Carrara 7

Carrara 7 is out and on sale. Anyone here using Carrara? Daz is pushing it pretty hard but I cannot find anyone who actually uses it. Most of the reviews I have read so far are just standard cut and paste of the product spec sheets... which of course state that this is the best modeling package...ever

uh, really. let's have a look at it. i sometimes work with carrara 6 pro, but it's unusuable except for the displacement painting (super easy sculpting mode). i got it for a veery nice price on the last christmas sale, $190 or so if i remember correctly. but you can't really use it because the sdvertised fbx exporter sucks badly.
it seems they got a new collada exporter. i have to test it, becuase that's what i need so badly right now. the 3d painting looks super easy and has been needed for such a long time.

so, test it, and if the exporters work, think asbout a purchase only if you can stand that since DAZ bought it, no interface change has been made or any really revolutionary feature has been implemented. get it while it's on sale, it's not worth the $500 it's probably going to cost after the sale period.

Thanks Broozar,
I am not really looking for a new modeling app, but if someone said good things about Carrara and with the sale price I might be tempted. I do not have a modeling app with 3D painting. Wish I did.
It does not look like they are offering a trial version of Carrara so I cannot even try it.

there is a trial for 6.1. i guess a trial for v7 will be available later next year, but then the sale will be over.

on the other hand, if you need a cheap displacement sculpting tool and an easy 3d painter, you won't find anything in this price category (while it's on sale..).
btw, they have a 30 days refunding policy that i used myself once (with v6), and can say that refunding is hazzle-free with daz. if you are up to it, buy a pro, test it 20 to 30 days, and then give it back. or keep it if you like it.

i updated today, here's my quick review:

the 3d painting is a njice new toy, it's easy to handle and quickly understood. i like it. and it's really affordable for the price. if you are looking for a nice 3d painter and displacement painter/sculpting tool, you might like it.

collada export works perfectly for still models: textures and materials are loaded without reloading textures.



when it comes to animation, it sucks badly. this is the same model with bones (which are not exported btw).



the collada file does not have BONES, ANIMATION or SKINNING tags in it, so how is it supposed to work anyway. carrara offers you to export morphs to dae, the result is the same as above.

the fbx 6.0 exporter still crashes the autodesk converter. fbx 5 is usable though, in both binary< and text format. but 5.0 does not cover animations, too.

@Broozar: You are a Lightwave user. Right?
Why do you use Carrara instead of Modo (except the price)?

i had Carrara long before i got LW. i bought it in the 6.0 days because of the fbx exporter that turned out to be totally worthless. but i kept it because i sidegraded to LW and needed the carrara key. after i discovered the displacement painting tool in carrara, i grew to love that function and drew organic model displacement/normal maps with it. and rendering in carrara is quick to set up. in minutes, you can have a nicely lit scene and render it with GI/sky light.

modo is a mainly modelling tool. i still model most of the time in wings3d, because it allows me to create low poly models in the absolute minimum of time. i use lw for animation (i practically don't use LWModeller at all, only LWLayout). i hope that the revised 9.5.x will export the animation data correctly to collada files.

now carrara has the 3d painting tool. my update from 6 pro to 7 pro just was 104 euros due to the $ exchange rate. where do you get a 3d painting (and sculpting) tool for just 104 euros? so well, i am keeping it. only the lack of animation support in collada files bugs me. i had hoped for more.

@Broozar: Modo can read and write LWO's directly. I tried the trial to check this out. Modo can also read/write UVMaps, MorphMaps and Weightmaps (and other Vertexmaps) from/to Lightwave.
I think that the Lightwave-Modo-Combo is a real timesaver because you have a seamless workflow. A good File I/O-Support is an invaluable advantage.

I did not know that you only use Layout.
Unfortunately i dont have the money to buy Modo. So i have to wait.

@broozar you can get silo with sculpting for
$150 and blender for free, and they both have sculpting. Of course I'm not sure how many polies carrara can squeeze out because sculpting is not the same everywhere, i can get a good 8-10mil polys in zbrush and only like 300-k in blender.

blender can't do the painting. yet. and i doubt it will be as intuitive as carrara's. 3d painting is still a feature that very few apps do well, only carrara and bodypaint do their job well imo. blacksmith3d paintSuite feels awkward and is unprecise, tattoo has been canceled. the last remaining app i know that allows 3d painting is 3d coat, coat3d ort whatever they renamed it. people will probably love coat3d more, but i never got it in my brain.

oh painting, i thought you meant sculpting. blender can do painting, its just very buggy and awkward. also it spills over seams in the uv map.

I have Carrarra 5 Pro...I find that its pretty good for High-Poly Models, but i still havent figured out the skinning yet...
If Carrarra 7 Pro is really that good, I might give it a try

You friendly, neighborhood
Doof

Lostclimate...isn't blenders' sculpting buggy as well? I remember reading of a lot of people having crash problems while sculpting.
And yet even after a google search I still have not run across anyone who whole heartedly endorses Carrara. That and the lack of a trial version makes me skeptical. Most people on the Carrara gallery seem to use it to play dress up with victoria. Though there was some nice original models on the WIP section.
I guess the search goes on for the "complete" 3d modeling app.

Yes. I was also searching for that and I think I found it.
My best bet is Modo, that is why I bought it recently. It is a good modern modeler, has the best uv-toolset, 3d-painting, sculpting, rendering and keyframe-animation. It misses only bones and character animation tools. But I am sure this will come soon.
Modo can be the best complete and affordable 3d solution next year.

In my case (I am a Lightwave user) this is already true, because Modo integrates perfectly into Lightwave (reads and writes LWO files directly and behaves very similar). So I even have all missing features there and both feel quite similar just like one application.

Blender indeed is a good candidate to become a full complete 3d application as well. But it needs some polishing in different areas (stability, im- and export, UI, 3d-painting).
Though it is free. But in my case I rather spend money for a stable and robust tool like LW instead of working in an unfinished app. But if you are doing it for a hobby, then you can be perfectly fine with Blender.

We will see what future brings. Some exciting things will happen in 2009 (at least I know this for sure in terms of Lightwave and Modo but the competition does not sleep).

And I will also watch Carrara. It has interesting tools like a terrain editor. But this is not a new feature for me since I already own a license of Vue. It can create and render terrains with lots of procedural materials, plants and can generate skies. Lightwave also has a tool to render skies. But Vue is prefect if you want to make a new landscape in just a few seconds.

the only bug i've ever found in scultping is sometimes in scultping mode the directions of the normals seems to be opposed (carving in will make it go out intstead) but that only happens once every like 50x i use it and the solution i always do is just export it to 3ds, reimport it, and its fine.

"Modo can be the best complete and affordable 3d solution next year"
I've heard a lot of good things about Modo, which emphasizes my point that I do not hear much good about Carrara (that may be a little to harsh).
the spec sheet on Modo and Carrara are very similar and even full price Carrara is much less then Modo. If Daz could integrate Carrara and Bryce (Bryce needs a full rewrite) and smooth out their glitches they could have the complete app.
And there is the problem... if Daz gets Carrara polished up I'll be kicking myself for not getting it at such a low price, Of course if they do not fix it then I will have the shame of being had once again

When considering a 3D app there is a lot more too it than price (and I think most here know that). I have Carrara 5 Pro and, frankly, I could never get into using the program. Therefore, no matter how little or much I paid for it, in my case it was money wasted. Modo is certainly more than Carrara and it is not as feature rich (i.e. it does not yet have full animation such as IK, bones, etc). Despite this, I can model in it very intuitively. As such, despite the higher cost, it was not money wasted (for me).

The best thing to do is see about getting a demo (does Daz offer one for Carrara?) and get down and dirty with the program. See if you can wrap your mind around how it works. If so, the Carrara could be the modeling package you need. If not, then even if it is a dollar, it could well be a waste of money and time.

Yes of course it is the sale price that is tempting me. That is what sales are all about!
It really is long term value that I am looking for, which is a problem that I have had with Daz. Years ago I got Bryce when Bryce and Vue were similar packages (even then Vue was slightly better) now vue is miles ahead of Bryce and Bryce has been semi-officially mothballed. The risk I see is that Daz will decide that Carrara is "good enough" and not improve it. I need a suite that I can grow into as my needs increase. And I do use my graphics software for business so I do keep an eye on expense. Right now Blender is meeting all my modeling needs, but they keep promising/threatening a major interface rewrite. It was a major shock last time when they changed a few of the hotkeys...can't imagine what a major rewrite would be like.
Carrara does have a trial version but it is for 6.1 and does not have any of the new features, but I can look at the interface.

Check out the trial of 6.01. In all likelihood, the UI will not change that much. If you can swing working in 6.01 then most likely you will get along fine with v7. For example, the 3DS MAX UI has not really changed since v1 ... not all that much ... and we are now on ... what? ... v9? Photoshop's UI has basically remained pretty much the same ... it looks better now and is a bit better organized, but it is still basically the same. Most 3D apps are not going to drastically change their UI unless there is a drastic flaw in them. And even then they may not. To change their UI drastically would cause them to alienate the people who have become familiar with the software and use it on a daily basis.

So get the v6 demo and give it a try.

I already downloaded the trial. Problem is that I am not an experienced enough modeler to give the program a workout. Which is one of the reasons why I posted here... unfortunatly most of the posters did not seem to like the interface.

"To change their UI drastically would cause them to alienate the people who have become familiar with the software and use it on a daily basis." I should send this as a warning/ advice to the Blender folks

Yes I do. The reason is more a traditional one anyway. I once started working with 3D using Raydream Designer and I just followed the product line and its successors since now so I am still with Carrara today although I tested many other apps during the years of course. The second reason is the already in this thread mentioned price. It is quite cheap but has a wide range of common functionality. Sure a hollywood highend 3d movie designer may not use Carrara because it is too limited, but up to a certain quality demand it just satisfies the needs. My personal problems with tools like Blender are some details that just don't fit for me, for example the hard to learn interface of Blender. So Carrara is for me a good compromise of sufficent functional range, ease of use and affordability.

Reen are you using Carrara for original models? The majority of people seem to be using it to render poser content. It seems to be mostly used as a render engine and most people model in another app. I have not seen any good original models coming from Carrara but that may be because I have not had time to wade through all the images of Victoria in a bikini to find one
BTW the sale was extended, which either means that no one is buying or they never really intended to end the sale in December.

Well, I don't know how "good" is defined for you, but my work is completely original and always created from scratch indeed. I use Carrara only, from modelling to rendering or exporting for MED and I don't really like the "Poser way" of creation because imo this mostly looks like "made with Poser".

A recent project I was busy with the last years was my game project "Quintarium" which results from a series of study projects. It is a neat example for this topic because there where two major phases for the same target: one with a prerendered high-poly concept and one with a lowpoly realtime concept (which made it into a prototype finally). So it can be seen that there are very different objectives which I handled using Carrara.

You may view a small selection of examples from this project in my portfolio:

The high poly approach: http://www.buehling.org/show?id=quintarium

The low poly approach: http://www.buehling.org/show?id=quin7

Or see the game site itself: http://www.quintarium.de/


Oh I just remember I used Poser in that project at one point: The mouse cursor hand rendering is based on a Poser hand model.

You have some "good" models on your site!
The thing that is interesting is that it is very hard to find images of anything other than props modeled in Carrara. Character models are hard to find. Of course many models aren't tagged with which software they are made with. If you look at the galleries on Daz they show 90% poser renders, same thing on renderosity. If you look at the maya galleries on renderosity it is almost 100% original. I know that it is unfair to compare Carrara and Maya but I still wonder why there aren't many people posting their models done in Carrara.
Yea I get tired of Poser art, though I admire the work of the original modelers. Poser art is everywhere, if you look at the blender galleries on renderosity, you will see that people are importing poser models into blender and making poser art... I find that very odd!
edit.... I found original character models on the DAZ WIP forums.... some of them are very nice!