by dustrider » Wed Aug 27, 2014 10:26 pm
dustrider
Wed Aug 27, 2014 10:26 pm
Welcome aboard! The Carrara plugin is MUCH more stable than the DS plugin. I think all during testing I had Carrara crash to the desktop maybe 5 or 6 times, and I use a laptop that I don't shut down or reboot very often, I just close the lid and let it go to sleep, so sometimes I had Carrara and the plugin running while changing and testing things without closing Carrara literally for at least 30-40 hours.
Yes, as SiFi Funk said, you can have both the DS plugin and the Carrara plugin on your system and all will be fine (I have both). You can also have both versions of Octane stand alone to match your plugins installed as well (I have 1.2x, 1.5x, and 2.x installed), just make sure they install in different directories.
For getting over the Carrara learning curve in a hurry you might want to get the first in the series of Carrara tutorials by PhilW from Infinite Skills (available at DAZ3D), or there are some great tutorials by crippleman on YouTube (links can be found in the Carrara resources thread at the DAZ Carrara forum). The big plus to using Carrara IMHO is that not only do I have access to Octane now, but I also can use Carrara's internal render engine which is quite fast compared to 3Delight in DS, in addition to having access to all the other features that DS doesn't have (modeling, landscapes, tree modeler, etc.). It's also much simpler to set up materials and tweak render settings in Carrara (at least for me, but then I have been using Carrara since version 2). So you have access to a fast and easy to use biased render engine when needed, and of course Octane for mind blowing unbiased renders.
Hmmmm....I thought the manual was a pdf, silly me! Hopefully Sighman will chime in here and point us to a PDF version.
Good luck, and feel free to ask questions as needed!