Quote - One thing I do wish DAZ would do is allow us to model the figure in the posed position like in LW.  I would be easy to make morphs and so forth like this in Carrara.

While I don't work for Daz, I'd recommend that when you find things like this that you file an enhancement request for this change at bugs.daz3d.com.  I would also like to be ablle to model the figure posed.  It's a hassle to switch back and forth because of the character's placement in space changes.  So, you're constsantly readjusting the camera back and forth.  I'm not sure why they can't inherit the pose into the modeler.

Thanks.

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Brian

Quote -  Here is a render out of lightwave I did using the figure and scene I mentioned at the beginning of the post.  I made some changes and messed with the lights.  The figure I am using has a texture map, epidermal map, subdermal map, blood map, bump, spec....  The lighting in Lightwave is superior in my opinion.   With a lot more work you probably could produce similar results in Carrara.  It's a great tool (Carrara) I just hope DAZ brings it forward. 

I actually like the lighting that comes from Carrara.  To me it is just as good as Lightwave's lighting.  The main issue is that Carrara supports limited numbers of sub shaders to which you can attach maps.  You mentioned that that render required 6 maps.  You can't even really load all 6 of those maps in Carrara.  There is no such thing as epidermal, blood and subdermal maps in Carrara.  It just doesn't support that.  This is one of the main issues I've had with Poser and Daz's products.  In fact, most 3D apps don't support enough surface shader maps to render realistic looking skin.  They simply do not support enough texture maps.

Carrara does offer a mixer to add more and more things together in one sub shader.  But, adding maps together ultimately produces only one map for that sub-shader (specular, transparency, glow, etc) instead of actually producing multiple maps.  The limited nature of the number of maps leaves Carrara's results a bit flat.  Basically, Carrara needs more top level sub-shaders like epidermal, subdermal and blood maps and at least two or three specularity and bump maps to create more subtle surfaces.

Perhaps with Daz Studio Advanced, the new shader system will provide enough connectors to utilize this many maps and produce more realistic looking skin.  The problem is that Daz is so focused on Daz Studio that they're not actively improving what should be their flagship product, Carrara.  

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Brian

 I agree on the lack of tutorials with Carrara.  There are several things I find a bit frustrating about Carrara.  The main issue is the shaders area.  There are lots of ways to create subtle shaders within Carrara, but they aren't always blatantly obvious.  Unlike Daz Studio which basically has presets for things like Metal and Skin, Carrara has none of this.  When I import a scene into Carrara, it seems to always turns specularity to 100%.  So, you get this tiny pinpoint specular highlight...even with Daz content! Not only is this frustrating, it's time consuming to fix it each and every time.  

Of course, once you get all of the shaders perfect, you can easily reload that saved file and work with it again and possibly apply the shaders to another figure later.  And that brings up another point. Carrara needs a way to allow easy storage and application of specific in-shader settings like Glossiness, Specularity, Bump maps, etc.  So that you can easily store sub-shader settings and apply them to only 'skin' objects, for example.  I believe you may be able to save them to files, but it really should be a palette of these user defined presets inside Carrara.

Carrara's renderer is quite capable of producing high quality images.  The main problem is in setting up the shaders to get it to do it.  Can it produce what Lightwave can?  Perhaps, but I have no experience with such a test.

As for another example of an issue, (and perhaps one of the plugins fixes this issue) the bigger you make a specular highlight, the more diffused it becomes (doesn't have a crisp edge).  I guess Daz felt that the bigger it gets, the less tight it should be.  I don't like this about Carrara's specularity settings.  There should be a setting to allow for tight specular highlights no matter how big or small the specular highlight is.  Certain materials require very tight, but larger, specular highlights.  If there is a way to fix this issue, I've yet to find it.  If it's not possible, then these are the kinds of issues that will prevent perfectly realistic scenes out of Carrara.

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Brian