Just wondering, since Carrara is my main and favorite workhorse of a 3D program, will there ever be a new version? Sooner or later, Carrara will become unusable on a modern OS without any new updates. Don't want to face this sad news.

Carrara's future is bleak. As I mentioned in this thread the latest Carrara 8.5.1.19 has the 'Smell and Feel' of a software hastily put together by an intern paid minimum wage. There will certainly be more of 8.5.x.x 'releases', but they will all be buggy, poorly tested and mostly unuseable.

You are exactly right, at one point the last good known version of Carrara (which imho is 8.1.1.12) will stop working on newer OSes, and it will be the end of Carrara for those of us who don't want to use 8.5.x.x releases developed by inexperienced intern(s).

As I mentioned in the thread above, I am not hitting on the intern(s) working on Carrara, but doing serious developments on a complex 3D app isn't a job for an intern.

IMHO Carrara's only clear advantage is its native support for Poser contents, and its particularly well-thought 3D view and scene building tools.

Other than that I don't see anything in Carrara that would make it stand-out. Compare Carrara Pro with the 'entry level' Cheetah3D and you will see that feature for feature, Cheetah 3D beats Carrara Pro hands down.

Fortunately for people of your talents, who don't seem to use much Poser contents anyway, there is a 'dream solution' which is Houdini Indie version. This is a full-blown Houdini package (a $12,000 3D app) offered at $199.- The only restrictions are that you cannot use it in a commercial pipeline and the output is limited to 1920x1080.

I have it on good authority that If you are looking for a job as a 3D artist in a prominent production studio, even mentioning the name of Carrara will immediately get you thrown out the door, while if you show some reasonable Houdini skills, you could get hired immediately with a hiring bonus that could be as much as $100K.

It would be interesting if they tried a different approach, such as the selling of a required proprietary part of Carrara, and making the rest open-source. In this way they could make the source code public, and folks can contribute, but they would maintain a core required piece that they could sell. That way the public could contribute, and they could maintain a product.

Although...I think the market in this space is probably too competitive, and those who would benefit the product probably would prefer to focus on improving more fully open-source and powerful products, such as Blender.

If they just released it as open source, they would basically be releasing what could develop into a competitive product, as the public would not be able to maintain support for the proprietary figures and technology that they put into their other products. So there is no benefit to them as a business to do this.

The outlook has not looked good for a while now...the longer it goes, its a pretty safe bet to assume it's been shelved.

IMO, Poser is the most similar software, though not cheap, but other than modelling has a fair amount of similar features, and is built to use all the same content, just as easy...except for the newer Daz stuff. I don't even use it now, but am saving up for it for the next sale, as I would like to try its newest toon and drawing style features, and have again access to its animation set and dynamics. (some may argue Blender or others, but nothing but Carrara. Poser and DS were made to use the content so easily, imo)

3doutlaw posted at 3:13PM Tue, 08 March 2016 - #4259848

It would be interesting if they tried a different approach, such as the selling of a required proprietary part of Carrara, and making the rest open-source. In this way they could make the source code public, and folks can contribute, but they would maintain a core required piece that they could sell. That way the public could contribute, and they could maintain a product.

Poser has a SDK available. I think that it should be possible to build enhancements to the software as an open source collaborative effort...

dr_bernie posted at 3:13PM Tue, 08 March 2016 - #4259830

Carrara's future is bleak. As I mentioned in this thread the latest Carrara 8.5.1.19 has the 'Smell and Feel' of a software hastily put together by an intern paid minimum wage. There will certainly be more of 8.5.x.x 'releases', but they will all be buggy, poorly tested and mostly unuseable.

You are exactly right, at one point the last good known version of Carrara (which imho is 8.1.1.12) will stop working on newer OSes, and it will be the end of Carrara for those of us who don't want to use 8.5.x.x releases developed by inexperienced intern(s).

As I mentioned in the thread above, I am not hitting on the intern(s) working on Carrara, but doing serious developments on a complex 3D app isn't a job for an intern.

IMHO Carrara's only clear advantage is its native support for Poser contents, and its particularly well-thought 3D view and scene building tools.

Other than that I don't see anything in Carrara that would make it stand-out. Compare Carrara Pro with the 'entry level' Cheetah3D and you will see that feature for feature, Cheetah 3D beats Carrara Pro hands down.

Fortunately for people of your talents, who don't seem to use much Poser contents anyway, there is a 'dream solution' which is Houdini Indie version. This is a full-blown Houdini package (a $12,000 3D app) offered at $199.- The only restrictions are that you cannot use it in a commercial pipeline and the output is limited to 1920x1080.

I have it on good authority that If you are looking for a job as a 3D artist in a prominent production studio, even mentioning the name of Carrara will immediately get you thrown out the door, while if you show some reasonable Houdini skills, you could get hired immediately with a hiring bonus that could be as much as $100K.

That's rather a lot of speculation presented as fact and then extrapolated from. Saying that kind of thing doesn't make it true. I think if you check the Carrara page in the Daz Documentation Centre you will probably see the current beta number, which was certainly incrementing for a while, and there were references to what was being done from one of the Daz software developers (Rob Whisenant) in one of the Daz threads on the new Connect system. I do realise that the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, but don't simply assume the worst.

I'm with RHaseltine on this one. The only thing that the churning DAZ team has done consistently is communicate poorly to their users. There are actually just a few CG companies that communicate well in fact. However, the other companies tend to be on a faster development track.

I do like Poser. But the big thing about Poser that I don't like is also the same thing I don't like about DAZ Studio. I can't make stuff when using it. Only pose and arrange stuff. So, I've an arsenal of Creation CG solutions to fit that bill, including Carrara.

Carrara does so much, so well...

I'm actually a little confused why the don't sell it off. If more users had it, I can't imagine it would hurt the DS distribution and a larger user base would continue to push the sales of Daz content.

At this point, selling it off for something is better than the nothing they are getting right now.

I have wondered recently how much money they would want for it. It's hard for me to understand how letting it go would harm the Daz business. Bryce is in the same condition.

@ RHaseltine:

As I mentioned in this post I do not have any hard evidence that the latest Carrara 8.5.1.19 was done by an inexperienced intern, it's only a 'hunch'. Carrara 8.5.1.19 just 'smells and feels' that way.

I could enumerate all my professional background over the past 20 years that, imo, qualifies me to express an opinion about the 'Smell and Feel' of a piece of software and about the kind of programmer(s) who designed it, but let's leave it at that.

FYI in the latest Carrara 8.5.1.19 under the Browser --> Content tab, the 'auto-detect runtimes' doesn't work anymore. You must add your runtimes manually. Under the same tab when you double-click on a content to load it, it displays a dialog asking you to 'Please locate the default repository (folder Runtime)'. And it does this each and every time you double-click on a content to load it. Wow, great, wonderful, you can't even load a content anymore without telling each time the location of the default repository.

That important functions that worked flawlessly for ages suddenly get screwed-up big time, is a proof that Carrara 8.5.1.19 has been 'released' with minimal testing. It's a proof that the intern(s) who worked on Carrara had absolutely no idea of what they were doing. Yeah, let's ship it out and when a user reports a bug the answer will be 'Gee, how could that have happened?'

I maintain here that Daz delivers us a pudding that cannot be eaten and it will get worse and worse with every new serving.

I agree that 'Carrara does many things very well', but all the things that it does very well will sooner or later stop working (as in the examples above) because the cook is not up to the task.

Carrara still has a future. It's development may be absurdly slow, but comparing it to pro software is unfair. Look at the price for the same license! Free student versions and introductory but limited versions only go so far before you need to buy the full license. So as an affordable intermediate program between things like Houdini and things like Poser / DAZ Studio, it's actually quite Sexy.

And with my 10 Plus years working in the Naughty Adult Website market I feel I am more than qualified to express an opinion about the Sexiness of a piece of software (not to mention "hard"ware) - and I gotta say that by focusing on Genocide, Carrara is losing some sexiness.

NOT because it wants compatibility with the latest content technology from DAZ, which makes perfect business sense, but because the effort would be better spent on other aspects of the program. It must be daunting to code both for importing the new figures and fixing bugs and adding a new bell or whistle all at once. Dropping off the latest figures would lighten the workload a bit and make more time for the other stuff.

I'd just declare to those clamoring for G3 compatibility that it will always be a generation behind in terms of the latest shiny new figure line (with hopefully better functionality of those figures), but it's other features will be ... Sexier?

RHaseltine posted at 7:24AM Thu, 10 March 2016 - #4259934

That's rather a lot of speculation presented as fact and then extrapolated from. Saying that kind of thing doesn't make it true. I think if you check the Carrara page in the Daz Documentation Centre you will probably see the current beta number, which was certainly incrementing for a while, and there were references to what was being done from one of the Daz software developers (Rob Whisenant) in one of the Daz threads on the new Connect system. I do realise that the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, but don't simply assume the worst.

So, Richard, please do tell, when Carrara's Realistic sky will be updated to have more realistic clouds, fog and haze ?

When Bullet will be updated (to all which bullet is capable of) and Hair module expanded ?

When we gonna have Real mesh light instead outdated Anything Glows ?

When Surface Replicators are gonna be updated and have at least 20% of functionality of instancing in Vue ?

How about Fire and Ocean primitives ? Splats, anyone ?

What about fixing UV mapping in modeler, when in the world we gonna have universal manipulator and soft selection in UV area ?

Are we ever gonna have more detailed controls in Rendering department and anti-aliasing ?

Soft shadows, still 3 settings only, really ???

Do you know that Carrara users want more then 8 bit output for years, and ya all still did not deliver in that department ?

Where is better motion blur, blurry reflections (which do not take forever to render), better SSS and maybe dedicated skin shader which we all really need.

I know that improving content compatibility is pretty much only thing on ya all's to do list, but there are users that actually want more than that ...

I'm all ears, been using Carrara since version 5 and I really wanna know

Anything I said in reply to that list would also be wild speculation, since I don't know what is happening with Carrara development (and wouldn't be authorised to tell you if I did).

Hmmm, its not a good sign when representatives of a company show up on another forum and feel they must dismiss what they call wild speculation about their product.

Even if a very small percentage of the things said are actually true, would not their time be better spent working to develop and extend their product. If comments such as these motivate Daz to actually talk to users, rather than positive requests request to make corrections or enhancements that users have been asking, what shall we conclude?

That's a rhetorical question Richard.

@Lonegunman,

My list of interests are along similar lines for Carrara. Plus I have additional bug fixes and improvements that I've wanted for a very long time.

I understand Daz's interest in promoting content and to be completely fair, being able to access Daz content has boosted Carrara a lot. The user community for Carrara was practically no one until the ability to import and render a human model became easy.

I've been with Carrara since Raydream so I've seen its entire life. Poser import ability changed everything and Daz continued the process.

So, while the ability to render Vicki and Mike boosted the interest in Carrara immensely, pushing the abilities of the base code further are needed and would be gratefully welcome.

To go back a few steps, if Daz is no longer interested in advancing C, ok. Sell it off to somebody who is interested in taking the next step. There is really no practical commercial threat to Daz by letting it move on. In fact, it would be an advantage because it puts additional platforms in the open that can utilize Daz content.

And yes, Bryce too.

cjd posted at 9:47PM Fri, 11 March 2016 - #4260322

Hmmm, its not a good sign when representatives of a company show up on another forum and feel they must dismiss what they call wild speculation about their product.

Even if a very small percentage of the things said are actually true, would not their time be better spent working to develop and extend their product. If comments such as these motivate Daz to actually talk to users, rather than positive requests request to make corrections or enhancements that users have been asking, what shall we conclude?

That's a rhetorical question Richard.

I was actually thinking the same thing. It seems like certain individuals caution against (and when they are in a position of power, censor) any "speculation", but we rarely get any actual facts until, 15 minutes past too late.

IF development was going on, it would be nice to HEAR about it. The questions have been floating around for awhile and Carrara users, bless em, have been a LOT more docile than DazStudio users about these kinds of things.

Will Genesis 2 and DUF ever work seamlessly in Carrara? Will Genesis 3 ever work in Carrara? Will the stuff that was broken not too long ago ever get fixed? Hell, are there some technological problems that are impossible to ever fix and we will just have to live with these problems?

Carrara is an AMAZING piece of software. I LOVE it, will keep using it, but at what point will my hardware no longer support it? How long before even the smartest vendor stops supporting older versions of Poser/Daz/Carrara?

We want version 9! We want our Carrara! Come on Daz..we're waiting on ya.

I thought the old Daz bug tracker was a great way to collect user input, and for users to work together to resolve or investigate issues. That was efficient in my opinion. Now, users can still work together to investigate issues, but it's not managed by anyone specifically. Maybe when a user or users file updated reports in the current support system on a similar issue with any new info, that info from multiple sources gets tied together, but I'm just speculating there.

Obviously, the old bug tracker did not work for Daz for some reason. But when it was working, speaking for myself anyway, I thought it was really great. In fact I think they were one of the few software developers that had direct interaction to user feedback.

Being able to use Octane and Lux Render ( and other 3rd party renderers) now with Cararra is huge plus. I think its reasonable to say that many users would not still be with Carrara at this point if that had not happened. Hopefully new stuff will continue to come out to advance Carrara even if the native developer does not.

cjd posted at 2:47PM Sat, 12 March 2016 - #4260645

I thought the old Daz bug tracker was a great way to collect user input, and for users to work together to resolve or investigate issues. That was efficient in my opinion.

Obviously, the old bug tracker did not work for Daz for some reason. But when it was working, speaking for myself anyway, I thought it was really great. In fact I think they were one of the few software developers that had direct interaction to user feedback.

I agree totally with these points! From a customer's perspective, the old "Mantis" bug tracker was easily the best web feature that Daz ever had. I and others have asked Daz reps why it was discontinued, but the answers are never specific.

Now I'd like to get something off my chest that most likely can't be discussed in the Daz forum without being deleted.

/begin venting/

I have my own theory as to why the bug tracker is gone, but based only on my personal observations I could be all wet.

My thought is this: As Daz's management went through changes, the new people in charge didn't like the open nature of the bug tracker. The very things that made it useful to the customers worried the managers.

• An open bug list that customers could search to see if their bug was already reported, and any progress being made.
• A method for customers to collaborate in a meaningful way by adding troubleshooting info in a single location.
• A method for customers to collaborate directly with the developers to solve bugs.

Of these features, I think that the bug tracker was discontinued because;

One - it exposed all of the unresolved bugs that existed for years without resolution.

And two - it allowed the developers to directly communicate with the customers.

I have never seen any of the actual software developers post in the forums (only "Quality Assurance", and web support people), and I suspect that they are discouraged from doing so.

I also noticed, toward the last days of the bug tracker, that many of the developers who had been the most proactive in solving problems with the customers, were vanishing from the tracker's users list. While the issues that they were working on remained posted, the developer names that the issues were assigned to changed to a generic "user0001" (or something similar). I suspect that many developers were being laid off and the bug tracker was exposing this.

Nowadays Daz is almost completely locked-down, with only a select few "DAZ_" spokespeople in the forums. And those people will rarely answer a direct question or engage in a real dialog (they seem to prefer to make Pronouncements, then vanish back into the woodwork. The forum moderators are more accessible, but since they are not Daz employees, are usually as much in the dark as are the customers.

Having followed Carrara over from Eovia, where the company's CEO and developers would regularly chat with customers on their forum, I really miss the old days.

Due to the company's present opacity, and its history of sloth (we all know what "DAZ soon" means), it's almost impossible to predict Carrara's future. So, I'll just continue to use it until it no longer functions on my OS of choice.

/end venting/

'Johnny has no future Mr. Angel. He's dead!' (Charlotte Rampling and Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart)

Same thing with Carrara. See this link

dr_bernie posted at 1:55AM Sun, 13 March 2016 - #4260708

'Johnny has no future Mr. Angel. He's dead!' (Charlotte Rampling and Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart)

Same thing with Carrara. See this link

If Carrara is dead then I'm a lot more perverted than I thought!

I knew I was kinky, but had no idea I was a necrophiliac!!

And it looks like we've sure got a lot of other necrophiles around here too...

To paraphrase a popular internet saying - "Dead. You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means!"

Do you think any of this is a surprise to me?

At one point, for a very brief time Carrara, Studio, and DAZ content worked quite well together. I thought "hot damn it's all coming together", then it didn't. In fact Carrara, Studio, and DAZ content have drifted so far apart that they don't work together at all now. I gave up when it was so frustratingly difficult to get anything done that my ears would get to ringing. Just too old to let myself get that worked up anymore.

As Mickey Rourke says to Charlotte Rampling in this link: 'Look, I don't know much about this guy, but he must have been really stoopid to let you go!'

Same with Carrara. Daz must have been really stoopid to drop a 3D app like Carrara!

You are still making assumptions, that Daz has "dropped" Carrara in this case. It ain't necessarily so.

RHaseltine posted at 7:26PM Mon, 14 March 2016 - #4261079

You are still making assumptions, that Daz has "dropped" Carrara in this case. It ain't necessarily so.

Wanted to respond to that but after all these years it seems pretty redundant.

I wish it wasn't the case.. was just thinking where Carrara might be by now if Daz had stuck with it. But what's the use of this? Can we persuade Daz to change their mind? Maybe merge Carrara and Studio and Bryce together? Now, that'd be super for us!

@ RHaseltine:

You keep repeating that we are giving into speculations. Alright, let's try and do this: I am sure you can find a fairly new computer at Daz that can be used for some tests. Install Carrara 8.1..1.12 and 8.5.1.19 on that computer, and nothing else.

1. Start 8.5.1.19 and do an 'auto-detect runtimes'. You will see that it does not work. You must add your runtimes manually. Great progress! Ok, after you added your runtimes, double-click on a prop or a figure to load it. A dialog pops-up and asks you to locate the 'default repository', and it keeps asking you over and over each time you load a content. This is no speculation Richard, this is a fact. In its most important function, i.e. loading contents, Carrara has been masterfully screwed-up.

2. Go ahead and create a new scene in 8.1.1.12 and 8.5.1.19 and load this or this or this in textured mode. You will see that each time 8.5.1.19 is noticeably slower than 8.1.1.12. You can do this with just about any content, I gave you just a few examples. Again this is a fact Richard, not speculation. 8.5.1.19 has been hurriedly rushed out the door with minimal testing. In the process the only functions that make Carrara worth using, i.e. its scene building abilities, have been badly screwed-up.

3. Now build a scene of moderate complexity, like this one, with about 40 to 60 lights, set all texture filterting modes to Gaussian filtering, anti-aliasing to Best, object and shadow accuracy to .5 pixel, filter sharpness to 100%, set the Indirect Lighting to AO only, lighting quality to excellent, accuracy to 1 pixel and tile size to 48 and render. You will see that 8.5.1.19 is about 10% to 12% slower than 8.1.1.12. Carrara's renderer has been badly damaged between 8.1.1.12 and 8.5.1.19. This is an undeniable fact Richard. Carrara is decaying from one version to the next, and soon it will become plain useless.

4. Now please explain why Daz has spent months to implement the fast mipmapping filtering mode in Carrara. Was it done to 'speed-up' the renderer? Because if that was the purpose then I would call this the 'Engineering Screw-Up of the Decade'. To speed-up a CPU-based renderer you use Intel's Embree. Today just about every CPU-based renderer uses Embree. Vray, Cycles, LuxRender, Cinema4D, Modo, Lightwave, you name it, they all use Embree. And Carrara beautifully misses the boat by using a 1990 fast mipmap technology used in games. There is simply no excuse for such an engineering screw-up. And this is a fact, not speculation.

Add to this a Bullet physics engine that doesn't work, an unuseable storyboard room, a slow renderer whose output looks like a photo shot with cheap point and shoot equipped with a plastic lens, and you will quickly reach the conclusion that Carrara has become a mostly unuseable piece of software.

Yeah, OK, there are still few people around the globe who are using Carrara. But I would put them in the 'necrophiliac' category, people attracted by corpses.

Daz (in the form of Rob Whisenant) has said that Carrara is being worked on, though in the context of the discussions (Connect and Genesis 3 since that had also come up) he addressed only the content-loading aspect of the work. So how are you wanting them to change their minds - to not developing Carrara after all?

dr_bernie posted at 4:58PM Tue, 15 March 2016 - #4261268

@ RHaseltine:

You keep repeating that we are giving into speculations. Alright, let's try and do this: I am sure you can find a fairly new computer at Daz that can be used for some tests. Install Carrara 8.1..1.12 and 8.5.1.19 on that computer, and nothing else.

1. Start 8.5.1.19 and do an 'auto-detect runtimes'. You will see that it does not work. You must add your runtimes manually. Great progress! Ok, after you added your runtimes, double-click on a prop or a figure to load it. A dialog pops-up and asks you to locate the 'default repository', and it keeps asking you over and over each time you load a content. This is no speculation Richard, this is a fact. In its most important function, i.e. loading contents, Carrara has been masterfully screwed-up.

2. Go ahead and create a new scene in 8.1.1.12 and 8.5.1.19 and load this](http://www.daz3d.com/the-captain-s-ready-room) or this this in textured mode. You will see that each time 8.5.1.18 is noticeably slower than 8.1.1.12. You can do this with just about any content, I gave you just a few examples. Again this is a fact Richard, not speculation. 8.5.1.19 has been hurriedly rushed out the door with minimal testing. In the process the only functions that make Carrara worth using, i.e. its scene building abilities, have been badly screwed-up.

3. Now build a scene of moderate complexity, like this one, with about 40 to 60 lights, set all texture filterting modes to Gaussian filtering, anti-aliasing to Best, object and shadow accuracy to .5 pixel, filter sharpness to 100%, set the Indirect Lighting to AO only, lighting quality to excellent, accuracy to 1 pixel and tile size to 48 and render. You will see that 8.5.1.19 is about 10% to 12% slower than 8.1.1.12. Carrara's renderer has been badly damaged between 8.1.1.12 and 8.5.1.19. This is an undeniable fact Richard. Carrara is decaying from one version to the next, and soon it will become plain useless.

4. Now please explain why Daz has spent months to implement the fast mipmapping filtering mode in Carrara. Was it done to 'speed-up' the renderer? Because if that was the purpose then I would call this the 'Engineering Screw-Up of the Decade'. To speed-up a CPU-based renderer you use Intel's Embree. Today just about every CPU-based renderer uses Embree. Vray, Cycles, LuxRender, Cinema4D, Modo, Lightwave, you name it, they all use Embree. And Carrara beautifully misses the boat by using a 1990 fast mipmap technology used in games. There is simply no excuse for such an engineering screw-up. And this is a fact, not speculation.

Add to this a Bullet physics engine that doesn't work, an unuseable storyboard room, a slow renderer whose output looks like a photo shot with cheap point and shoot equipped with a plastic lens, and you will quickly reach the conclusion that Carrara has become a mostly unuseable piece of software.

I'm not at Daz, nor am I a developer.

Have you reported these issues as bugs?

I, for one, would like to see version 9, and for Carrara to be brought up to date. Very much love the program, but eventually...

Great news: The 'auto-detect runtimes' not working in Carrara 8.5 is now reported on Daz web site See Link.. I have reported this problem in my post above.

For heavens sake this is the first function that you use after you install Carrara. The second function you use is to build a scene in 3D view. All you have to do is to load a scene in 8.5.1.19 to see how noticeably slower it is when compared to 8.1.1.12.

Carrara 8.5.1.19 has not been tested for even 15 minutes before being shipped. This is what happens when you put interns in charge of software development.

Note that my gripe is not with the intern-in-charge. I am enraged at Daz management who uses under-qualified under-paid interns to develop Carrara, and then charges us the eyes of the head for a buggy worthless 'release' only good for the trash can.

Way to go Daz, way to go!

dr_bernie posted at 4:17AM Tue, 29 March 2016 - #4263121

Great news: The 'auto-detect runtimes' not working in Carrara 8.5 is now reported on Daz web site See Link.. I have reported this problem in my post above.

For heavens sake this is the first function that you use after you install Carrara. The second function you use is to build a scene in 3D view. All you have to do is to load a scene in 8.5.1.19 to see how noticeably slower it is when compared to 8.1.1.12.

Carrara 8.5.1.19 has not been tested for even 15 minutes before being shipped. This is what happens when you put interns in charge of software development.

Note that my gripe is not with the intern-in-charge. I am enraged at Daz management who uses under-qualified under-paid interns to develop Carrara, and then charges us the eyes of the head for a buggy worthless 'release' only good for the trash can.

Way to go Daz, way to go!

No.

They got the most important thing about the update right! C 8.5X can load 3DUniverse's Toon Cow!!!

Compared to that, auto detecting runtimes is meaningless.

This is a key step forward in the Relentless March To The Release Of The Millennium Cow!!!

No version of C8.1X could load this critically important Cow. And since this was the main reason for making C8.5, calling it worthless is missing the point.

Any feature broken by this Cow stampeding through the source code is irrelevant. No mere intern is capable of coding support for Cows. The Cows would not tolerate it.

Perhaps the problem is that you have to buy the Toon Cow separately? That was my biggest complaint.

If you're going to name a program Cowrarra, it should come with more Cow Content right out of the box.

I love this program, it has been so wonderful for me. Is there any chance of Daz developing it as an open source like Blender I wonder?

An open source Carrara will be just as dead as the current closed source.

Blender, with tens of thousands of users around the world, can raise enough funds to support only a small team of full-time developers See Link..

Carrara has, at most, few hundreds of faithful users around the globe. It's extremely unlikely that it will ever attract enough interest and enough funding to sustain an open source development.

Let's face it: Carrara is a mostly dysfunctional buggy 3D app. And with inexperienced interns in charge of its development it will keep getting worse. Carrara can actually be viewed as only a 'Proof Of Concept', i.e. it gives you an idea of what a full-featured 3D app should do. But in no way is it a reliable platform for a production pipeline.

Don't even bother about the future of Carrara, because there is none. If the current version that you are using suits you well then keep using it until it no longer runs on your favorite OS, otherwise trash it and switch to something else.

But what other cheep or free alternatives are there? Blender is like having to take to many steps to what should be easy and straight forward. Five steps in what should be one or two or even worse. It was made in such a way that is becomes to long of a process to learn. Others may like it but would it not be in the best interest of layman's like myself to open blender up and just start figuring things out in minutes or at least a few hours. Modo is like that but modo is out of my price range but boy was it easy to navigate and figure out. I was modeling almost the next day. Blender is taking literally years to figure out, i'm not joking. Why should any software be that complicated. What ever philosophy is behind blenders workflow should be reconsidered. I want to like blender but until they consider other options for alternate workflows, it will be way to off putting. I often have to wonder why it is not picked up by certain studios out there. It takes a special train of thought to learn it, like you need a certain brain and too much time on your hands to learn blender. Work flows need to be fast and unless you are that special type forget it. I want to open blender and to navigate around my model just like that. Where is there a easy navigation gizmo? Why do i have to dig deep to model or do anything?

I don't think Daz is going to release Carrara anytime soon. My guess is they put a bunch of money into it to "Daz" it up for content and found that studio is still returning more content interest than C so they've basically shelved it. There is no commercial incentive fo Daz to push the code forward (or they would do so).

Daz is still on the move to consume market share as we have seen so they have money. They are simply not interested in Carrara or Bryce (just Daz content). I'm also guessing they would want a lot of money for somebody to take it off their hands. Then whoever bought it would need to put some significant work into it to un-Daz it by decoupling all the Daz tentacles it has now and then to upgrade it for a new version that people would want.

That's a fairly large investment. Probably $750,000 in manpower for coding work and then who knows how much money Daz would want to sell it. Let's say it's $1,500,000 to get Carrara into shape for C9.

That would mean that at least 10,000 copies of the code @ $150 a copy would need to sell before there was any profit needed for the next release.

I don't know how many C users are out there but I'm pretty sure it isn't 10,000. We had users complaining for months here about the latest release pricing so I'm pretty sure $150 is about the price point that would be maintainable.

I don't know why Daz bought C in the first place. Maybe Eovia just wanted to give up or something and Daz got it for cheap. Now, Daz has it and Daz is not in financial trouble so they aren't going to sell it for cheap (they don't need to). They also have no motivation to upgrade it for the cost given the user base is now too small for commercial viability.

I'm guessing on most of that but it's a theory that answers a lot of questions.

If C somehow did get released into an open source organization, at least it would be moved forward as OS's changed and we would see some movement. Once again though, there's no practical reason why Daz would do that.

Now, as we see, C is basically drying up on the vine and drifting into our past.

Hobbyist CG artwork is a tenuous market. Most serious CG people go into commercial organizations that do CG for a living and the majority of the hobbyist community is oriented around the poser/Daz type of stuff. The true interest in C really got serious when Poser figures could be imported. That means that Daz views C as a studio competitor given that the vast majority of the users basically do the same kind of artwork.

So, from Daz's point of view, the number of Daz users versus C users is very different and Daz is putting its efforts into the market that most hobbyist's use (studio and not C).

It's kind of a weird combination of really bad luck for us C users.

Until Daz decides to turn the code loose, I don't think we are going to see any development and I really can't figure out why Daz would turn it loose. Bryce has a bigger user base than C and it's the same story for that code. If Daz has also killed Bryce, there is no way C would survive.

Best way to eliminate competition is to buy it out and shut it down. Many Bryce owners went to Studio. Many carrara owners went to Studio. Next step buy and close down other premade/content stores. The only thing that is keeping DAZ for running/owning the hobbyist CG industry is Poser, and I expect that to ether close down or end up being bought out and closed down by DAZ. The way I see; yes a manstan prediction, DAZ will end up absorbing the rest of the hobbyist CG industry and be the only option. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqcLjcSloXs

If we had more say a free market then companies would not be doing such desperate things in order to survive. Buy outs would be rare if not ever happening in other cases. Competition would be quite common and with no government to business connections, corrupt capitalism AKA corporatism then we would have more choices in the marketplace, and businesses would by means of natural market forces and market only regulation would have to up there quality control or we would shop elsewhere given more choices in a true free market. Government forced regulation and taxation is never a good outcome. We the consumers always loose and the business owners as well. You know... the guys that keep us employed even local businesses are hurting. If people had an easier time starting and maintaining a company then maybe we would have something better then Daz or Daz would have to get there crap together, that or fail and we take our business to the better alternatives. Again in a real free market this would occur.