Back in 2006, when Daz first acquired Carrara, they didn't just get the software. They acquired the entire Eovia company, including some former Metacreations employees who were programmers for Carrara and Hexagon. They had a contract with Daz to continue development of the software, which also included the Ray Dream physics engine and renderer. It's not documented anywhere for sure, but I suspect that somewhere between 2010 (the release of Carrara 8) and today, they lost those programmers or their contracts expired and they left to go somewhere else for more money. That's probably why Carrara has not been updated in any significant way for almost 10 years!

I suspect the main reason Daz wanted Eovia to begin with was simply to have a way to render their products quickly. Bryce was purchased two years earlier for that very reason, but it was just too slow to please most users and there was no way to significantly improve the Bryce render engine without re-writing the entire code from the ground up. Bryce is basically a render engine with features built up around it. Carrara was a modeling package with a render engine built into it. There's a big difference in how you can expand on things there.

Personally, I think Daz should have integrated iRay into Carrara instead of DS as a secondary render engine option. Kind of like how 3dsmax and some other big professional software can offer a number of plugin render engines with their apps. Instead, they must have lost their Eovia team along the way and finding a way to program for Carrara without them proved too expensive or difficult.

Hey, that looks pretty good! The lighting and materials are great but noticed a few things maybe you can clarify for me.

In that opening shot I noticed what appeared to be shadows on the xmas tree suddenly pop on? Or maybe geometry was suddenly appearing out of nowhere? If you look close you'll see it as the camera is pulling away from the closeup. What is causing that? I've seen that kind of thing before in eevee animations so I'm curious why that happens. Also, what would the biggest differences be if you rendered this in Cycles?

Oh, I don't know if you realized this but your thumbnail says 4k UHD, but the highest setting I can watch it on youtube is 2k.

Yea, I noticed that about the normal maps too! I appreciate people making tutorials but that is something everyone needs to know. It's in the blender docs that if you use a normal map node, the textures need to be non color.

Miss B, why still using 2.79? Blender has changed so much since then you'll basically need to relearn a bunch of stuff if you decide to update. Latest versions are even way different than the original 2.8 release.

I just opened the scene. Very good materials. They might actually be some of the most realistic looking candy canes I've seen in Blender. You are right that the texture depends heavily on the UV coordinates of these exact models though. I tried changing the stripes to use object coordinates and it messed everything up. I was able to change colors and even changed the design on some of them using the color ramp setup.

At first I was like, ok that's pretty cool. Nice looking textures. Then I saw they were PROCEDURAL and I almost spit my coffee. That gingerbread and metal pan mat look incredible, but are you suggesting that the scene lighting is also procedural too? How?

Thanks, Lobo! There's some really good addons in that list. The really great ones are pay, but worth it. I for one can't rig or animate on my own for crap, which is why I started using Daz Studio to begin with, but that Autorig addon really seems to be a great way to get my feet wet.

Cute. Why did you never do animation tutorials? Seems you do just as good animation as modeling.

The impressive part is that you somehow managed to turn otherwise boring boxes into a compelling little video clip. ho ho ho! Good looking models.

I have a feelin you might not like this suggestion, but everything you said points to Blender as a possible solution. There's a few plugins out there that can import Daz content now, and it will probably be the most inexpensive solution. It has 2 native render engines you can pick from, and both are extremely fast and take advantage of your GPU for extra speed. One is basically a real time engine, and the other is Cycles which has been proven to be extremely good. Poser is actually using a customized version of Cycles for its default render engine now, Superfly.

Downloaded! It looks amazing can't wait to play. Thank you

The nicest thing about blender is that we can run multiple versions side by side. I still have 2.81 installed, I'm using 2.83.5 now with all my addons, but I'm going to install this 2.9 just to see how it works and have all of them on the same machine. If 2.9 works good and I can install all my usual and paid addons without any problems then I might use it in place of 2.83.5. They will probably release 2.9.1 in a few weeks anyway.

LuxXeon posted at 10:35PM Thu, 13 August 2020 - #4396750

Boni, just to give an idea of what can be done using only texture maps, I've quickly thrown together an example video. This is obviously not the kind of stone texture you had in mind, but I think it shows that with PBR texturing, even low poly models can be made to appear relatively detailed. I didn' t do any sculpting or baking for this, just used a tileable PBR texture map set with diffuse, roughness, normal map, and displacement. Something like this might be one optional way to go.

Was that rendered in cycles? That looks interesting. Like temple ruins or something that was just dug up and discovered by archeologists.

Got it. Thanks, Lux. I gotta be honest I'd never have figured out how to use the sharp edges. Crease edges make more sense to me and seem to be a lot more useful because they work with subd without anything else to worry about. Plus it actually affects the edges.

Oh one last thing Luxeon, promise! hehe. In your example where you create a point from the subdivded cube by creasing 3 edges, why did you create a new edge instead of using the third edge that was already connected to that vertex? Why bother adding new geometry to the box when there is already 3 edges connected to that vertex? I'm sorry if I'm being a pain here. I'm just trying to grasp that. I used Blender years ago back when it was still in 2.7x days. Then I switched over to Maya for a while and got used to that. Then I came back to Blender recently and I'm all messed up with the workflow now. It's so strange to me now and I just can't work like I did with Maya. I even played around with 3dsmax for a while which I enjoyed a lot but upgrading became way too expensive. Thank you again for the help. Also thank you to all the blender users here! This is a really great and personal forum compared to other Blender forums!

Thanks Luxxeon, that's what I wanted to know. I was searching all over for a way to crease vertex without more geometry and then I realized there just wasn't one. So I'm guessing you used edge crease on that model in the other thread but if you didn't use support loops and need at least 3 edges to crease a vertex into a point with edge crease, then how did you make the points on that other model? I only see two edges connected to those points. Another question while I have your ear is about that sharp edge thing. You gave sharp edges to two edges in that example, but I don't see any change to that object at all. I know you said it only works for smooth shading but what good is that really? I mean what would be a practical use for it then? Sorryu for all the questions and thank you to everyone who tried to answer. And thanks for your help luxxeon! I used a few of your freebies years ago and they were great models.