Thank you!

It's a great idea. It would be great to be able to easily find all the materials related to VWD all at once in a single place!

Thank you for the tip and the content explanation! It worked like magic! :) YAY!

Ah! No, it's not. For the simple reason that I didn't install it (it wasn't on my list of bare bone things to install and try) But you are still loading the content from your Content tab, not your Smart Content tab, is that correct?

It's only a Carrara problem. Daz Studio sees all the morphs with no issues...

Thank you for the comprehensive guide! I hope it gets stickied somewhere to help others too!

Based on it I am guessing that the problem I am having is not normal, so I posted a question in DAZ Forums. (No morphs loading in Carrara with the figure). I do have all the prerequisites (DAZ Studio, Carrara 8.5, Essential Starter Kits), so something else must be wrong. Oy. And I was so hoping that the clean install of everything will save me from these troubles...

Thank you, diomede!!! I can't wait to get back to it.

And thank you for the step-by-step write-up!

So far I am trying to get Genesis to work in Carrara in the most basic sense. I found that even though I load the figure, it loads with just basic shape and rig, no morphs whatsoever and applying the character presets from the Content folder does not work either. So I am learning the whole process from the most basic initial steps.

I did find the thread you referred to, thank you! But DAZ Forum search function appears to have become useless there. :( Or am I just using it wrong? Is there a way to specify which sub-forum to search? Thank goodness for Dartanbeck's thread indexes!!! I am slowly going through the Genesis related ones hoping to fix the issues I am having.

Once I figure out the basic steps I will have 2 more challenges to overcome: figuring out how to add my own morphs to Genese1&2 content and how to add Carrara hair to those figures (hair that is not cap-dependent, but can be added to different parts of the body). Do you know if this is even possible?

I am trying to get back into Carrara after over a year break. And I am totally lost in all the compatibility issues of what works with what and how exactly. I find your post extremely useful because I was hoping to be able to use Carrara 8.5 and Genesis 2.

Can you point me to a thread that lists how to set it up and, if you don't mind sharing, add your own tips on your pipelines and workflow. I was never too savvy in DAZ Studio since I mostly used it as a very awkward Carrara plug-in, and the whole save-as-wearable-preset thing is completely new to me: where do you save it to (does it matter?), and how do you make Carrara see it?

Also, is the current Carrara 8.5 build - the right one to use with the latest DAS Studio 4.9.1.30 (I had no choice but to download the latest one since the one I had saved before was from over 2 years ago, and, apparently, completely obsolete.)

Wow! Cool contest. I've been away and had a major computer migration. I don't even have Carrara installed on the new system yet, so not sure I'll get around to it. But I love the contest idea!

Thank you!

I don't use FB either, but the page looks good. As long as all the posts are public and I don't need an account to see them, I'd be happy to visit it from time to time.

That's a very cool effect! Thank you! I hope you can post more from your column.

P.S. About investment in tutorials: if you can find samples videos from both, compare Infinite Skills to Mark Bremmer's tutorials - they cover similar things, but there are some differences, so I'd look into it to see what's the best fit for you.

Also, most DCG plug-ins are a very worthwhile investment. Things like Shaders Plus, Shader Ops (1 & 2), Anything Goos are must haves in my book. There are also very useful Shoestring Shaders. And Toon Pro can be extremely useful for a variety of looks, not just strictly toon. It's not that you absolutely wouldn't be able to do without them, but they make life much easier and some very cool things possible.

Well, I think you will find a rather diverging set of opinions about it. I don't find Carrara faulty or buggy at all - it hasn't failed me yet.

In fact, there have been very few instances where I've reached the limits of it, and in some of those it was really the limits of my knowledge of it. Where I hit the wall, there are usually some workarounds or, at the worst - a commercial plug-in to add the functionality that I find missing in the core software.

It depends on what you want to be able to do with the software. For basic 3D which can combine modelling, scene setup, rigged DAZ content, morphing, basic UV-mapping, advanced shading, texturing, surface-painting, easy object replication, pretty nifty rendering and even python scripting (there is a plug-in for that) - I don't know of anything better for the buck AND easier to learn.

Blender is free and can do most of those things (except DAZ content), as far as I know, but I find the interface a hell-and-a-half to lean. I tried multiple time, including following tutorials for it - and ran away screaming each and every one of those times.

Carrara UI is visual, clean and once you understand the concept of different functionality tabs/rooms - very logical and a piece of cake to learn.

You can find example of my Carrara work in my Gallery (by NO means the best there is - there are better and much more talented and advanced users out there, but I don't use outside renderers, so it can give you a sense of what Carrara's native renderer can do in mediocre hands...)

Also, DAZ forums has the recent Carrara challenge with some work by Carrara newcomers, to give you a sense of what a newbie experience might feel like. It's in voting, too, so if you stop by in the next couple of hours - take a minute to vote, please! :)

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/49155/

Thank you! That was quick! :) I was just about to do the same :).