There is no more a Hexagon forum at Renderosity, so I post this article here. It should be of interest to Carrara users as well.

The great news is that Daz has released a new beta version of Hexagon. The bad news is that this release is obviously done by a junior developer getting on the job training.

Here is the list of the new features: See Link

2.5.2.109 (November 29, 2017)

Installation
    The Public Build can be installed and co-exist along side the General Release
    Separate application and content packages can now be downloaded/installed using Daz Install Manager (DIM)
        BETA versions must be downloaded and installed using Install Manager; BETA versions are not available as a standalone installers
Stability
    Many changes have been made to the core code that are targeted specifically at improving stability
    Identified and eliminated various crashes
    Identified and eliminated various memory leaks
    Performed significant amounts of static code analysis and code maintenance
Hexagon News
    A new informational dialog has been added that displays the latest news about Hexagon development
    The dialog contains an option that prevents the same news from being displayed more than once
    Edit > Preference Editor > User Interface > Misc contains two options; one that controls whether or not Hexagon News is checked at all, and one that prevents the same news from being displayed more than once
Daz Studio Bridge
    Edit > Preference Editor > Import/Export > Daz Studio Bridge contains an option for specifying the path of the Daz Studio installation to use when sending to Daz Studio; recent versions of Daz Studio contain a corresponding setting in Edit > Preferences... > Bridges
General User Interface
    Updated URLs used in various menus/actions
    Updated various branding images; icons, splash, about, etc
    Updated various English language text entries
    Added some missing French and Japanese translations
    Added various actions to the Help menu
Windows Specific
    Large Address Aware (LAA) by default; still a 32-bit executable
    Fixed DWG/DXF Import
Mac Specific
    Removed PowerPC support

These are featurettes added to Hexagon by a junior to get introduced into the code, after what, ten years since the last release?

I am not blaming Daz for this effort. I actually think it's very honorable for them to do so. It's only that it shows that Daz does not currently have development resources to work on its 'abandonwares', i.e. Bryce and Carrara. All we can expect are minor insignificant developments.

For the (still) Carrara users who are expecting a flashy mouth-watering Carrara 9 loaded with new eye-popping features, my advice, as it has been for quite a long time now, is to not hold their breathes.

Hello dr_bernie

Thank you for sharing this information. Yes the old Hexagon forum is gone persay we have condensed several forums that have seen little to no participation for a long time the Hexagon, Silo and Wings we have a new 3D forum that is a generalist forum for 3D applications that do not have their own forum here. But if the subject picks up like use to where it would be better to have a individual forum for a particular application we will consider bring it back and Hexagon still has a very strong following so I am I am sure this new news from Daz might breathe live back into Hexagon Here is a link to the 3D forum https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?forum_id=12537

Lobo3433

Blender Maya & 3D Forum Moderator

Renderosity Blender 3D Facebook Page

@ Lobo3433:

Thanks for your reply. I wasn't aware that there is still an Hexagon forum. I guess I didn't look hard enough.

I would nonetheless appreciate if you would leave this thread here, because its intended audience is actually Carrara users.

The point I am trying to make - and I believe this point has been made by many other users in many threads - is that Daz does not have adequate development resources to make any significant works on its dying products, i.e. Carrara, Hexagon, and Bryce.

If you are a Carrara unconditional, then keep using it as it is, until it breaks on your hardware/OS. But don't expect a brand new mind-blowing Carrara 9 to ever see the light of the day.

They why did DAZ buy Eovia? I believe to keep anyone else from acquiring those programs. Grrrrrrrr.

dr_bernie posted at 1:31PM Fri, 01 December 2017 - #4319064

@ Lobo3433:

Thanks for your reply. I wasn't aware that there is still an Hexagon forum. I guess I didn't look hard enough.

I would nonetheless appreciate if you would leave this thread here, because its intended audience is actually Carrara users.

The point I am trying to make - and I believe this point has been made by many other users in many threads - is that Daz does not have adequate development resources to make any significant works on its dying products, i.e. Carrara, Hexagon, and Bryce.

If you are a Carrara unconditional, then keep using it as it is, until it breaks on your hardware/OS. But don't expect a brand new mind-blowing Carrara 9 to ever see the light of the day.

No worries I was not planning on moving your thread I just wanted to make you aware of the other forum as well. I got my start with Hexagon and I do also own Carrara even thou it did not catch with me but the fundamentals I learned in Hexagon is what got me to go further with Blender

Lobo3433

Blender Maya & 3D Forum Moderator

Renderosity Blender 3D Facebook Page

Yay! Great Hexagon news. I'm still wishing for a new-er version of Carrara. I work with Cinema 4D, but for me, the greater adventure is... Carrara!

Do not want to double post but for all those interested posted Hexagon tutorial links in the 3D forum that some may find of interest

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2919668

Lobo3433

Blender Maya & 3D Forum Moderator

Renderosity Blender 3D Facebook Page

galaxiefilm posted at 2:51PM Thu, 21 December 2017 - #4319086

They why did DAZ buy Eovia? I believe to keep anyone else from acquiring those programs. Grrrrrrrr.

My mind is getting fuzzy on when certain things happened with respect to Poser, Daz, etc., but I still think I remember the basic story... Daz never liked not being captain of the Poser ship. Their business was becoming increasingly tied to a program they had little control of the marketing and development of. When Poser got bought by e-frontier there was a period when its future looked unusually uncertain and around that time Daz decided they needed their own platform that they could develop and market, to maintain their dominant position as content vendor and hopefully become a respectable 3D application provider. Again, I'm not sure when Daz bought Eovia, but it was at the time a logical fit. In theory, if people didn't want to leave Poser for Studio, Daz could make more Carrara specific content and attract the people who wished Poser had modeling tools and more environmental presets... Carrara was already in competition with Poser, because it had some of the best character animation tools in its price range, and to an extent, it was also in competition with Vue. And as Poser users were already sending things into Vue to render scenes with large realistic environments and lighting, Carrara could be to Studio what Vue had become to Poser. But instead of improving Carrara along whatever trajectory it had been on, they tried to graft in all of Daz Studio's underpinnings (or at least emulate them) so that Carrara users could buy and use Daz content just as if they were inside Studio.

Unfortunately, Studio, as intended, did become their flagship product. With Studio being a a moving target and receiving the bulk of their development attention, it seems to have proved difficult for Carrara's skeleton crew of developers to catch up to Studio in such a way that the two would have and maintain true parity with regard to handling the brokered content. I imagine that Hex was acquired alongside Carrara with this same hedging of bets reasoning... It could be rolled into Carrara making Hex essentially Carrara without animation and rendering... Carrara's renderer could be added to Hex, if that was what people wanted... Or maybe Carrara gets axed, but Studio gets Hex as a modeling room, and maybe they graft in Carrara's particles and renderer...

It's hard to say what the best case scenario is for this type of acquisition. I never thought they were trying to buy out their competition, à la Autodesk, because they didn't seem to me to be in competition with Carrara or Hex. I think, rather, that they either imagined an end-to-end ecosystem of tools sharing the same content, or wanted to acquire a few patients on life support with an eye on harvesting their internals so as to Frankenstein their own 3D uber-suite.

It may also be that they simply wanted to hire the developers of Carrara and Hex and buying those companies was the easiest way to acquire that talent. Idk, because I've never been in the know on who the specific people on all of these teams actually are/were.

Let's hope Carrara and Hex can be grated into Studio. That would be a fantastic program indeed.

The bridge between Hex and Studio is very convenient for me. Sometimes I model the base item in Carrara where I am more comfortable, use Studio's transfer utility to do the base rigging, and then use the bridge to Hex for some of the additional morphs. Yay, update to Hex is good news for me.

Hex has the Carrara render engine - will it open and render Carrara files in Studio?

Hexagon doesn't do real renders, it has an OpenGL mode but that's it.

Forum: Carrara

Subject: A New Beta Version Of Hexagon Released. Daz Juniors Hard At Work.