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Thanks Phil. Sorry, I should have said that I want to do it in a regular render inside Carrara, not in an animation.
That being the case, my first suggestion would be to draw the tracks onto a height map and use Carrara Terrain to create the mesh. I would focus on the tracks as a separate terrain so I didn't have to draw tiny little dots in the center.
Just make a separate terrain piece for the tracks and use a zero edge modifier to keep the corners of the terrain low so it'll fit nicely against a larger terrain piece.
I should really (Unless you want to, Phil?
) make a nice Sparrowhawke presentation in here. His stuff is so awesome and he's so incredibly nice to share with us all. Great stuff!
Here is an excerpt from Jay Nola's wonderful Plugin FAQ, but I'd like to do a really nice Sparrowhawke piece!
Sparowhawke3D
Sparowhawke3D has several free plugins for Carrara, tutorials for them. Several alpha versions of plugins can be found in The Laboratory area of the website.
Sparowhawke3D's Website is at:
Sparrowhawke3D
Some of the links to files on Sparowhawke3D website don't work. However, those files can be found by looking in the Indexes and Sub-Indexes for Downloads and Laboratory and that exist for the website.
The Indexes can be found at:
Index Downloads
Index Laboratory
FAQ About Sparohawke3D's Plugins
Q: Do they work in Carrara 8?
A: Yes, beta versions can be downloaded that work in Carrara 8.
Q: Does a Mac version of them exist?
A: Yes, Mac versions exist for them.
Q: Are they totally free?
A: Yes, you can however thank the creator if you like by purchasing a DAZ or Renderosity gift certificate for the creator. See the Stuff section of Sparowhawke3D's Website for more details on doing this.
UnifiedBrain,
Do you mean like this? It's done with a grey scale image in the displacement channel of a terrain. I used the snow shader that came with Carrara. I've also attached my setting for the shader.
See? So many different ways to do things in Carrara!
That same map could also be added to the terrain's filter list as a height map directly in the Terrain room
Fantastic BrianP21361! I love that image! Love Spidey!!!
Yes, for a static image, bump mapping will give the illusion of some depth if it is not too deep, or displacement mapping if the tracks are to have real depth - and doing this on a terrain is quite an efficient way of doing it as terrains are basically set up to take displacement. You can actually use terrains for quite detailed models as well by using a displacement map approach.
I did post a video about one of Sparrowhawke's plugins - Instance Randomizer - which he very kindly developed at my request:
Oh Fantastic, Phil! I forgot about this Gem (the video, not the plugin - LOL)
Thanks for posting it here!
FWIW, Nerd-3D is now over at hivewire and almost everything I've seen him do is available there.
That said, the Spidey picture you did (Dart) is pretty cool and a lot simpler... Now I want to know the story of how spidey got lost in the snow!
New years bender?, Drugged by his arch enemy and dumped in the woods, Looking to rescue his love interest and got lost himself?
Inquiring minds want to know!
cheers,
--ms
I long to own the rest of the Nerd3d collection I've started, that Footsteps tool being toward the top of the list!
But the Spidey render is by BrianP21361 (post just above mine), not me! ;)
Ah, sloppy on my part - great image anyway BrianP21361! and the questions remain!
re:Nerd3D, ditto - there are a couple of 'em that I meant to get and missed the DAZ window, but will probably pick up if/when Hivewire has another sale, or I have a project. Hivewire isn't as much fun to shop at as DAZ... Not nearly as interesting or random sales...
Dart - that image may not have been yours, but the ones you've been posting all over the place are on fire! The stonemason ruins scenes with the haze, the spaceships, and the pedistal (sp?) renders are all great! inspiring.
cheers,
--ms
Yeah, that whole place is built of friends! I love those folks and hope they continue to grow!
I'm glad Chris (Creek) is inspired again... looks like he's having a blast! Lisa B's helped me a lot over the years, same with Ken Gilliland and Nerd3d!
...and thanks for the compliments! I've always wanted those Base Camp pedestal thingies from TheAntFarm... so cool are they! They're actually a lot more fun than what I was expecting! Not sure why... everything I get from TheAntFarm is wonderful and fun to use.
Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately, they were still over my head. I'll ask again if needed when my understanding improves.
In the meantime, I simply turned a couple of primitive rectangles into long tire tracks, and changed them to a different snow shader than the ground. Not the fully indented look I was hoping for, but good enough to fool the eye.
The image is my recreation of Amazing Spider-man #408 (408-1.jpg). Honestly, I can't remember what the comic was about. I just liked the scene.
heh, good rendition of the original. I thought we might have fun speculating the cause of a snow-bound spidey, having no other clues... Especially with this crowd - good stuff!
Dart - I agree about ant-farm - he (she) has a great series of older scenes in his/her catalog that seem to draw from the 'Bug's Life' sort of town, where the buildings and props are all fabricated from small cans, forks, and junk-yard stuff like that. I have no idea how I'd use it, but I want it all! You gotta look to really see the wealth of detail that's been put into it all - the deadwater series:
http://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=deadwater
esp the deadwater general store... And the entire 'never...' series. Dark industrial, and very well-done.
This digression doesn't have much to do with learning carrara, though, does it... :^)
--ms
Amazing Work! Check this out
Original (McFarlane?) BrianP21361
Fantastic Work Brianp21361!
Curious, is that Predatron's LR Masked Hero?
I don't normally do known comics or these types of super heroes*, but I bought that versatile figure for (many) other reasons, and I just love it! His LoRez figures are amazing. So many Morphs - So Many Shapes. I keep feeling tempted to grab his Redantum bundle (poser version for me) but there are more of his LoRez figures ahead of him in line :) ...and the fact that I have this Masked Hero... I mean LR is really good for these guys!
Other than the Loretta LoRez, these guys are the Masked Hero to take advantage of that cool suit that comes with it. Kinda hard to tell from this image, but the guy right behind Loretta is actually an alien and the guy in the far right foreground is a teenager/youth. All beards, textures, skin tones and shapes shown here are included in that pack or ossibly some from LoRez Lorenzo... they all work together. Okay... I'm babbling LOL
* I love the Comics renders I've seen of yours. Top Notch stuff!
This being a Learning thread, and I was just talking about Predatron, I have this book in my wishlist and long for the day I get to read it!
Predatron and Diane are Heroes of mine... I just love their products and style
nice segue back on topic! (one appreciates such things as one gets older!)
I don't think I want to be a PA, but I bet there's a huge wealth of smarts in that document!
--ms
Cool!
I love learning this stuff. I seem to recall that, back when I first started into the world of digital 3D, learning seemed really steep and endless. It's amazing how much easier it gets in time.
The thing is, I wasn't really interested in the book at all. I was just going for a deal to get myself into Carrara Pro, which I really wanted Badly!
Nowadays, however, I'm really grateful that I took that route - because now I have this cool book to reference. Not to reference Daz Studio instructions, since that's an entirely outdated version, but the advice that Les Pardew offers on so many important subjects regarding creating 3D scenes, setting up characters for interesting Avatar shots, how to make natural-looking poses and how to avoid creating awkward ones, advice on lighting and rendering... this is really one fantastic book!
I just pulled it out again. It's fun to do that once in a while. I had forgotten that it also contains a really brief, but very nicely detailed primer on setting up a quick scene in Bryce - something I still haven't done and really want to do some day.
It also has a really beautiful gallery of renders in the back which remind me that all of these new advances in render engines might make some processes easier or faster for certain things, but they cannot undermine the fact that our older render engines are incredibly capable of creating images just as fine!
It's a beautiful reminder to me as to why I really loved Carrara right from the start - it's incredible render engine.
For Christmas, my super-awesome nephew bought this book for me - said he couldn't help it - it had my name written all over it!
Anyways, he was So right! This book is so perfect for what I've been studying lately - and it all fits in with my Carrara endeavors - the underlying drive to all of my studying. It recognizes and helps to illustrate the difference between Special and Visual Effects. But much more, it draws from a wealth of the great artists whom have transitioned from Optical (Film) visual effects into the Digital era - most of whom actually helped pioneer much of what we use today!
Knowing the difference between Special Effects and Visual Effects is much more than just knowing the difference, literally. It's an important step into knwing when to use practical, special effects and when to, instead, rely on post.
Anyways, it's all related to Learning this stuff - and I want to try and emphasize that, learning how to create dynamic images in Carrara comes from a LOT more than just studying what Carrara can do and how to do it. We need to understand what it is we want as an end result. If we're using Carrara for Art, we need to know a bit of something about Art - the more the merrier. Same goes for design, visual effects, architecture, 3D modeling, photography... Carrara is so vast that most of us actually came to it with at least a slightly different idea of what we'll be using it for. One of the coolest things about this forum IS that difference. It's why, when one of us asks a question, we'll get a whole bunch of incredibly different, yet equally helpful answers to the same question!
Note - click on image above to see a Google Preview of the book
Dart,
Thanks for the compliment. The stuff you've been posting lately is very inspiring, especially the lighting. I love the fog and glows. I have your environments and need to experiment with them more.
I should have credited the figure. It's an M4 second skin and a mask from Joe Quick and Sturkwurk. It's avaialble on ShareCG: http://www.sharecg.com/v/41804/gallery/11/Poser/M4-Comic-Style-Mask-and-Textures.
So, speaking of first steps toward becoming a published artist on DAZ...
I looked all over for an "art horse easel bench" on freebie and paid sites and couldn't really find anything that fit the bill... So I popped out Phil's tutorial and Carrara and made one myself. While I was at it, I made a drawing board, a piece of paper for the board, and a pair of clips to hold the paper to the board.
I used several block primitives and stretched them, using a larger block with collision enabled to align them, I used two other blocks to make a surface layer for the bench so that it would have a "groove" where the board would sit. The board and paper are just two block primitives flattened and scaled. The clip is made of a cylinder with two flattened and stretched blocks.
I exported all as .obj files and imported back into DAZ, where I added the DAZ default wood shaders and Will Timmins Procedural shaders to create the wood grain. The image on the paper is just a material layer in surfaces using an image of a charcoal still life that I drew.
Now... for my questions...
The clips are too crude. I want the cylinder to be hollow in the middle - is there a way to do that with the cylinder object, or do I need to take a cube, turn it into a plane, and deform it into a cylinder in order to create a hollow cylinder?
I'd like to make tabs at the top of the cylinder with holes in them, and add a hole for a handle into the art board. Is there a way to do that with a primitive cube that has been turned into a plane? I looked at modifiers and it seems like what I might need to do is scale the board down smaller, deform a half of the cutout into one side of it, take another cube and scale it to be the top part of the board, with a matching mirroed cutout, and stick them both together and group them to make one object with a hole in the middle. That seems difficult and I'm not exactly sure how to do it. Is that the best way?
I'd also like to round the corners of the bench and the art board, and make the rear leg a trapzoid that is wide at the bottom and the width of the bench at the top.
Finally... I'm using shaders - is there a way to convert my shaders into actual textures for the objects? Or where would I start on just creating my own textures otherwise? I don't have the first clue where to start, here.
And finally, once I get it all together - how do I package it up for distribution as a freebie?
Here is a quick test render of the object.
HI :)
all objects are Hollow,. but the problem you're reaching is that you're going beyond primitives, and want to create a more detailed model,. for that, you need to go into the vertex modeller, or spline modeller,. in either of those modellers, you can build what you want,. and it's not much more complicated than what you've done already.
In the Vertex modller,. you can create "vertex primitives",. Cube, Cylinder, Sphere,. Grid (plane) etc.. or create a simple 2D shape, like a square or circle,. and use "dynamic extrusion" to "pull out" a box or a tube,. from that basic shape
in the vertex modeller you can edit the shapes,. create Shading domains to apply different colours or textures,. you can even create morphs to change the models shape with a slider control in the assembly room.
The spline modeller allows you to create a "shape", and a "Profile",. which define the shape of the object.
Although there is an option in Carrara to "Convert" a primitive, to a Vertex model,. this normally produces an unscaled "origianal shape" promitive,. which can mean more work that simply creating a vertex primitive.
Have a play around in the vertex modeller,. INSERT / Vertex model.
Hope it helps :)
Thank you, @3DAGE for the direction. Does Phil's basic tutorial cover this in later chapters, or are there other advanced tutorials that cover these concepts in more detail that you would recommend?
I suppose I just need to slog through all of Phil's tutorial either way and get it over with - I've just been putting it off and playing around in DAZ, and really, now is the perfect time for me to be throwing myself into Cararra and learning a bit more than just setting scenes and doing renders in Studio.
Yes, there is coverage of basic modelling in the Learning Carrara set, chapter 15. There is a lot more on modelling in the Advanced Carrara set, but I would look at the basic stuff first.
I feel like what I've accomplished just with the parts of the tutorial you give away for free is pretty impressive - so I imagine that there will be a lot more to learn if I complete the entire course. Thanks for heading me in the right direction!
Glad you are finding them useful!
HI donovan :)
basically what you did with the cube primitives and cylinder primitives in the asembly room,. is what you would do in the vertex modeller
insert cube (you can set the definition) ,. then use scale, or select one side, and move it,. or select edges or vertices,. and move those.
you use the move, rotate, scale, tools, to position the mesh how you want it,. pretty much the same as you did with primitives,. but,..
in the vertex modeller, you have Full control over the shape you create,. you can move, rotate, scale, or use the modelling tools to create more geometry, EG: modelling a vehicle fom a cube,. or a figure,. or whatever.
there's a bunch of great modelling tools in carrara, which can help you construct the shapes you need,.
and a lot of helpful people here :)
That is awesome. I'm going to look into it as soon as I get a chance.
Is it even *possible* to package and distribute content created in Carrara for DAZ studio? I mean, in either case it seems like a great place for me to learn and get a handle on the basics - but the goal is to eventually be able to create content, hopefully good enough to sell, so that I can at least maybe offset a little of the cost of this hobby. Between being able to make my own content rather than buy it, and possibly being able to sell that content... that would go a long way toward helping ease the sting of the cost of 3D modelling as a hobby. :)
I'm pretty happy just to be able to create my own models in Carrara and import them into Studio.