A Hidden (now unhidden!) Gem of the early 2000s!!!

September 2013 

Carl Desmond visited us in the Carrara Discussion Forum at Daz 3D and offered this important message:

(his post)

Details

Carrara 8.5 offers the latest in DAZ technology. Our software engineers have worked meticulously to ensure that the new features in Carrara 8.5 exceed the standard you've come to expect for Carrara. Carrara 8.5 provides seamless support for the Genesis and Genesis 2 3D model figures you know and love. The new parameters tab grants intuitive access to morphs for your figures and allows you to filter by region, body part and even keyword. Carrara 8.5 ships with AutoFit and Morph Projection, which allows you enormous versatility in clothing.

New and improved animation and keyframing tools including Key Frame Filters and a Graph Editor, which puts the power in your hands. These new tools, as well as new intuitive keyboard shortcuts, connect the serious animator to the 3D model in a symbiotic relationship. Smoothing, refining and perfecting animation sequences has never been easier.

New SubDivision and Smoothing tools allow the user to control 3D rendering levels and model levels, allowing smoothing from within the assembly room. This cuts time out of your flow and saves you from needlessly switching between the modeling and assembly rooms just to update smoothing options.

Improvements to the viewport avatars for lights and cameras provide a new, aesthetically pleasing look to the interface. The Sunlight, Moonlight, Shape Light and Tube Lights have all received a makeover. This provides a greater visual reference as to how light will emanate from a source and react in the scene.

Now you can enjoy figure posing, modeling, 3D landscape design, rigid and soft-body dynamics, animation and 3D rendering all within a single application at an affordable price. Add a whole new dimension to your 3D art and animation with Carrara.

• What's Included and Features

  • Support for:

    • Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 10

    • Mac OSX 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, 10.9 and 10.10

  • Native DSON Importer - seamless integration of:

    • TriAxTM Weight Mapped figures (Genesis, Genesis 2 Female)

    • General Weight Mapped figures

    • Legacy Parametric Figures (4th Generation and earlier)

    • Support for multiple UV sets (through Hierarchical Material(s) Presets and Material(s) Presets)

  • Genesis Content

    • Victoria 5 Pro Bundle

    • Michael 5 Pro Bundle

  • Native AutoFit Functionality

    • Conversion of legacy parametric clothing to TriAx™ weight mapped figures

    • Automatic Morph Projection

    • Automatic Weight Map Projection

    • Morph Preservation

    • AutoFit does not currently work on Genesis 2

  • Improved Sequencer, Keyframing and Animation Tools

    • New Key Board Shortcuts to:

      • Play/Stop animation

      • Advance Frame

      • Previous Frame

    • Animation Filters

      • Sample - Creates a key at every nth frame of the animation

      • Smooth - Smooth out wild keys to get an even looking animation

      • Reduce - Programatically determine which keys are unnecessary and eliminate them

    • Graph Editor Scaling Box allows for easy adjustments of timing, scaling and amplitude of animations

  • Smart Content

    • Browse content by File, Category or Product

    • Selection based filtering of content - only see the content that is compatible with a selection

  • Animation Commands

    • Zero, Memorize and Restore figures, selection or selection trees

    • Memorize and Restore allow users to store values for the model's current pose and/or shape and restore all or part of the figure to the previously memorized values.

  • Improved Fit To Functionality

    • Automatic projection and following of morphs for TriAx weightmapped figures

    • No more relying on built in clothing morphs to fit clothing over a TriAx figure

  • Improved Viewport Avatars

    • Spotlight, Sunlight, Moonlight, Tube Lights and Shape lights have all received a makeover and can easily be identified in the viewport

• Features Introduced in Carrara 8.0

  • Pro - 64-bit support for MAC and WIN OS - Work faster and smarter as you take full advantage of your computer's 64-bit hardware.

  • Pro - Bullet Physics Library - Create and edit rigid and soft-bodies for realistic and exciting animations. Enjoy a robust particle system, collision detection and a remarkably fast rigid-body physics engine.

  • Pro - Network Render Optimizations - Enjoy greater control over your render farm as you easily add and remove nodes via your master machine. Render frames or buckets as you choose for greater safeguarding against lost render data. Get GRID for even more power!

  • Pro - Negative Lights and Photometrics - Now you can work with negative lights and photometrics (IES) for even greater control over your lighting.

  • Pro - Editing of Posed Meshes - Now you can do important clean-up and detail work on your conforming objects while the model is posed or conformed so you can see the results as you work. Morph Creation allows you to utilize Carrara's great modeling tools to make your own custom morph targets and easily save them as a parameter slider within your existing figure.

  • Multi-Threading for MAC and WIN OS - Spread the load on your CPU intensive calculations.

  • Improved FBX and COLLADA Data Exchange - Take rigged and animated models straight into your favorite game engines, like UnityTM, and see how rich your experience can be with your own, or any of DAZ 3D's existing content options. Also, import from a variety of popular formats and/or export your work to and from other packages including LightWave, Adobe After Effects, 3DS, LWO, PSD, and more.

  • Plant & Vegetation Improvements - Add custom models and textures for unique leaves, flowers, fruit and more. You can also use a variety of different leaf objects per plant for natural variation.

  • Render Time Optimizations - Get more than 200%* improvement in performance when rendering complex scenes using your high-end MAC or Windows system.

  • God Rays and Barn Doors - Harness the creative force of god rays and the control of barn doors as you design superior lighting for your scenes. The Light Lab also features robust control over lighting direction, intensity, and tinting from one or more sources to ensure a more accurate production of real-world environments.

  • Normal Maps - View normal maps both in real-time display and at rendertime.

  • Puppeteer for Carrara - You asked for it, and you got it. Introducing Puppeteer for Carrara. This tool contains everything as seen in DAZ Studio and has been fully integrated for use with any Carrara animation project.

  • 3D Paint and UV Editing/Unfolding - 3D Paint Tool that enables textures to be selected, edited and "painted" directly onto an object. Also a new UV Editor that shows a 3D view of the polygon mesh, a 2D display of the UV values on the polygon mesh vertices, and a set of tools to manipulate them.

  • Rendering Options - Achieve a new level of realism in your scenes with Soft Shadows, Blurred Reflections, Blurred Transmission, True Ambient Lighting, Caustics, Global Illumination, Ambient Occlusion, HDRI, Motion Blur, Subsurface Scattering, Shadow Catch, Transparency with Absorption, Depth of Field, and more. And, with Multi-Pass Rendering you can retouch or edit images without having to re-render.

  • Vertex and Symmetrical Modeling - Streamline the modeling process in both the "Modeling" and "Assembly" rooms. Ideal for creating and editing anything from characters to vehicles and more. This feature allows users to edit both sides of a symmetrical object at the same time.

  • Figure Content LOD Support - Includes support for Content Figures that have multiple Levels of Detail (LOD).

  • Non-Linear Animation Track Groups - Using Carrara for creating animations? This merge track tool will provide an improved interface to create groups of tracks then collapse or expand the tracks in those groups.

  • Animation and Web Capabilities - Create Web animations, generate thumbnail images, preview them in storyboard format, and create virtual tours using QuickTime.

  • Dynamic-Hair - With the Dynamic-Hair and fur modeling/simulation feature, you can paint, cut, brush and shade 3d-hair to bring your images to realistic life --- and do it with the greatest of ease.

  • Image-Editing Tools - Import 2D images from a variety of formats, transform them into 3D objects, then incorporate them into your scenes.

  • Landscape Creation and Presets with the Landscape Wizard - Quickly and easily produce remarkably realistic landscapes, impressive fantasy worlds, and other dynamic scenes. Also included are presets for terrains, waters, skies, rocks, clouds, fog, and more.

  • Intuitive User Interface - Take advantage of handy palettes to create and edit objects, design scenes and render final images quickly and easily.

  • Texture Editor - Easily import, create and edit texture presets, then save them as new textures for future use.

  • Displacement Modeling - You can paint detail on a model with the greatest of ease --- using free-form brush tools --- almost as if you were modeling with clay.

  • Ocean Primitive - Simulating the surface of the ocean, this feature can be used to create both still and animated oceans. You will be able to control the waves, plus the speed and direction of the wind.

Notes

RENDER NODE

Render Node provides 10 nodes and 20 CPUs out of the Box.

See GRID here