I just watched a short video demonstrating how to work on a posed figure.

I added a Genesis figure to the scene, gave it a pose and then entered the Model Room.  For some reason the model keeps resetting to the default T pose while in the Model Room, and as soon as I exit, it goes back to the pose I set.

The User Manual link seems messed-up as well, I keep getting a manual for Carrara 7 which is two versions old.  Does anyone know where I can download the Carrara 8.5 Pro User Manual?  Looks like there's a fair bit of stuff in 8.5 Pro that wasn't in version 7.

Characters play by different rules in Carrara than standard objects. If you want to edit the mesh of the character in it's pose, then you'll have to export the posed character as a .3ds or .obj file and re-import it into the scene. You'll then be able to edit the mesh. 

Why does it work this way? Because the posed characters are an 'interpretation' of the "T" posed mesh that has been modified/morphed by the skeleton. 

Cheers Mark but are we talking about the same thing?

Click For Video

I'm trying to do that on Genesis, I don't see any stuff about having to save as an obj, it looks like he's working directly on Posed figures, I thought that was one of the features that was added to Carrara 8.

That said, I just tried exporting the figure as you suggested and even that keeps coming back into Carrara in a T-Pose, even after posing it and saving it as an obj while it was posed.

You can model in the assembly room (not the model room) to work while it's still in the pose, I believe.

Cheers Jonstark, I finally got it to work so I can edit the figure while it's posed, but now I get an error every time I click on the "Valid" button - keeps saying "An error occured while executing Switch mode."

Quote - You can model in the assembly room (not the model room) to work while it's still in the pose, I believe.

Not with Genesis, G2F/M or any clothes gone through autofit.

Lets see, in one build of Carrara they went out of their way to get modeling in the assembly room to work and brake it in the next build. Ya, that's typical DAZ.

Great, so that's another absolute waste of money feature I bought a program for this year, Poser being the other.  Seriously, something has to change regards laws and software developers.  It's not right that a software developer can advertise a new feature to get you to upgrade, and then that feature doesn't even work - they should be forced to fix it.

It's not the only thing that doesn't work, it's even worse than Poser for bugs; four crashes last night and I've not even got started with it.  No prizes for guessing why there are barely any animations out there, I'm guessing the severe lack of stability has a lot to do with it.

And where on earth is the documentation, please, does anyone know?

Looked in the menu, the folders, on DAZ, everywhere obvious but I cannot find a user manual for Carrara 8.5 Pro.  Policy and quality control at DAZ surely can't be so bad that they've not updated the documentation for two whole releases.

Can it?

Attached Link: userguide

The userguide is about the closest you will find to a manual from DAZ.

But I have been using C8.5 since the beta release, and genesis practically form it's released. What gets me is the biggest issue with using genesis/G2F/M in C8.5 is DAZ protecting the figure from you doing anything but using it.

The issues with autofit wouldn't be nearly as bad if DAZ would let you fix them. Take genesis in to the modeling room and what is the firs thing you see the "protected topoligy" warning.

Now you know why C8.5 was the worst selling build of carrara to date.

And lets hear what DAZ has to say about it. {insert crickets chirping sound}

Well, that pathetic excuse for documentation you linked to only concerns itself with "installing" and "content"!

Says it all really!

Quote -
Well, that pathetic excuse for documentation you linked to only concerns itself with "installing" and "content"!

Says it all really!

Yup, about sums it up.

I'm not saying C8.5 is bad, it's that by now we should have gotten a bug/feature fix update. It's bad enough that the release version doesn't work as well as the last beta build, but a year of knowing all the issues with no fix is just unforgivable.

The only thing I can figure is DAZ just doesn't want to sell carraraests genesis, G2F/M or any of the morphs, characters, clothes, poses, and so on. And I don't understand why any company would purposly deter the sales of content when they are in busnes to sell content.

Why doesn't DAZ want carraraests as customers?

Quote - You can model in the assembly room (not the model room) to work while it's still in the pose, I believe.

In my newest piece I have a person on a motorcycle in the foreground. On first importing into Carrara part of her back poked through her clothes in a spot that I could not 'pre-hide' in Daz Studio. So I took the figure into the assembly room, selected the polygons around her neck but under the outfit, and dragged them down towards the center of the body - solving my issue.

Quote - So I took the figure into the assembly room, selected the polygons around her neck but under the outfit, and dragged them down towards the center of the body - solving my issue.

Edit timers on posts here - curious. Haven't seen that on forum software much in the last decade.

Wanted to add that the motorcycle figure I edited was a Genesis 2 Female - Olympia 6 to be precise, with an outfit on her that was made for Vicky 6. And she was still rigged and posed when I made the edits.

The other figures in my scene were brought into Carrara as obj imports. I'm not yet sure which method taxes my resources more so I just kind of mixed it up this time.

Actually poke through is easy to fix, use displaement in the clothings shader to push it up a bit.

I wish Carrara had Poser's Morph Brush so that you can just pose the figure and rectify anything on the spot, move or smooth polygons etc.  If there's going to be a version 9 (and I assume so), I think that'd be top of my wishlist along with some sort of motion designer like iClone has for animation.