I guess Daz heard us saying they were forgetting us...

http://www.daz3d.com/sales-promotions/

Yes, there is a big promotion for Carrara, but it's kind of a Non sale Sale.

Things are 40% off when they were 50% off recently, sigh.

Oh well, it's the thoughtlessness that counts.

This is not for me :-(

I already got all.... ;-)

Quote - I guess Daz heard us saying they were forgetting us...

http://www.daz3d.com/sales-promotions/

Yes, there is a big promotion for Carrara, but it's kind of a Non sale Sale.

Things are 40% off when they were 50% off recently, sigh.

Oh well, it's the thoughtlessness that counts.

but ..but .. if they were 50% off recently ..why on eath do people say they forgot Carrara users .. aint 50% off not enough  lol ...

A lot of carraraests didn't upgrade.

Most carraraests already have most of the carrara spacific content. Little new is coming out; Ringo's done some shaders, and Howie has released 2 new scenes{?}.But the new plugins aren't at DAZ; I think.

Carrara content sales have bottomed out so sale sale sale sale. Which doesn't work if you have everything already.

DAZ still seems to be clueless, even though the biggest part of C8.5 was genesis lafhassed compatability, that carraraests use poser/studio content.

DAZ has yet to realize if they had released C8.5 at a reasonable price C8.5 sales would have doubled or tripled and they would have far more carrara content sales and eaven O.O more genesis content sales.

Note never trust DAZ to shave it's self with a straight razor, they are too prone to cutting their own throat.

This isn't bad.

But I would have preferred that Daz issues a statement admitting that the new 'Fast Mipmap' texture filtering mode is the software blunder of the decade, that it will not be in Carrara 9, and they agree to talk more often to users to get their opinion about what features should or should not be implemented in Carrara.

dr_bernie, the mipmap filtering could have been introduced as a prelude to some really advanced new features.  Mipmapping isn't useless these days, with new technology.  It helps in voxel sculpting, because mipmapped alpha brushes are MUCH smoother and artifact free than alpha brushes without it.  It's actually incorporated into many of today's advanced sculpting software, like 3D Coast, Zbrush, and others.  So it could have been added because they plan on incorporating some kind of voxel sculpting with super high resolution support, and alpha-brush system.

@maxxxmodelz: Voxel painting in Carrara? Are you serious?

Carrara still doesn't have dynamic clothing, nor a decent Bullet physics implementation with live simulation. Its particle system, metaball and spline modelers all go back to the days of RDS. The render room still has a tiny preview window that was suitable in the days and ages of 16MB EGA graphic cards, its camera doesn't have fstop, aperture, shutter speed, backlight, and all the goodies you would expect from a decent camera. I could go on and on but I don't want to write a multi-page article.

And you think they are working on some advanced technology like voxel painting similar to 3D Coat or ZBrush?

I have a much simpler explanation of why they brought-in that fast mipmapping nonsense. They wanted to speed-up the renderer but didn't know how, so they opted for a technology from the side-of-the-road, called mipmapping.

Had they done their homework, they would have implemented the Embree technology which would have given a pro feel to Carrara at a development cost not much higher that mipmapping.

Oh, I'm familiar with all the shortcomings of Carrara.  Painfully so with my limited use of it.  Even the scene navigation felt like 1998 to me.

However, that doesn't mean anything.  All that stuff you mentioned would actually make sense and be useful.  But when it comes to small companies marketing an application to the masses, the things they add are usually "bullet point" features.  Something that they can plaster all over the site to make the software look cutting edge.  Those features you mentioned wouldn't mean squat to the average poser user looking to purchase a software that they mistakenly think is a good alternative to more expensive packages.

Daz already has a "new" technology they call HD morphs.  Which is basically the ability to add superfine details to the Genesis 2 characters on the fly.  So that's what is coming to Carrara next I would assume, and the mipmapping is to help create these high definition morphs in Carrara, with some form of alpha brush sculpting.  I think that's probably the reason.  But your guess makes sense too of course.

Quote - I guess Daz heard us saying they were forgetting us...

http://www.daz3d.com/sales-promotions/

Yes, there is a big promotion for Carrara, but it's kind of a Non sale Sale.

Things are 40% off when they were 50% off recently, sigh.

Oh well, it's the thoughtlessness that counts.

A number of those vendors were on sale last week, so if you were collecting points you can use your 20/44% off coupon ontop of that, so it makes the discount a little better. But low ball discounts shortly after higher discounts don't encourage anyone except those who are flush with cash to buy. 

I have to say the prices on Daz's site seem to be all over the place for me - example - I'm seeing the Carrara training at 60% then 50% off if I go to a different page.

@ Maxxxmodelz:

If what you are saying is true, then that would be another pointless development by Daz, from where I am standing.

Both Carrara and Studio have GoZ plugins, and I haven't yet seen any render in RO's Carrara and Studio galleries that uses GoZ's sculpting abilities. That means that an HD morph creator would really be of very limited use to a majority of users.

What I would like to see in C9 is more accurate processing of light, flawless blending between NLA clips, native support for sketchup models, a renderer using Embree, a professional camera, a better, faster and easier to use particle generator comparable to Particle Illusions, a better spline modeler, an overhauled mataball modeler, a polygon modeler comparable to Hexagon, improved landscape tools, an HDRI lighting that resembles Lightwave's, a scripting language like XPresso in Cinema 4D, a storyboard room that actually works, a flawless live physics engine, better rigging and weightmapping tools, live preview renderer that even Poser has, tons and tons of improvements to the UI, and I could go on for another 10 pages.

The last thing I need in Carrara is a tool to design hi-def apocalyptic monsters.

Well, I would tend to agree with you on all points, dr_bernie, but I'm afraid that's what may be coming.  Hopefully they could incorporate some of the other things you suggest, but Daz is kinda famous for propeganda advertising, and what better propeganda for Carrara (their point of view) than a feature that they can advertise as "ground breaking" technology?  It's kinda not, but they could say it, and people would buy it.

Embree is undoubtedly great, but the implimentation of it in Cinema, for example, is not entirely without some issues. When it's used with certain Irradiance Caching methods (particularly the new method introduced in C4Dr15), it increases memory consumption by up to 4x the standard on a typical scene, causing some users to run out of resources fast.  The solution, according to Maxon, is to use the "old" IR engine for now.  The speed increase is still worth it, but from a programming standpoint, I wonder if Embree presents some issues that smaller companies like Daz, who are really just content developers, not dedicated software engineers, might find problematic?  I'm merely speculating here of course, and it does kind of back up what you are suggesting about the mipmaps.

It just seems strangely coincidental that Daz is also introducing this HD morph technology at the same time, and we know that mipmaps are used in sculpting apps for alpha brushes, which would be useful in creating high resolution morphs.

Quote -
but ..but .. if they were 50% off recently ..why on earth do people say they forgot Carrara users .. aint 50% off not enough  lol ...

Well, they forgot about us during the sale, then a bunch of us said something about it and they finally put some stuff into that 50% sale, I guess back in September it was.

Yes, 50% is very good.

LOL

@ Maxxxmodelz:

I'm starting to believe there is sometging fundamentally flawed in the Genesis concept, i.e. the concept of 'one mesh for all purposes'.

So far I haven't seen not one Genesis female morph that looks feminine. There is something unnatural about a Genesis based female morph. 

By comparison morphs based on Victoria 4 or Victoria 3 always look very natural, very feminine, as attested by hundreds of V4 or V3 based morphs available on RO's site.

I think I am starting to understand the reason why. A human female, an alien monster and a lizard are fundamentally different polygon structures. You cannot use the same polygonal mesh to reproduce all of them faithfully and accurately. That explains, in my opinion, the unnatural look of human morphs based on Genesis.

For this reason I believe that an incremental weight-mapped Victoria 4.5 or Aiko 4.5 or Michael 4.5  or Hiro 4.5 would have been a lot more useful developments from a 3D art point of view than a revolutionary Genesis.

At this point, and from where I am standing, Genesis is not a match to Gen 4 or even Gen 3 models as far as the natural look goes, but I admit that Genesis has better posing abilities due to its higher poly count and its weight-mapped design.

The Genesis concept is good from a theoretical point of view, but that is as far as it goes. As long as the human morphs created with it have this unmistakable 'genetically engineered' look, I will not use it.

Genesis is a dead figure. Time to embrace G2F; which doesn't work any worse in C8.5; from what little time I had to work with it.

dr_bernie, the Genesis figure IS the V3 and V4 Figure!  It's the base all the V figures after V2 were based on, because there are morphs for it that change it into that exact replica figure!  Yep, you can morph Genesis 1 into V4 or V3, or Steph Petite, and they are exactly the same (with a different vertex order), but look exactly the same, and Genesis can accept V4 textures.  I think the reason you see what you see is that people don't have all the morph packs, and for good reason... they are expensive, and there's so many addons to the darn thing, who can afford them all?

Edit to say, you can also morph it into the Freak, M4, M3, and the Girl!  It's exact replicas of those figures, with better rigging.  YOu can also use any texture pack created for any of those figures, and with an addon, you can accept any morphs created for any of those figures.  So clearly, all those figures were created from THIS mesh, and sold as different characters.  We could have saved a ton of money if they just released Genesis FIRST.

Thanks Maxxxmodelz for the clarifications. They give me even more reasons to not use Genesis.

What I want is an incremental Victoria 4.5 with better posing abilities, that's all. I want Daz to spend its development time getting the fundamentals right, not revolutionize the 3D world.

For those of us who want a revolution, there is 3D Coat or ZBrush. Let them handle it.

Carrara has so many quirks in so many areas that getting them right should give Daz enough work for the next 5 years.

Look at this 3D app: http://www.cheetah3d.com

It is not a revolutionary 3D app, but it has all the fundamentals done right. Look at their News page. You will see that every release, minor or major, has some significant fixes or funcionalities added to it. The only reason I am not using this app is that it has no Daz/Poser content support.

If what you are saying is indeed true, i.e that Carrara's fast mipmap filtering mode is implemented for HD sculpting support, then I think Daz is on an even more wrong track than if fast mipmap were implemented to speed-up its renderer.

But then again if Daz board of directors is planning to sell the company in the near future, then all these 'revolutionary' developments could make sense, because nobody will buy Daz for Studio or Carrara, probably not even for its content library full of nudity, but most likely for a few technological breakthroughs that Daz has somehow managed to accomplish.

I personally like Genesis, but it only works as advertised inside of Daz Studio, not Poser.  I never used it in Carrara, so I wouldn't know it's functionality there. I have the Generation 3 and 4 morph pack addon, and the addon to include all the morphs for those legacy figures, so I can pretty much reuse all my content from V4 and V3 that I accumulated over the years, on Genesis.  I like that I can switch from the new Genesis UV's to the V4 UV's with a dial turn (I assume they did this by mapping the figure with multiple UV channels, which isn't revolutionary at all, and is also available in 3dsmax and other high end applications), but most users see it as Black Magic.

All the Gen 3 and 4 figures were made from the notorious "unimesh" that Daz had for years.  I think all Genesis is, as a figure, is that Unimesh technology, released as a standalone figure.  They created V3 and V4 from this mesh, just like we are able to do now, as a morph, and called it a new figure.  Everyone knew that years ago actually, but we never had access to the original "Unimesh", until Genesis 1 was released.

I think the new Carrara is going to get the Ptex-like subD that Daz Studio now has, and Poser has.  Reason being, if they want these new HD morphs to work in Carrara, it MUST support that.  No doubt about it.  That will be a really big new addition to Carrara 9, no doubt, and a big sales bullet point.  No telling if any of the other things you are talking about will be addressed, but it makes perfect sense now why they added Fast Mipmap support for that reason, and the new Genesis support, and released it as a way for users to warm up for the big integration in version 9.

You gotta follow what Daz Studio is doing in order to predict what they have in store for Carrara I think.

My biggest peeve, if I were a Carrara user, would be... why bother?  Carrara is very poor as a modelling app (sorry to anyone using it as such, but bless you for being able to make things with such limited functionality), and the render engine is good, but OLD.  Outdated.  It's modelling tools are also from 1998, except the dynamic extrusion tool, which is hard to control, and not exactly modern either.  So it wouldn't be a great tool for making HD morphs on these Genesis figures, UNLESS they added sculpting tools??

I have a feeling they may just slap Hexagon's modelling tools in with Carrara, maybe in the next release, as added features to make people happy and sell it to former Hex users as a modelling app too, thus why they never bothered releasing another version of Hex yet.

However, Hex, as it is, is buggy, and not fun.  It's still far short of most high end modelling applications in it's selection tools (selection tools can make or break a modelling software), but it's quite a few levels above and beyond where Carrara itself currently is with modelling tools, so it would be a great addon.  But they may also impliment sculpting to help in creation of HD morphs.  That sounds logical at least, although not what you were hoping.

Quote - I personally like Genesis, but it only works as advertised inside of Daz Studio, not Poser.  I never used it in Carrara, so I wouldn't know it's functionality there. I have the Generation 3 and 4 morph pack addon, and the addon to include all the morphs for those legacy figures, so I can pretty much reuse all my content from V4 and V3 that I accumulated over the years, on Genesis.  I like that I can switch from the new Genesis UV's to the V4 UV's with a dial turn (I assume they did this by mapping the figure with multiple UV channels, which isn't revolutionary at all, and is also available in 3dsmax and other high end applications), but most users see it as Black Magic.

There is no logic to that statment. And I am afraid you would be sadly disapointed in how Genesis and autofit work in C8.5.

Quote - All the Gen 3 and 4 figures were made from the notorious "unimesh" that Daz had for years.  I think all Genesis is, as a figure, is that Unimesh technology, released as a standalone figure.  They created V3 and V4 from this mesh, just like we are able to do now, as a morph, and called it a new figure.  Everyone knew that years ago actually, but we never had access to the original "Unimesh", until Genesis 1 was released.

Ah, no. Genesis is a complete new figure. New mesh, boning and rigging, and with the new triax weightmapping.

Quote - I think the new Carrara is going to get the Ptex-like subD that Daz Studio now has, and Poser has.  Reason being, if they want these new HD morphs to work in Carrara, it MUST support that.  No doubt about it.  That will be a really big new addition to Carrara 9, no doubt, and a big sales bullet point.  No telling if any of the other things you are talking about will be addressed, but it makes perfect sense now why they added Fast Mipmap support for that reason, and the new Genesis support, and released it as a way for users to warm up for the big integration in version 9.

Why? Carrara already has it, just not DAZ's version so not compatable with DAZ content. Much like weightmapping.

Quote - You gotta follow what Daz Studio is doing in order to predict what they have in store for Carrara I think.

Yes and it is called reinventing the wheel. Moreover I want a CG app, not another sales gimmick.

Quote - My biggest peeve, if I were a Carrara user, would be... why bother?  Carrara is very poor as a modelling app (sorry to anyone using it as such, but bless you for being able to make things with such limited functionality), and the render engine is good, but OLD.  Outdated.  It's modelling tools are also from 1998, except the dynamic extrusion tool, which is hard to control, and not exactly modern either.  So it wouldn't be a great tool for making HD morphs on these Genesis figures, UNLESS they added sculpting tools?? I have a feeling they may just slap Hexagon's modelling tools in with Carrara, maybe in the next release, as added features to make people happy and sell it to former Hex users as a modelling app too, thus why they never bothered releasing another version of Hex yet.

Not going to happen.

Quote - However, Hex, as it is, is buggy, and not fun.  It's still far short of most high end modelling applications in it's selection tools (selection tools can make or break a modelling software), but it's quite a few levels above and beyond where Carrara itself currently is with modelling tools, so it would be a great addon.  But they may also impliment sculpting to help in creation of HD morphs.  That sounds logical at least, although not what you were hoping.

I wont give DAZ credit for being able to do anything with carrara out side of tweaks and shoehorning in their own content compatability.

Quote - I want a CG app, not another sales gimmick.

I am with you on this one. What I want is a 3D app that evolves as my needs evolve, and so far Carrara has been a sore disappointment except, to be fair and equitable: 1) the 64-bit support 2) the ability to fit clothes with figures posed, 3) the significant speed improvements in the Open GL preview screen and 4) the NLA clips, which still don't blend as accurately as they should, but at least it's something I can use.

If Maxxxmodelz hunch is true, i.e. that the fast mipmap filtering mode is a prelude to the hi-def creature sculpting features, then it would be a new disappointment to be added to my list.

There is no logic to that statment. And I am afraid you would be sadly disapointed in how Genesis and autofit work in C8.5.

No logic in my statement?  In what capacity?  All I was saying is I like the way Genesis works... in Daz Studio.  Don't bother elaborating now, because I'm done responding after this anyway.

Yes and it is called reinventing the wheel. Moreover I want a CG app, not another sales gimmick..

Then it's time to start using a different package, if that's how you feel.  Carrara itself is one big sales gimmick software, as are most mid-level 3D applications.  Most of the updates to it in the last 7 years or so have been bullet point features to make it more attractive to the content buyers Daz cater to, not to 3D modellers or CG effects artists, and certainly not to independant or small studios.  If you don't like that, then you probably shouldn't be using the software.

***Not going to happen.***Glad you know for sure.

I'm done here guys. Good luck with Carrara.

If you had tried to use the mil4 clothes on genesis in carrara you would see what I mean.

And no, mid level 3d apps are not sales gimmicks. As in they aren't built to sell you content.

Carrara isn't ether; although it can use content, carrara works pefectly well with out it  as it all can be made with in carrara.

Studio at insept was just a sales gimmick, give people the app to use your content, for free and you sell more content. Till Studio 3; when studio finally got some functioning tools, it was simply a staging app, not what I would consider a mid level CG app by any means. It's tools are so spacific that it is precluded from any list of mid level CG apps. Even now with it's tools for working DAZ/Poser content it is still little more then a staging app. Because it's tool set is quite spacific.

By reinventing the wheel I mean DAZ is trying to put it's own verion of features in to carrara that are already there, just not compatable with DAZ's version.

I said it is not going to happen because we have been told repeatedly over the years, by DAZ, that it wont.

And if you are going to get all bent out of shape because some one disagreed with you, bye.

I actually think that Maxxxmodelz comments are very useful and informative.

The feedbacks of an 'outsider' well versed into 3DSMax are very valuable because they give us a fresh perspective and help us steer the debate into a productive course.

Quote - I actually think that Maxxxmodelz comments are very useful and informative.

The feedbacks of an 'outsider' well versed into 3DSMax are very valuable because they give us a fresh perspective and help us steer the debate into a productive course.

For comaritive reasons sure, to use it as ammo to run down carrara, no.