet physics engine (if I'm not mistaken it has live simulations) and a Javascript based scripting engine.
Maybe Daz should bring Dr. Martin (I forgot his last name) on board as a consultant to lead Carrara's dev. team and doesn't let them embark in a 3 years development that adds very little value to Carrara.
Quote - But I see this as one of those "grass is always greener" things. Climbing over that fence useually gets you little more then pulled muscels and splinters. If the lawn looks greener on the other side of the fence, do some yard work. As I said I'd rather see DAZ put down that beer, get out of the easychair, turn off the TV, and do some yard work other then mowing the lawn every other week. Pull them weeds, trim them hedges, fertalize that lawn. The best way to a greener lawn isn't always jumping fences.
Either that or pay the kid down the street $25 to fix up the yard or a professional landscapper $75 to do it.
Quote - > Quote - > Quote - Time to call in some pros
Unless, of course, you like the mangled and mutilated lawn look. Then it's just right.
Maybe they're hoping we get used to the mutilated lawn look. Hoping it "grows" on us.
If my wife was in charge, that Carrara lawn would be mowed and manicured by now. No two ways about it.
1.Microsoft bought TrueSpace to use it's technology in bing maps not to keep the software. After they got what they wanted TrueSpace was dropped.
- Adobe: no one like to deal with their subscription crap. I already replace Adobe products with other software.
- Corel: don't have much experience in 3d field by the time they buy Carrara it will be dead. Remember when they bought Bryce they didn't know what to do with it. Under Corel Bryce didn't get any development.
- Maxon and Newtek already have a superior products Cinema 4D and lightwave so they don't need a competing product under their name. Newtek is a good company to deal with but not Maxon. It is another Autodisk and Adobe want to be buying software from them getting really expensive. If you don't upgrade your software for couple version you have to pay the full price.
- Smith-Micro: is the best choice to develop Carrara further plus Poser and Carrara complement each other and both use to be part of MetaCreation. They should buy n-Side QUIDAM too and integrate It to Poser to make more powerful.
- E-Frontier: already bought amapi and stop development on it after few months. They integrate some of the tools into shade and dropped the rest.
In my opinion Smith-Micro is the best choice to develop Carrara further.
Your points are well-taken Nasultani. Smith-Micro is probably the best choice as a potential Carrara acquiror. My only reservation is that I am not sure how well Poser and Carrara can co-exist within the same company, competing for the same mostly US/European market.
For this reason I picked E-Frontier, because Shade is mostly active in the Japanese market.
Regardless, one thing is certain, and it's that Daz is not qualified for any high-caliber software development project.
It is not a question of Daz being understaffed, it's a question of Daz living in a planet of its own.
As evidence to my claim, I would like to 'call to the witness stand' the totally nonsensical fast mipmap texture filtering mode that Daz spent months to incorporate into Carrara 8.5
Fast mipmap is a form of glorified LOD that used to belong in last century's game engines, not in today's pro level 3D app.
In the process, Daz beautifully missed this technology, called Embree by Intel:
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/embree-photo-realistic-ray-tracing-kernels
Embree is already implemented in C4D R15 and VRay. Its implementation in Carrara would most likely not have taken more time or more skills than implementing fast mipmap
This is what Mark Bremmer had to say in this thread regarding Embree:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2872177
"C4D r15 has engaged Embree and it has made a huge difference in my render times. It would be nice if Daz followed suit. "
Making huge differences in C4D's already super-fast native renderer means making phenomenal differences in the speed of Carrara's ailing renderer, while at the same time improving its render quality by a huge factor.
I would truly expect Daz Carrara's project manager to come here and give an explanation as to why preference was given to fast mipmap over Embree. I would really like to hear what he/she has to say.
Quote - In my opinion Smith-Micro is the best choice to develop Carrara further.
Except that Smith-Micro has gone from over $15 per share in 2011 to .84 per share now.
Lotus 123 ~ S-Render ~ OS/2 WARP ~ IBM 8088 / 4.77 Mhz ~ Hercules Ultima graphics, Hitachi 10 MB HDD, 64K RAM, 12 in diagonal CRT Monitor (16 colors / 60 Hz refresh rate), 240 Watt PS, Dual 1.44 MB Floppies, 2 button mouse input device. Beige horizontal case. I don't display my unit.
Quote - "Embree? Is that some sort of cheese"?
HA HA HA! Good one! In Daz planet they probably think Embree is some sort of cheese!
Quote - In my opinion Smith-Micro is the best choice to develop Carrara further.
Another potential acquiror would be Reallusion (IClone). It's a stable company and it already has some ties to Daz/Poser products.
Carrara would actually be a good fit in their line of products. Iclone for Pre-Viz and Carrara for semi-pro 3D animations.
They might have a hard time selling it, as other apps have too much development in their own pipelines, and it's hard to see what benefit they would gain.
The other thing is that 500lb gorilla that snuck in the backdoor of the 3D software industry because few were taking it seriously enough. It's the one to set the bar for any 3D production suite, and as development continues, it's likely going to be an 800lb gorilla that steals bananas from the likes of C4D, Max, and Maya... (And if you haven't checked on it in a coulple of years because your last experience with it, give it another shot. It has improved a lot.) That 500lb gorilla is named Blender.
Seriously though, add a few more features like model and texture libraries, and some UI changes to make it even easier to start with... DAZ and a few other companies will be hard pressed to beat Blender (not just on price) unless they come up with something really special.
Your friendly neighborhood Wings3D nut.
Also feel free to browse my freebies at ShareCG.
There might be something worth downloading.
I agree that Blender is already a 500 Lbs gorilla. Blender 3.0 will without a doubt be the 800 Lbs gorilla. It will be a smash hit and it will take no prisoners.
I recently downloaded Blender 2.68 and played with it for a couple of hours. I can already tell you, and that may come as a surprise, that I really like the interface.
Blender's UI is certainly far better than Lightwave', a lot less confusing than Modo's, and probably as good as C4D's. I personally feel very comfortable with it.
But Carrara's superiority over Blender is its vast library of pre-made contents. Creating a Blender scene with animated characters and believable lip syncs is most likely an involved process, while with Carrara it's quite simple. Although I have no doubt that Blender is a lot better than Carrara for complex animations and interactions between characters, based on the few made-with-Blender movies that I have seen on YouTube.
I think Blender's "threat" to the pro market is dramatically overstated. I tried Blender recently, and it's not even close to a 1:1 feature comparison to 3dsmax's current state, even with the lagging dev of Max in the past couple upgrades. I'm assuming the same is true with Maya. I imagine it would take Blender to possibly a ver 3.0 before it will have a comparible feature set to either Max or Maya (can't speak to C4D), and by that time, both of those apps will have been developed further as well.
I look at Blender's presence in the 3D app market like POV-Ray's in the rendering market. POV is a great render engine, with tons of great features, but never became a go-to rendering software in the professional industry. It never overtook Vray, or some of the others, and while it boasts a very impressive model description language, it most likely will never develop to the point to put any of the commercial competitors out of business.
Blender is great, but not likely the threat to Autodesk's products that the open-source community is hoping for, and even mid-range apps like Carrara arent in that much danger. Most of Carrara's user base seems to be hobbyist, to intermediate 3D enthusiasts, and my opinion is that Blender is in a strange area where it will probably never fully surpass the functionality of Max or Maya, but is still way too complicated and complex for the average hobbyist looking to compliment Poser.
Tools : 3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender
v2.74
System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB
GPU.
I don't believe Blender will be a threat to production-proven 3D apps like Maya or 3DSMax. What I meant by 'Blender 3.0 will not take prisoners' is that the 3.0 release should pack enough high-end features to make it worth considering in a pro pipeline.
But going back to the topic of this thread, I believe now that Adobe and Sony Creative Software are the best picks for a possible Carrara acquisition, for the following very similar reasons:
-
Carrara fits very nicely in both companies product line (Vegas, Acid Pro, SoundForge for Sony, Photoshop, Premiere and After Effects for Adobe).
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Both companies products are already priced in the $199.- to $799.- which is about the same price as a non-discounted Carrara Pro, i.e. $549.- So Carrara's price will not be an oddity in their product lines.
-
Both companies are very accustomed to talk to the prosumer market, which is precisely Carrara's target audience.
4 Both comapnies have substantial financial resources. Putting a team of 10 developers to work on Carrara to bring it back in shape will only be a drop in the bucket in their development budget.
- And finally, both companies have proven track record of successful software acquisitions like Vegas for Sony and Illustrator or InDesign (formerly Aldus Page Maker) for Adobe. So we are sure that they will be able to add value to Carrara and not kill it right after the acquisition.
Between Sony Creative Software and Adobe, my personal preference goes to Sony, because I am not so much in favor of Adobe's Creative Cloud subscription structure, but other than that both companies are equally tooled to breathe some life into Carrara and give it the stature it deserves in the prosumer market of 3D apps.
Quote - The issue is DAZ wont sell it. Why sell an app to a competitor?
At this point I believe Daz has 4 options:
1. Sell Carrara, in which case Sony Creative Software is the best and most qualified acquiror, the company most capable of bringing Carrara back to life, as far as I can tell.
OR
2. Shell-out some hefty development budget to pull Carrara out of its current pitiful state, but that seems quite unlikely.
OR
3. Declare Carrara officially dead. Use it at your own risk and peril, as we all seem to be doing anyway.
OR
4. Keep dragging Carrara along until the release of Poser Pro 2016, most likely in the summer of 2015, at which time PP 2016 will kill Carrara, and that will be the end of a great 3D app that could have been but never was. Long live Carrara!
DAZ never calls an app dead, just look at Hexagon. Ask any DAZ rep about Hex and they will tell you is on the agenda, not it's dead and has been out of development for 4 years. DAZ will not tell you any facts/truths that might cutail sales.
Genesis is a prime example of this. We all know genesis is out of development, any one looking at what is on sale in the store now can see G2F is what is being developed. Although I thought we would see a G2M by now, it looks like G2F is all that is being developed. But that doesn't stop DAZ from banning people for saying as much.
DAZ has always blaimed the nay sayers for the drop in carrara sales, it; of coarse, has nothing to do with their lackadaisical, inept development of carrara.
Carrara could have been the number one midpriced full line CG app, but not the way DAZ has been doing it. Tweaks to out dated features, light icons, changing around the interface for no reason, and adding bugy features to support a dead figure is not the way to do it.
G2M has made an appearance. It's referenced in Design Anvil's new product.
Daz might sell Carrara, if they need money badly enough. Looking at this past year sales - almost every week there seem to be at least one if not two or three sales going on. Then the split of Gensis into G2M and G2F which looks like a move to squeeze more money out of customers. You'll make more money if users have to buy two of everything. A person has to wonder if Daz isn't having some kind of cashflow problems.
Quote - Pixologic will be the best choice to develop Carrara and hexagon. in the past they hired most of the developers from evoia france. if that happen carrara and hexagon be back in bussiness in no time.
Can't argue with that. One of the last great features added by the eovia developers was dynamic hair. Proof the devs at that time knew what they were doing; of coasre DAZ borked in the next carrara release.
The constent sales are another big change at DAZ. It's gets to where it's just irratating, puts me off shopping there. Especially when you have to sit there and do some figuring to see if items are ringing out at the right price.
But we will never know what is going on at DAZ, which actually means DAZ is squandering a big asset, it's user base. I don't think the people that are running DAZ realize how helpful and understanding it's core user base can be. Give us some facts, comunicate with us. The more people freindly any company is the less it appears to a cold, heartless, indifferent, corperation. The consumers enimy.
Just don't send a salesman to yank our chains, and feed us placations.
Quote - The constent sales are another big change at DAZ. It's gets to where it's just irratating, puts me off shopping there. Especially when you have to sit there and do some figuring to see if items are ringing out at the right price.
I really don't mind the sales IF they were really sales.
I remember one sale awhile back where you had to pull out a calculator to figure out the price. Then you would ask in the forums and you'd end up with three or four other people coming up with a different price.
This recent PC Club sale sure as hell didn't feel like much of a PC Club sale.
Also, the prices on things seem to be higher than they used to be.
Quote - > Quote - The constent sales are another big change at DAZ. It's gets to where it's just irratating, puts me off shopping there. Especially when you have to sit there and do some figuring to see if items are ringing out at the right price.
I really don't mind the sales IF they were really sales.
I remember one sale awhile back where you had to pull out a calculator to figure out the price. Then you would ask in the forums and you'd end up with three or four other people coming up with a different price.
This recent PC Club sale sure as hell didn't feel like much of a PC Club sale.
Also, the prices on things seem to be higher than they used to be.
When is a sale not a sale? Give up? When it's at DAZ!! :)
Sales at DAZ used to be fun and hyped to the hilt, not just by DAZ but by us customers as well. The sales were like events that we anxiously waited for each year. The wait and speculation made it all even more fun.
Now, DAZ has a sale everyday. And having to have a calculator handy just to make sure you get your sale price is just sad.
I can remember when DAZ made a big stink about us unruly customers (referring us as chlildren) and constant sales. They told us going forward that there would be fewer, more meaningful sales and we'd just better stop griping and like it.
And the next day, they had a sale. And the sales just keep coming. Yay, DAZ.
That is it though. I used to look forward to DAZ sales. I'd join the Pclub in August or September and run it through to march or April because that was the time of the big DAZ sales. I haven't the past couple of years because there really is no reason to. There just doesn't seem to be any "special time of year" sales. DAZ may call them as much, but with the non stop sales there's nothing "special" about them.
I get DAZ sales spam practically daily. I've been tempted to put them straight in to my spam filter and just forget about them.
Just to make a point, recently LOTRO started a double XP month as a lead up to the release of helms deep. With XP practically falling from the sky as is; I often comment I expect to be given XP for passing wind soon 
The last thing some of us players need is twice as much of the all ready too much XP. Yes Turbine has a XP disbler pocket item for sale in the store; costs as much as a some expantion packs.
What this means is the XP disabler is a top ten seller when it is on sale. Due to the demand of a way to turn off the XP for the double XP month Turbane released a cuopon for 25% off, and dropped it in a thread. For the last week that thread has been the 1# most hit thread on the forum and of corse the XP disabler is in the top ten sellers.
That is how you create a void. You make it so special people can not afford not to buy during the sale.
Now if I were running DAZ; I wouldn't be banned from the forum 
well maybe, but I run items at a resonable everyday price. Then I would have a consumers board made up of regular customers; say 20 and at least 5 Carraraests and 5 Posers, to poll after buying an item. One of the questions would be was it the value you paid for it? That way I would know what to put on sale say the last weak of the month.
I'd also give those consumers a 10% off next purches for posting renders of the/an item. Renders in the forum are always good void boosters. I mean how many times have you passed up an item till you saw a render of it on a forum?
I'd also not run sales opposite real world sale times. I'm mean whom has money for virtual items when shopping for Xmas? The DAZ sale should be "the returned item blues sale" the first part of January, when people have a bit more money to shop, and lets face it possably be a bit let down from Xmas and wanting to buy somethng pretty to better their mood. 
Daz's Store is like a casino. You can win big or you can lose big. It's very difficult to plan your next move in advance.
RO's store by comparison is somewhat better organized. For items on sale, the sale dates are clearly stated in the item page, and when an item on your wish list goes on sale, you receive an e-mail notification.
Also RO's pricing is not as erratic as Daz's. You never see a $9.99 item suddenly auctioned-off at $1.99.- RO does not discount its products to the bone, which results in a financially more stable company and also less customers kicking themselves because they over-paid for a product.
But going back to the original topic of this thread, I have 3 objections about Pixologic acquiring Carrara, although the fact that the former Eovia dev team is working for Pixologic is very beneficial to Carrara.
My objections are:
1. I don't see ZBrush and Carrara living side-by-side under the same roof. These are 2 fundamentally different products, even though they both are 3D apps. They target totally different audiences. Will Pixologic Marketing team be willing to even get anywhere near an ailing Carrara and try to promote it to a customer base they never dealt with before, when they can earn a lot more selling a successful ZBrush to a customer base they know how to talk to?
2. Pixologic is, and has always been, a company with only one product. They have never done any acquisition, except Sculptris which was (or is) developed by a lone developer, that Pixologic acquired to eliminate a potential competitor. Will Pixologic be able to handle Carrara's acquisition successfully? As successfully as Adobe did with Illustrstor and Page Maker or Sony Creative Software did with Vegas?
3. Pixologic being a company with only one product and being very successful at that, is a prime target for an acquistion by Autodesk. If Autodesk acquires Carrara through a Pixologic acquisition, it will trash it on the first day, because Autodesk has absolutely no use for a Carrara that does not fit anywhere in its product line.
I would like to add a little comment to my post above. Unfortunately the edit time limit has expired. So I have to do a new post.
Carrara is of not much value if it weren't for Daz/Poser contents integration.
A point of contention for companies like Adobe or Sony Creative Software in an eventual Carrara acquisition is the amount of nudity in those contents which might not fit well with their corporate image.
This should not be a problem for a company like Pixologic though. Their gallery does not contain much nudity, but it contains loads of apocalyptic monsters made with ZBrush. Therefore the human nudity in Daz/Poser contents should not constitute a cultural shock for the typical Pixologic customer.
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I am among those Carrara users for whom the 8.5 release has mostly been a disappointment.
My first encounter with Carrara goes back to RDS 3.0 (or was it 2.0?) on a Power Mac 120, which I used for a product presentation, so I have been a Carrara user for quite some time.
I am not a Genesis user and I don't intend to become one anytime soon. The only new features in Carrara 8.5 for me are redesigned light icons, an improved timeline and probably some bug fixes.
For an almost 3 years wait between Carrara 8.1.1.12 and Carrara 8.5, what I got amounts to not much.
Actually 8.5, in some respects isn't even as good nor as fast as 8.1.1.12. The new 'fast mipmap' filtering mode may be ok for a game engine but for a professional 3D app? Gimme a break. Large scenes such as Stonemason's Urban Sprawl 2 (http://www.daz3d.com/urban-sprawl-2-the-big-city) don't load properly in 8.5 in textured mode, which they did flawlessly in 8.1.1.12, and in anything other than fast mipmap filtering, the render times are about 10% slower, by my mesasurements. I run Carrara on a PC with dual Xeon @ 2.6 GHz and 16 threads, 24 GB DDR3 RAM and Nvidia GTX 295. It's a bit of an aging machine but it's still very adequate even for demanding 3D apps.
So considering all these facts, isn't it time that Daz3D just sell Carrara, and who would be a good acquiror? Few companies comes to mind:
Microsoft: They already had a bad experience with Truespace which was a lot bigger than they could handle. But maybe Carrara is a simpler and easier to manage codebase. But then again Daz/Poser contents contain tons of nudity and might not suit well with a company like Microsoft.
Adobe: A multi-billion dollars company like Adobe definitely has the resources to handle Carrara which actually fits quite nicely within their line of products.
Corel: Carrara fits nicely within Corel's line of products, but Corel has a reputation to acquire products only to kill them right afterwards.
Maxon (Cinema 4D) or Newtek (Lightwave): These are great potential acquirors. They both consider products like Carrara/Poser as serious products, and they both have the resources to maintain and grow Carrara. But how would their customer base (some of world's most prominent production studios) react to such an acquisition?
Smith-Micro: Has the financial resources to develop Carrara further, but what would be the outcome of a 'friction' between Poser and Carrara? Probably the same outcome as the current friction between Daz Studio and Carrara.
E-Frontier: Former owner of Poser and currently mostly active in Japan with Shade. I have followed Shade since 2007. E-Frontier has come-up with a new improved verison of Shade every year since then, so it is a serious company. Shade has built-in support for Poser contents through Poser Fusion (although you would still need Poser installed), so Daz/Poser contents are part of E-Frontier's corporate culture. Shade Professional price tag in the US is $749 which is about the same price as a non-discounted Carrara. A look at this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0HyVyd0Thw should give you an idea of what an outstanding piece of sofware Shade really is.
In my opinion, among all the companies mentioned above, E-Frontier is the best candidate to acquire Carrara. They have the knowledge and expertise to handle a high-performance 3D app, they are familiar with Daz/Poser contents, they have been able to remain profitable with a 3D app in the Carrara price range and acquiring Carrara would probably allow them to expand their customer base outside Japan, which should result in an even more profitable, more stable company, which is precisely what Carrara needs at this stage.