Moonglow posted at 5:44AM Fri, 22 January 2016 - #4250585

The latest four products released by DAZ3D will NOT WORK WITH CARRARA, nor will most future releases by DAZ3D. Read their latest FAQs and their forums about the new DRM products and Carrara incompatibility. Also, if you run "Daz Connect" feature in the new DAZStudio 4.9, it will, depending on file locations, update current DAZ product files in your runtimes and render them unusable in Carrara. Read ALL the FAQs...and also "between" the Daz3D lines.

That's partly true. The four new items will not work in Carrara, but not all future items will be DAZ Connect-only (yet - eventually they will be, you're right about that, but they are not switching over entirely right away). Running DAZ Connect and allowing it to download content updates WILL download versions Carrara cannot use, but it WILL NOT over-write any content you have already downloaded/installed except for earlier versions of D/S itself. The new encrypted files it downloads go to a different location and are in a different file format. I installed it just to take a look and it only needs to connect using DAZ Connect one time and then never again (currently).

Even if you install D/S 4.9 you only have to let Connect connect once and then you never have to use it again (currently) and they have said repeatedly that all the old products that came out pre-4.9 will always still be available in your library as .zip files.