Is DAZ Carrera no longer a serious player?

[Gare]

After a HD crash and a backup (whew) I found and re-installed Carerra. originally Raydream Designer in the 1700s, and bopped around it a little.

In addition to having a UI similar to KPT used to have (slick, unintuitive, the talented folks who make ArtRage cobbled that when it was trendy), it appears to be an animation and rendering bundle in addition to modeling. I find the modeling features to be byzantine, but then again, this is 2009 software, and DAZ has a recent version up for $285.

$285 seems like a fair price for commercial software if you upward adjust for inflation, but I guess my real question is: is it worth bothering with, at any level, novice or professional?

Here's an example of a preset scene, using the highest rendering quality.



The lighting composition is very nice and the green light through the glass is a nice effect. However, the deal breaker for me is the glass. It looks like plastic, not glass. The metal caps leave something to be desired, too. I think Carrera just isn't up to date with physically-based modeling...the interaction between materials and lighting.

I pulled this real quickly from Maxwell Render. Yeah, there's a big price difference, but I'm trying to make a point here. Is Carrera worth it for an ambitious pre-vis artist?



I'm not trying to provoke, I'm not being a jerk. I'm just opening a comparison open to discussion.

I'm really not sure whether to keep Carrera on my drive, or stick with my familiar tools.

Opinions?

-g

[hoja]

The free open source program Blender has a greatly more modern and extremely flexible GUI, far stronger modelling
and texturing tools, a greatly more advanced renderer (Cycles) as well as a Compositor , more advanced animation tools
and a better physics engine than Carrara.
Carrara is marketed by a firm which at smaller scale does what Autodesk got famous for: Aquire interesting software packages
and let them die. I have never met anyone who still uses Carrara or Hexagon. The Blender foundation has managed to create
likely the most vivid community of all 3D applications out there, hundreds of volunteer programmers engage and write smaller or
larger Plugins. Forums like Blenderartists have so many daily entries, one hardly can keep track of development.

The web is full of free learning resources for Blender:
Just enter the word Blender into Youtube (which is an ambiguous word which even means different things in several languages) and
see what results appear first and the overall result count. Now enter Carrara (which has at least 2 meanings too) and see
which entries take the win and how many there are overall.

This is only what a completely free program does. I did not even talk about the qualities of well maintained commercial apps.
Yup, I think it's fair to say that Carrara is completely irrelevant by now.

[theinonen]

I have latest version of Carrara but have not really used it anymore. It is still very good value for money as has just about everything thrown into same package but that also makes the user interface little confusing. Also the rendering quality is not that bad but more modern renderers give better quality out of the box, with just press of a button.

I must disagree about the physics engine, as Carrara uses Bullet which is actually very good and most likely Blender uses the same one.

Blender might be good software today and even the UI has evolved into something usable by mere mortals, but I still hate it. Hated the user interface when I first tried it several years ago and I still hate it. Reminds me too much about some Amiga software in 1990.

[hoja]

but I still hate it. Hated the user interface when I first tried it several years ago and I still hate it.

Well, it hardly makes sense to discuss areas which are just a matter of taste...
I personally found Carrara's Kais Powertools aesthetics a disgrace 10 years ago, now I feel it has falled out of time entirely.

What can not be discussed is that Blender's GUI plays in an entirely other league when it comes to customizability.
You even had no problem at all to make the program look and even behave like Carrara (as essentially any event
can get remapped to your personal preference).

[theinonen]

Carrara interface is not my favourite either and generally dark UI colours that are so fashionable today are depressing.

Not long ago I loaded Blender to see how it has evolved over the years but everything was too small with 4K monitor. Maybe there is easy way to make things bigger if could see the text on menus, but things like that really give bad first impression.

For example Metasequoia has auto DPI adjust enabled as a default on settings, so people with normal eyesight can start experimenting straight away. Small things like that matter.

[Mike Bailey]

I used Carrara many years ago, my first 3D software was Ray Dream so it was a logical step forward at the time. l wouldn't consider using Carrara today.

[hoja]

Carrara interface is not my favourite either and generally dark UI colours that are so fashionable today are depressing.

If you prefer a light skin, no problem. Some people use a bright skin over the day and a dark one at night...
Blender ships with a variety of preset Themes, there's bright ones among them. Dozens of user made skins
are shared in forums and may get loaded with the click of a button.

I can not sense the Atari feel you get – but as said you could even redo interface elements to your liking.
Customization options offered are just insane and likely even overwhelming a lot of users.

Not long ago I loaded Blender to see how it has evolved over the years but everything was too small with 4K monitor. Maybe there is easy way to make things bigger if could see the text on menus, but things like that really give bad first impression. For example Metasequoia has auto DPI adjust enabled as a default on settings, so people with normal eyesight can start experimenting straight away. Small things like that matter.

Even a lot of software which costs four digits can't deal properly with Hires monitors... Blender offers the best control
over scaling the GUI to any resolution and personal preference I have ever encountered anywhere. Simply dial in a new dpi
value and everything rescales in realtime.



That all being said... my daily work usually requires CAD-data so (any) mesh based programs can only be complimentary tools.
But Blender is a very nice option indeed.

[Gare]

Well, I did find a reason for keeping Carrera on my drive...it does planets pretty well, and fast. The ship was composited in with P'shop, with the ship render from Cinema 4D, not my best work, I admit...




Um, seeing as people have recommendations her, should I give a different title to this thread?

My Best,

Gary

[hoja]

Gare, renaming threads after people have posted really sucks. It shifts the meaning of every single post and may even let
them appear off topic/silly. My sole point in at all chiming in was pointing out that a lame and outdated DCC package can
nowadays easily be substituted by something which costs nothing. I answered your original question.

I render for more than 15 years and exactly for that reason I would never take part in a generic render engine comparison.
There's so many factors to consider, so diverse demands and that different levels of pre-experience that I'm convinced that
such discussions make no sense. One could quite as well ask for the best camera.

I would appreciate if you changed the title back and move the render-stuff to another thread.

[Gare]

Gare, renaming threads after people have posted really sucks. It shifts the meaning of every single post and may even let
them appear off topic/silly. My sole point in at all chiming in was pointing out that a lame and outdated DCC package can
nowadays easily be substituted by something which costs nothing. I answered your original question.

I render for more than 15 years and exactly for that reason I would never take part in a generic render engine comparison.
There's so many factors to consider, so diverse demands and that different levels of pre-experience that I'm convinced that
such discussions make no sense. One could quite as well ask for the best camera.

I would appreciate if you changed the title back and move the render-stuff to another thread.

Well, if you feel that vehemently ("renaming sucks"), I'll obige and return this thread to its original name. Bear in mind, though, that so many posts are about rendering engines, that Carerra hasn't been mentioned more than twice here, my original gist of the thread I began here.

That said, I agree that this disorients users who want to go back to a thread...I've rrenamed. Apologies to all, and I'll see if I can prune and set up a new thread for rendering engines.

My Best,

Gary