... take it anymore with Carrara 5 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :cursing:

I have been trying to use the vertex modeler and have had nothing but problems.

Empty polygons followed by Fill polygons always leaves some of the previously filled polygons empty and sometimes, some of the interconnections dissapear, also.

Trying to delete a single vertex or line sometimes causes all of the lines (edges) to get deleted.

Sometimes "undo" works and sometimes a real friendly error message pops up indicating that some "unknown" error has occurred and the program will now shut down [thank you very much - grrrrrrrrrrr!!!!). ;=[

The last straw was this morning when trying to delete a single vertex, the entire mesh was deleted and the "undo" only produced the "unkown" error message - all work was lost.

Get a new computer?  I just did ... a brandy new hp running 2.8GHZ with 2 GB RAM and no other application s/w running or installed.  Same problems still occurring.

Soooooooooooo ......... Carrara 5 has been UNinstalled and I am back to using Carrara 4 which appears to work without any of these types of problems.  When I delete a single vertex or line, that is all that gets deleted ... not the whole blessed object.

Oh, and yes, I had installed the latest SR updating it to 5.1 ............. ;=

Anyone else seen these types of problems with C5?

[end of rant] ***************************************************

cheers,
dr geep <---------------------------------- now reverting back to his usual happy self ..... see-->
;=]

Yes. Believe it or not, they aren't "bugs"; they are "features." Apparently the way you and I have been making vertex models for the last ten-odd years is wrong, and the designers wished to gently force us into correct techniques. Unfortunately they can't seem to explain what those are, or apply them consistently. Half the time, my dear doctor, when Carrara blips up that annoying "Can't do THAT to a polygon!" you can go ahead and do it anyhow by using the hotkey sequence instead of the tool menu. Or vice-versa. One thing; control-X seems to delete the way we expected it to (delete is now more like "remove point and rejoin mesh around it.") For me the most annoying new habit is the auto-complete of faces -- which always seems to have strange guesses. If for some reason I am filling faces by hand on a simple extruded cylinder, after I have filled one Carrara will jump ahead and create a poly face that warps across the middle of the cylinder (and is non-planar to boot). Then it will cry that my mesh isn't empty, or has more than two edges, or something. And as I try to remove this face it will instead tenaciously stick to any vertice it can find; like a flapping bit of 3d flypaper. I have found that filling such things requires working as one would tighten the bolts on a cylinder head; work back and forth across the space and with luck you will thwart the excess faces. As for the "Can't do ____ on a polymesh; please empty it first" (which appears REGARDLESS of whether the polymesh is, indeed, empty) I have no solution. The last time I had to fill a tiny missing wedge to an otherwise built model (a prospect that would normally take one link, and one fill command), what I finally did was added a new vertex to one of the edges of my triangular gap, drag that by hand until the gap was hidden, then weld. I believe I had to use hotkeys to do at least one of these operations, too, as I guess Carrara had decided one or more of them was illegal as well. If you want to put up with a slow and frustrating process you might try submitting a bug report. I haven't seen any action on the bug tracker in last ten days, tho. Perhaps they are off at a trade show.

Hi nomuse,

Thanks for the input.

Needless to say, Carrara6 is definitey NOT (nor will it be) on my wish list.
I'll just stick with C4 until I decide to find a different modeler.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

I should note; My understanding is this change in behaviors was modified by the needs of the new edge tools. For me it is a tossup between Carrara 4 and 5, with 5 Pro, for better or for worse, leading by a margin. The reason is the edge tools, which despite some funky behavior can make modeling much faster. (I say this as I am laboriously going through several models without the benefit of the edge tools -- as those tools are also capable of invoking the STILL unfixed polygon name bug).

I'd be interested in your experiences with Silo, Doc. I'm a little leery of putting money in another program at moment, tho, having been caught in the Hexagon fiasco. For the nonce I'm putting up with Carrara...but I too have little interest in Carrara 6. Pity; I've been with the base program since Ray Dream 3d. But unless I see some strong indication that they are listening to modelers and actually beta-testing before release, I am not going to be a sucker for them again.

Silo?

Silo1.4 was (is) outstanding and the Silo2 beta is well on the way to being the very best modelling app bar none.--its avoiding the pitfalls which Hexagon fell into, and which we all hope will be corrected.

I'd use Carrara 5 instead of 4 because it has more polygon tools.  I don't know if you've already tried Amapi for modeling, but Amapi 6 is free now from http://www.polyloop.net

Amapi 7+ is now owned by e-Frontier.

Other free choices of course are Blender and Wings3D.

Hmmm... I'm not seeing the Amapi download on polyloop.

Gordon

http://forums.polyloop.net/showthread.php?t=8428 is the software download forum.  You have to have posted some comments first on the site in order to download the program.  It prevents bots without access rights from downloading.

Ah! Thanks!  An understandable precaution. I have Amapi 3 that came with Carrara 3 Studio, but I've been wanting to try a newer version.

Silo  - It's just that good.

After watching the bug tracker and the DAZ forums carefully for last fifteen days it has become quite clear that DAZ has no intention of addressing any Carrara bugs. Their only interest, in fact, is on what to add into the next iteration of the program; something that appears to be more and more a DAZ-branded Poser-figure render solution. Outside of ideas for the future, the only issues that have been assigned relate to fixing typos in that rather typo-ridden manual. Carrara is a great general-purpose package; nice renders, a simple but effective modeler, clunky but usable animation. The Poser imports make it even friendlier towards the hobby market. So it is such a pity that breaks in the basic functionality are being, (and have been, since at least version 4), ignored. I know it is still early in the day, but so far DAZ has not done much to earn back the trust the last owners of the program wasted.

I just wanted to jump in and let you guys know that we are planning to improve most areas of the applications and that we do fix existing problems. Watching the bug tracker is not going to give you any idea of the current development work on future versions since we use a separate bug database (which is not public) for those versions.

We are indeed aware of some of the problems with the vertex modeler. There are indeed some changes that were made in Carrara 5 for edge linking that can cause a bit of a problem for some people used to work with the vertex modeler as it used to be. The reason for those changes was that we wanted to use some of the Hexagon tools and they did not support those edges. I believe that overall the vertex modeler is getting better with each version.

  Charles

Thanks Charles! Mark

@charlessb,

Hmmm ... interesting ... I would LOVE to use Carrara 5 and was planning on posting some tutorials for it on my web site ............. BUT ...
... I refer you to my original post in this thread.

Any idea when a 'bug fix' update might be available?

TIA ... ;=]

cheers,
dr geep <-------------------------------------- who would REALLY like to be able to use Carrara 5 ...
;=?

http://www.e-frontier.com/article/articleview/2010/ offers Amapi Pro 7.52 for $149 now.  Comes with Shade 8 rendering.

Doc, I do use Carrara 5 Pro. Those edge tools are the bee's knees for roughing in a model. And I love that they don't hurt the UVmap either. (The bugs, tho, drive me to tears. Especially as I've been reporting some of them for over a year now with basically bullshit as a response).

Quote - ... (The bugs, tho, drive me to tears. ...

You, my friend, are not alone !

They [the bugs] drove me back to C4 ............... which is better than nothing.

Oh well ... :closedeyes: Hope springs eternal in the human beast.

cheers,
dr geep
;=[

Well, there was finally a distinct movement on the DAZ bug tracker.......... They deleted the thread complaining about "No movement on the bug tracker." Take that, doubters! ///rant deleted//// Okay, that thread was out of place. But I believe it highlights the twin problems we are dealing with here; the first problem is that the DAZ team does not feel it needs to respond to anyone or give adequate information to anyone. "Our people are working hard" is the best you'll get from the latter. "Yes, that is a bug" is the best you'll get on the former, and even that is rare. How about a "Thank you for bringing this to our attention" once in a while? (I have to insert -- I have had personal contact over some previously reported problems, and it was informative and cordial and I thank the gentleman for taking the time with me. Unfortunately this was before the 5.1 patch or the sale, and I have a sneaking feeling that the bug I helped him identify -- a critical modeling workflow bug -- has since been lost in the shuffle). The second problem is that DAZ isn't fixing Carrara 5. All these bug reports do is tell them what they might want to put into Carrara 6. So, basically, by submitting a bug report you are being an unpaid and un-thanked beta-tester for 6. Since several issues have been there since version 4, I personally have little interest in writing yet another fat check in hopes that they might actually be resolved in yet the next version.

Well in keeping with the Renderosity Terms of Service, this thread is kind of going nowhere in a postive way. Since Charles Brissart, the lead engineer for Carrara indicated in his post earlier in this thread that many bugs that are fixed or being fix but are recorded on a different bug-tracking list that is not available for public review, negative input about the status of those issues is pure, unhelpful speculation. Therefore, this thread is done. Mark