I would like to make 1 request to Daz, but I am posting it here because it could be deemed as disruptive if posted in Daz Carrara forum.

I am a bit skeptical now about using Carrara's 8.5 release. The almost 3 years it took to complete it means that the software changes it has gone through must have been steep, almost a complete rewrite, actually even a complete rewrite wouldn't have taken that long.

So it's legitimate to assume that there are tons and tons of new as-of-yet undiscovered problems in the 8.5 release.

The 8.1.1.12 release on the other hand  has been remarkably stable and bug-free, as far as I can tell.

So my request to Daz is: Can we have a final 8.1.x.x release that contains just the new light icons and the improvements to the timeline and graph editor?

I don't want any bug fixes that may have been done in 8.5, no fast mipmap and no Genesis. Just the 2 features I mentioned above.

This shouldn't be very hard to implement, at most 2 or 3 days of work for 1 developer.

After that the 8.1 release can be put to rest and considered as final.

Please Daz, make this one user happy.

Sounds good considering DAZ screwed up major going from 8.1.1.8 to 8.1.1.12. I have several issues opening 8.1.1.8 scenes in 8.1.1.12. Mainly many shaders will go to a null sampling setting. Fun stuff when you have 80 shaders to reset.

It also changed what setting you use to make parts of an object invisable; of corse that is after you reset carrara to run in compatability mode for W7 on W8. Till you do that the setting doesn't work at all. So yes, there are minor compatability isues with the last versuion of C8.1 on windows 8.

But you know this wont happen. C8.5 wont get an update ether. And the lengthy development time had nothing to do with how deep DAZ worked on C8.5 and everything to do with DAZ's way understaffed development team; not sure you can actually call 1 guy a team though. If DAZ still even has any development staff.

Carrara 8.5 'About' screen lists no less than 23 people as the development team. This isn't exactly understaffed.

But let me be clear: My grudge with Daz isn't about Genesis.

Genesis is Daz's cherished child and they have every reason to be proud of it. My grudge is about that fast mipmap nonsense that was introduced as default filtering mode for texture maps.

You see, in the glorious days when a PC with a 50MHz 486 CPU and 64 MB RAM was the cutting-edge of computer technology, the fast mipmap technique was appropriate to speed-up rendering times. Actually part of Carrara was written in those days.

But in these days and ages of 5+ GHz CPU's with built-in SSE and AVX instruction sets, the fast mipmap technique doesn't make sense anymore, it's only a relic of the past. It belongs in a museum.

IMHO, Carrara would have been a lot better product using these newer technologies, not a technology of the late 1990's as testified by this thread which goes back to 2002: http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=108440

BTW, by implementing the fast mipmap filtering DAZ must have screwed-up something big time, because:

1. Larger models like:

http://www.daz3d.com/vanguard

http://www.daz3d.com/urban-sprawl-2-the-big-city

don't display properly in textured mode in the 3D OpenGL preview, and

2. The Gaussian filtering option, that I always use in my scenes to get a smoother softer render, is now 10% slower to render than in 8.1.1.12

This is the technology that I was expecting to see in Carrara, instead of fast mipmap:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2872177

Maxon (Cinema 4D) implemented this technology in its latest release (release 15) and got a 3x speed-up in its render speed.

And you honestly beleive that list? If DAZ actually had that many people working on their developmental staff C8.5 would have been out in a matter of months, not years. Any bets that list is the same one that is on C6? Most of which left DAZ years ago.

In 3 years we got 2 updates to studio, 1 update to carrara, and nothing else. If that is the best 23 people can do in 3 years I say fire them all. But that list is boges, DAZ may have 3-5; if that, as developmental staff. Hell I doubt DAZ has 23 people on staff over all.

But what is up with C8.5 doesn't effect me. The only people it effects is those that bought it and thought it was good enough to keep. And since most people kept it after purches there can't actually be anything wrong with it.

DAZ isn't looking at gripes in the forum, or bug reports, they are looking at sales period. You bought it, you kept it, so all must be good and on to C9. As I said DAZ wont be working on an update or fixes to C8.5. That ship has sailed. What you bought is all C8.5 will ever be, and don't count on any fixes in C9. 

If what you're saying is true then I think Adobe should buy Daz and do some house-cleaning.

Or maybe Corel?

About 3 years ago DAZ was taken over by some online avatar company I had never heard of. It's been in a steep downward spiral ever since. Development has come to a stand still; even on Studio. Genesis was released then aparently abandoned. Carrara development seems to be little more then a badly ported autofit, compatabilty with a 3 year old buggy figure, and adding DRM as a nessity to use ether. That sort of out ways the good tweaks to existing features we did get. Don't get me wrong, C8.5 isn't all bad, but there just isn't enouogh good for it to have any value to me. Really, the only part of C8.5 I am missing is soft cloth for draping. And after having used the beta for 2 years that should tell you something.

Lets face it, DAZ has become little more then a content brokering company. I'm sure they are making a tidy little profit off the backs of the PAs, and developmently costs would cut in to that profit. So development has pretty well been dropped.

OK, I agree. Daz is understaffed.

But the fast mipmap thingy didn't just land by itself inside Carrara. Someone must have put it in there, right?

That is what enrages me. To see time spent, actually time wasted, on a 1990's technology that nobody uses anymore, except in low-end game engines.

This is today's technology that Daz beautifully missed: It's called Embree By Intel:

http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/embree-photo-realistic-ray-tracing-kernels

And this the result achieved by this technology:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJd-WEtkg-Q

The time needed to put Embree in Carrara would most likely have been the same as the time wasted on the fast mipmap.

With only one difference: Embree would have turned Carrara into a world-class product worth buying, while the fast mipmap is only good to laugh at.

But maybe it's still not too late. Maybe Daz can make amend.

Quote - With only one difference: Embree would have turned Carrara into a world-class product worth buying...

 To whom?  Not to underplay the Embree technology, or it's importance to Intel's processors in rendering, but I doubt it would be that big of a game-changer in the overall world of render engines for Carrara.  GPU technology is faster, and more exciting overall, although Embree helps bring CPU up to par.

Would it really make Carrara a "world class" product all by itself, and appeal to a market looking for world-class rendering technology, which are usually professionals or studios?  Nah.  The current king of world-class raytrace rendering, Vray, has a helper to it's 3dsmax (and possibly others) plugin that uses Embree too, and benefits from it as well.  Vray is currently the "production-proven" rendering standard for raytrace engines, but it's not because of Embree at all.  It was that way long before Embree was introduced.  I think a lot more would need to be done in addition to Embree in order to bring Carrara into the modern world of render technology.  I agree, however, that it would be a good start.  A better start might be to have that in it's default render engine, but also include support for plugin render engines, like Vray.  Plugin render support is essencial these days to most 3D packages.  People want to have a choice, and want the best tool for the job.  Even Blender has multiple engines to choose from.

Thanks Maxxxmodelz  for your comments. It's great to know that Embree is now implemented in VRay too.

That makes 2 world-class products, VRay and Cinema 4D, that have implemented Embree. Which proves that Embree itself is a world-class technology.

Would Embree turn Carrara into a world-class 3D app? Probably not. But it would at least help bring it to the same level as Shade, and that is enough afaiac.

It makes my head smoke when I see Daz developers spend their time, **or actually waste their time, ** on a 1990's technology like fast mipmap as a solution to Carrara's ailing renderer.

I don't think that putting Embree in Carrara's native renderer would have taken much longer than the fast mipmap thingy, but the difference would have been from here to the moon..

At this stage of the game, my recommendations to Daz dev. team are the followings:

1. Take the fast mipmap code out of Carrara and trash it.

2. By the same token take-out the 'summed area table' filtering option and trash it too, because it simply doesn't work. Use it and you will see seams appear in the renders, all over the place. This is another one of Carrara's features that have been shipped without being tested.

3. Fix whatever was done to screw-up the Gaussian filtering option that now runs 10% slower than it did in 8.1.1.12.

1. Implement Embree in Carrara's native renderer, spend a full 2 months testing it on hundreds of animated and still scenes to make sure it's bug-free.

5. Ship C9 and see Carrara's sales go through the roof.

It can't be simpler than that.

Plug-in rendering engines are supported by Carrara.  The Luxus rendering engine is a perfect example.

I would like to have an update to c8.1 as suggested by the opening of this thread.  I'll just post for stanman now that Daz won't do it.  That doesn't change the fact that I would like it.

What confuses me is why Daz isn't taking the plug-in approach more seriously.  If you want Genesis, make it a plug-in and let people grow into it.  Sell the genesis content and bring the user base that's intersested forward.

I understand that the there is a general opinion that Daz's function in life is to suck money from the user universe.  That doesn't change my feeling that selling plug-ins for Carrara is smarter and would retain friendliness with the user base.

Could we have vray for Carrara?  I don't know.  We have Luxus now.  Seems like its in the realm of possibilities.  In fact, it seems to me that several of the things discussed in this thread could be taken on by people outside of Daz and some new people could be satisfying some of the user base needs.

Where are those people?

I understand all of the complaining but I'm ready for some construction Too.