So I just bought it from Daz at 50% off or whatever. Price was about $75, so I thought why not? I use Blender for almost all my modelling right now, but figured for that price, at least I can take advantage of the easy Carrara plants and outdoor scene and terrain creation stuff. I might use it for some figure posing and stuff too, since I'm not good with Blender's rigging or character tools, although I'm learning. I haven't even opened it yet, as I'm nervous to get started in it after all I heard about the bugs and stuff. My question is, is there any way to work with Carrara and Blender in a pipeline type thing? Like is there any export/import bridges or translators for Carrara and Blender scenes? I'll probably model everything in Blender, then export and render outdoor shots with Carrara. Then I might use Carrara for creating some plants and environements to export back to Blender for rendering in Cycles. At least that's my thoughts so far.

I'm sure I won't find the modelling in Carrara as fast or easy as Blender, so I doubt I'll do any modelling in Carrara. I just really wanted it for the easy terrain and scene creation. Just hope there's a way to export that stuff to Blender. Maybe I should have got Bryce instead? Prob too late now though. I saw Hexagon on sale there for something like $10. I might pick that up just for giggles, but right now I don't think I'll find any tool that will be better than Blender for modelling, unless I wanted to pay thousands for one of the big apps like 3dMax, which aint gonna happen.

Hey, I thought I was posting to the Carrara forum?? How did I end up in the Commiunity forum? Oh dang! Can someone move this over to Carrara for me please? Sorry bout that everyone! Must have looked at the wrong name or something.

All moved!

Love your profile image btw. :)

" ... then export and render outdoor shots with Carrara." I don't use Blender, so I can't answer most of your question. Also, I am not a modeler. But I do have a vast amount of purchased 3D elements (characters, props, light rigs, etc.) that work perfectly in Carrara, and not many are native Carrara format (*.CAR). In particular, Carrara works seamlessly with Poser format elements, adding their Runtimes to the Carrara browser and loading them directly from there. So I look at Carrara as the animation setup and rendering studio, and find it very powerful. I'm pretty sure Blender can export a format that Carrara can import (if not Poser CR2, PP2, etc., then OBJ?), you might give that a try.

Hello davidstoolie
You can use Carrara with Blender there is no direct Export but you can export things made in Carrara as OBJ file and import them into Blender and also export from Blender using OBJ as well and into Carrara. I am sure Mark and other members of the Carrara forum might have more input that they will share I do use Both sometimes myself but more of a Blender user than Carrara at present

Thanks for the info so far, guys! Hi, Lobo. Good to see a fellow Blender user here. I felt like I was cheating on my wife when I made this purchase, but I really need outdoor scenes and stuff that I'm not yet able to make in Blender, so Carrara looked useful for that kind of thing, and the price was finally right.

Anyway, I know about OBJ of course, but will plants and terrain made in Carrara export to obj too? I know sometimes things of high complexity are created in some software using proprietary means, like particles, which can't be exported to model formats like OBJ. I'm hoping that's not the case here in Carrara with plants and terrain. I know atmospheres and stuff can't be exported unless I render them. So that would be my next question, but I'll save it until the first one is definitively answered, so I don't comfuse anyone with tons of questions.

I don't use Poser, but I was hoping the Daz Studio content I have will work in Carrara. Daz says it does. That would be a big help, to have characters from Studio in Carrara, then sent over to Blender for final render. Assuming posing and stuff is easier in Carrara. Do Daz characters have to be rigged, or do the come rigged in Carrara format too? I will address more concerns shortly, but these are my questions for now....

Can I export plants and terrain from Carrara as OBJ?
Can Daz Studio content work in Carrara, and will I need to rig it first?
I assume there's no plugin to export directly from Carrara to BLender, and keep scale and convert rigging and stuff?

I do like Carrara tools for outdoor scenes especially when you start up a new empty scene and picking if it is 30 inches 30 feet or 3000 sort puts you in the right mind set if that makes sense for creating an outdoor scene. There is a a good tutorial PDF with an exercise of building a Lighthouse Scene yet at the same time it goes thru some basic modeling principles and such that you might also find interesting
Blender Basics 4th Edition 2011 I know there is tutorial using the MScasual scripts that can be used to export a scene from Daz and now Carrara so you can render it in Blender Cycles https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts2/mcjblendbotspecial this might be useful to you as well. Most Daz studio content I would say 90% will work in Carrara I will not speak on the new Genesis 3 models since I am not sure if the current version of Carrara supports them yet or not.

Thanks, Lobo! That's all great info. I was looking over the docs for Carrara, and I really don't think I'll do much modelling with it. I feel like I would be like taking 10 giant steps backwards. I think the real advantage seems to be the Plant Editor in Carrara, and the options for creating vegetation and stuff. I'm hoping the trees and plants will export nicely to Blender. Do the plants and trees in Bryce export to other apps?

Why not just model it in blender and finish in carrara?
Plants and trees will get real heavy coming out of carrara, you also will lose the surface replicator for making forests.
Carrara is my end app. I model in hexagon. Or just use a ton of premades; got 160 gig of it lol

Well, I was hoping to export the trees and vegetation, to render in Cycles. Cycles is probably a more powerful render engine, and I think the results will appear more realistic. I know this stuff is meant to be done in Carrara, like making forrests and stuff, but I was thinking to use the instancing with Cycles to get the same kind of duplication. I was hoping I wouldn't have to render very much in Carrara, but for outdoor stuff, I might have to.

Edit to say, I really like this plant editor, but I can see exporting this stuff might e a problem.

I'm going in the other direction - I've been using Carrara and am currently learning Blender. :) Cycles render engine is definitely more powerful and potentially more realistic, but Carrara's is surprisingly good considering how long it's been since it was last updated and I personally find the tree based shader system easier to work with than the node based one in Blender (that might just be what I'm used to though).

A couple things to be aware of - Carrara does use DAZ content natively, but it tends to lose bump maps and add unnecessary color multipliers to the diffuse on loading, so you have to find them and manually add them back in, so if something has both a poser version and a DS version, it's usually best to try and load the Poser version, except for Genesis/Genesis 2 characters and items (use the DS version for those). Carrara also currently does not work with the latest generation of DAZ characters - nothing after Genesis 2 Male/Female.

Also, I second manleystanley's note about the advantages of using Carrara's replicators. I think you'll find that Carrara's replicators are not quite as versatile as instancing in Blender, but are much more memory efficient. I regularly see people crashing Blender in tutorials on a number of replications that Carrara could handle easily (I have a Carrara scene with over 1,000,000 replicated trees and about 500,000 other replicated objects in it and the view slows down a lot but the memory use isn't too much more than just a dozen actual trees would be - I'm not sure you could do that in Blender).

Exporting Carrara's trees might be more trouble than it is worth - it works fine, but they make for crazy high poly OBJs. If your intent is to end up in Blender then have you tried playing with Blender's sapling generator? It's an included add-on, you just need to turn it on. Here's a nice video showing someone using it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlRF5S0aHwU

MDO2010 posted at 12:44PM Tue, 25 August 2015 - #4223930

... if something has both a poser version and a DS version, it's usually best to try and load the Poser version ...

I agree with that. Some users in the DAZ forums report success with DS products in Carrara (DUF files), maybe with minor tweaks, but I've had trouble. Mostly with things that are suppose to be movable (opening windows, etc.), but they don't. For now, I'm avoiding products that don't come in Poser format (or Carrara format, of course). It's not a big problem since I have a LOT of stuff already - 48 pages of products from DAZ alone, over 1500 items, the vast majority in Poser format. And I almost never use Poser.

If you bought Carrara for under $100 you have a bargain - No other software gives you what Carrara does for the price.
Use it but be patient and even though its not perfect. you will come to love it !!!!

Remember too, there are many plugins available that enhance its capability quite a few are free . The replication tool was mentioned above - If you need that feature get Inagoni's "Replicator" plugin for more options.
http://www.inagoni.com/news.php

davidstoolie posted at 10:41PM Fri, 04 September 2015 - #4223849

Well, I was hoping to export the trees and vegetation, to render in Cycles. Cycles is probably a more powerful render engine, and I think the results will appear more realistic. I know this stuff is meant to be done in Carrara, like making forrests and stuff, but I was thinking to use the instancing with Cycles to get the same kind of duplication. I was hoping I wouldn't have to render very much in Carrara, but for outdoor stuff, I might have to.

Edit to say, I really like this plant editor, but I can see exporting this stuff might e a problem.

Carrara's renderer is one of the best biased render engines I've seen, but if you prefer the realism of an unbiased render engine than Cycles is going to be preferable. However do bear in mind that Carrara has unbiased render options too, including Luxus and Luxcore (Luxcore is currently free in beta, check out the Daz.com Carrara forums to pick it up and give it a whirl) and of course Octane for Carrara, which is truly excellent in terms of speed and realism (and also can render Carrara hair).

You can certainly turn a Carrara tree into a real object that can be exported, but it's going to be very memory heavy and though Carrara has no trouble at all handling tons of trees, replicated into thousands more, I think most other apps would choke because they will handle them differently than Carrara does.

Hi, David. Fancy meeting you here. I don't mean to discourage or disappoint, since you've invested money in Carrara already, but I think for what you want to do, your best course of action is to download and install the FREE addon for Blender called Sapling, which produces some very realistic trees, and use it along with the instancing system in Blender. With this combination, you can easily customize your own trees with tons of variables, and generate a vast forest scene, directly in Blender.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmQlcAcLOaU

I have only used Carrara some years ago briefly, for a collaboration project, but I know the render engine is ok (nowhere in the league of some of the best biased engines, like Vray). The shader system is powerful, but showing it's age. I really hate to say it, but unless you want Poser or Daz compatibility, the functionality you purchased the software for could have been had for free directly in Blender, with some simple addons. Not knocking Carrara here, so please no flames.

@ davidstoolie 3 months ago carrara was on sale for $75 ? Where was that and hoe come they aren't still doing that ? That makes me want to wait, for ever if need be, to "buy" it. And/But what version ? 7 or 8 ?

I want to buy an early version of Carrara, namely Studio 3 know anyone with that ?

reidh posted at 7:41PM Tue, 06 October 2015 - #4232593

3 months ago carrara was on sale for $75 ? Where was that and hoe come they aren't still doing that ? That makes me want to wait, for ever if need be, to "buy" it. And/But what version ? 7 or 8 ?

Earlier this year I bought Carrara 8.5 Pro for $89. It was actually $65 for Platinum Club members, which I wasn't, so I put the PC membership in my cart and the whole thing (Carrara + PC Membership) came out to $89. I forgot what it would have cost without the PC discount, but it was more than $89.

Sorry everyone, but I decided to no longer use Carrara, and so I haven't looked back in this thread since I started it. I just got the ebot notification someone posted here, so I came bye to check it out. Yeah, I bought the software sometime back in August, from the Daz site. I don't think it's the Pro version, at least it doesn't say Pro on it. It was on sale for like 50% off, which lasted maybe a couple days? I don't remember. Anyway, I spent about a month trying to get to know the software, but have since abandoned my efforts in it. I like the particle system, and the hair is ok, but other than that, it just hasn't impressed me enough to keep with it. I've decided to return to Blender, and continue my education in that software instead. Seems everything I wanted to do with Carrara was right there in Blender all along. I'm sure Carrara is a great software for most people, depending on what you wish to do in 3d. I know that it's perfect for anyone who uses Poser, as a way to get better rendering and such, but I don't use Poser all that much either, so the value of it is limited. I was hoping the environment rendering would be of use to me, but there's addons out there for Blender that allow me to create the same kind of plants and stuff, but I also get to render with Cycles, which in my opinon is far better than the Carrara render engine. Anyway, thanks to everyone who helped me out. Sorry I won't be involved in the Carrara community after all, but it was interesting to play with the software some.

5 years ago it was great software but now..., well DAZ happened to it. I was one of the few people that used Studio and Carrara together to complement each other. Now they don't work so well together. They can still be used together but not the latest builds. I worked up another optitex dynamic clothing animation in Studio and sent it to carrara, now I'm working on hair but I don't have days for the dynamic hair to occupy my comp. Wish I had 2 modern comps lol