Feature Interview: Architosh talks to DAZ 3D

Continued from page 2

The truth about Carrara is that it is one of the better kept secrets in the industry. We are going to be pushing the education market with Carrara because it is a full-featured 3D package but is easier to use than a lot of the professional tools.

AFR: What are your customers doing with Carrara?

DF: Pro users are using it for film, pre-viz type of work. Last year at this time there was a short written up in the Hollywood reporter, who used Carrara and AfterEffects. Search Vimeo for Modern Times. 80 percent of the people doing the work in TV and film could do everything they really need in Carrara.

AFR: Where did Carrara come from again? Can you recount that history?

DF: Sure. Carrara and Hexagon came from Eovia. Carrara originally came from MetaCreations, the people who brought us Poser and Bryce, along with Painter. MetaCreations was founded by Kai Krause.

AFR: Let’s talk a bit about Genesis so I understand it completely.

DF: Our Millenium and Genesis character lines are at the core of our business. Genesis is a state-of-the-art character platform and provides immense capability, backward compatibility with older content and forward-minded features that users really want and need. (see image 05 below)

05 - The DAZ Studio user-interface (Windows version shown, Mac native as well). The software tool can fit into more complex professional 3D pipelines that include tools such as Lightwave and others. (image courtesy of DAZ 3D)

AFR: Help me understand who uses these characters they create in DAZ Studio?

DF: Beyond the hobbyist there are top design illustrators who use DAZ  Studio to create characters for numerous illustration needs…from advertising to storyboarding. They are also used by graphic artists to create book and magazine covers for example. A year ago a character was on Wired on the cover.

AFR: What is the main advantage of DAZ Studio over Poser?

DF: Our Genesis character platform is like four or five generations beyond Poser. We have state-of-the-art weight mapping and a very powerful rigging system. We also have superior online and inline tutorials and as we stated before amazing content numbering beyond 12,000 items. And there are compatibility paths between Poser and DAZ Studio as well.

AFR: You are approaching the young, the comic venues the newbies to the world of 3D and making it easy and affordable. All very noble goals for expanding 3D in our world, creating artists, et cetera. But these younger users are also big-time adopters of mobile computing hardware. What are you plans in the tablet space for instance?

DF: We can’t share all our plans but we are expanding in the mobile apps market. Our first app went up this month in the Apple App Store. It’s called Emotiguy Barf and its a fun, free simple app for basic entertainment. We see the bigger opportunity is getting people up to speed sooner. 3D has always been so hard for people to learn. Even getting kids and teaching them how to learn 3D earlier is strategically advantageous for us. The mobile app market is a very important element in that.

06 - ROSA is an award-winning animated short film that utilizes DAZ Studio figures. The short is available on Vimeo to watch and it is stunningly beautiful and well-executed. This shows you the creative potential of working with 3D figures and how DAZ can fit into a complex animation pipeline.

AFR: I would agree with you.

DF: 3D is here to stay. Without a doubt. Anyway, check out a film called Rosa on Vimeo. It was created using all of our models and it is amazing.

AFR: Thanks for talking to Architosh.

DF: The pleasure was mine.

That concludes our interview. Be sure to check out the ROSA short in particular. It is beautifully done and visually intense to look at. Also be sure to download the free software from DAZ 3D. Even if you are not sure you want to work with 3D characters having Bryce 7 and Hexagon 2.5 as professional and semi-professional 3D tools is a nice thing to have.

To learn more about DAZ Studio, the Genesis character platform and other DAZ 3D software tools, including their free give-away at this moment please visit them here.

And again, please be sure to check out ROSA!