Carrara 6.1

It kind of snuck up on me but Daz have brought out a upgrade to Carrara. The main enhancements are for hair, reduced memory requirements for vertex models, some enhancements to displacement mapping and a there's a long list of bug fixes too.

The hair enhancements have new tools for straightening, curling and clumping the hair, there is more control over overlaps and collision detection, symmetry and grouping

The 6.1 version is available to those people who already have 6.0. It's currently a full uninstall / reinstall but there are rumours of a patch version with a smaller download size. You can access it by resetting your download counters in your account.

In related news, Digital Carvers Guild has an enhancement to Anything Goos that allow you to smooth between shading domains.

Carrara 6

Daz is previewing some of the new features of Carrara 6 on their forum and on youtube.
So far they have announced:

• Ocean Primitive: Like the land that was added in an earlier version but this allows you to make different seas, lakes etc. Shark demo video.


• Non Linear Animation: It allows users to create clips of animation (or poses) that can be reused and combined on multiple tracks of animations.


• Hair: A couple of demo videos on Youtube and a screenshot on DigitalPainters.


• Symmetrical Modeling: edit both sides of a object at the same time.


• Displacement modeling
  


• Enhancements to the vertex modeller including a bridge tool.


• Improved speed for viewing and manipulating larger meshes.


• Interactive Edge extrusion


• Improved Content Browser including support for multiple runtimes for Poser content. N.B. Daz Studio Libraries are not currently supported.


• Import of DSStudio scenes and Poser content and Skeleton import from DSStudio without the need for the creating applications.


• Skinning and morphing targets improved and performance boosted and integrated with Carrara's animation timeline


• Support for conforming clothing but not Poser's dynamic cloth.


• The imported figures will be editable and have features that regular vertex object have such as creation of morph targets. Full body morphs will also be supported.


• Rigid Body Simulation with a new updated physics engine with simulation on demand not when the application feels like it.


• Ray tracing Improvements - Improved speed and quality of raytraced depth of field with blurry reflections or soft shadows.
  
  
  


• Carrara 6 will have a standard and a pro version.


• Improved OpenGL support/performance.


• Free upgrade for people who buy now.


• Enhanced lighting controls such as shadow bias (used to correct self shadowing on low resolution objects) and lighting effects (CrossScreen, Glow, Nebula, Pulsator, Stars, VarioCross) see screenshot below.
  


• More transparency options for shaders, In-Scattering; an effect by the light reflected by small particles inside a medium such as cloudy water or a smokey room and a direct Absorption control. See Shark video above for an example of In-Scattering.


• New scene wizards, the empty scene can now be created with different default scales which affects the default size of new objects.
  


• There is also a new landscape wizard with a wide range of options for land and sky.
  
http://www.digitalpainters.net/car/v4moutain2b.mov

• Landscapes can be edited to use Render Time Displacement which uses less memory and can generate more details
  


• An alternative rotation controller to help with, for example character animation


• Enhanced editing of multiple selection for example if many lights are selected then you can change their brightness simultaneously or many object can be hidden at once.


• Unicode Support: Support for unicode object names and choice of fonts in the UI.


• Given that Daz have Collada Import and Export support in Daz Studio there is some speculation that there might be import and export support for Carrara 6. The is already a Collada plugin for C5.

There have been some observations that some of the new functions look like the previous generation of add-ins from Digital Carvers Guild such as Ground Control and Project Gemini. There are rumours that Erik is updating his current plugins to be compatible.

Microsoft's X format, import/export will be supported in a limited way in the release.

A flyer for C6 has been seen at Siggraph 2007.


Daz3D have announced that "Carrara 6 is scheduled to be released for sale on the DAZ 3D website in August 2007 with a special introductory discount being offered to DAZ 3D customers. The standard edition of Carrara 6 will have a MSRP of $249, and Carrara 6 Pro will have a MSRP of $549."

Daz3D's own Carrara 6 summary thread (needs registration)

For reference: Carrara 5 full feature list
Carrara 5 Pro vs Standard