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Outof curiosity, have you seen the wonderful discussion in this thread?
Jonstark Creating realistic Carrara hair for animations and still renders (video tutorials!)
Agreed. Sometimes I think I spend half my life unravelling Carrara's sloppy UV maps . . . (to the extent that I'll sometimes export to something else just to UV map it!)
And yes, everything in my store was made in Carrara (although I do also use other tools) before being exported to DS. If I can do it, certainly other people can.
One warning though, making stuff in Carrara can quickly consume your life!
Anyone on the fence about whether to get Carrara should read this!
Taking a break from a job I'm supposed to be doing for a client (which probably would have been done by now if not for so many Carrara inspired 'breaks'!), I think I've discovered my favourite thing so far - the multipass feature of the render room. I often use a multi-pass script in DS (not part of the program and purchased at additional expense), but it's got nothing on what's included with Carrara. A whole folder of different and wildly useful passes over my image if I want them, and all produced in ziliseconds. I'm trying not to think about everything I can so easily do with this lot in Photoshop later, but I can't wait to go and play. In the meantime... must... get... some... work... done...
I know! I keep wanting to try some of those UV positioning type passes as nodes in Fusion to be used with their volumetric fog and other fun nodes... if only time would permit more fun time!
I'm really glad that you're having such a great time! Reminds me of me! ;)
PhilW - just wanted to share... spent a couple of hours this afternoon with the free chapters of your tutorials... I can see what Carrara is capable of and how it differs from DAZ, and it is the kind of 3D rendering I am interested in being able to do. The tutorial is going on my wishlist. :)
I bought LAMH and it mostly crashes DAZ on my machine and is pretty difficult and frustrating to work with. I think it has tremendous potential - but at this point, I think I need a lot more hardware horsepower and significant time to invest in really learning the interface and how to get what I want out of it.
It is one purchase from DAZ I have a little buyer's remorse over at this point. Especially considering that it sounds like Carrara has this capability built in.
Not only does Carrara have hair/fur, but it has dynamic hair and fur, which means it can be animated and responds to physics like character movement or wind.
No doubt at $22 it is a great deal. I just checked my LAMH purchase and it was a $22 total too... and while there was a lot of other content included (most of it freebies, but I think I purchased a couple of other items at the same time)... it didn't include M5 and V5 and all the other additional characters and content that is bundled with Carrara. I guess that is what makes me regret the LAMH purchase. The Carrara purchase seems like a better all around deal.
Absolutely! I got what I feel was an amazing deal when I bought my first copy at just under $200, and then another $86 or something for the 8.5 Upgrade. My timing was perfect where I bought a book (from here) for $25 which came with Carrara 6 Pro, I added the C6 Pro to C7 Pro Upgrade for about 170 more, at a time when buying 7 Pro would get me 8 Pro for free when it released... and could have 8 beta (the whole beta was Pro, I think...) until that release!
So while I have 6, 7 and 8 Pro, I only use 8.5 Pro and just love it. But I already know that I would love using 6 or 7 if I never had 8. But 8 Pro added the 64 bit... there's just no going back from that - not for me! Just like going back to 8 from 8.5... no way!!! I just can't do it!
But even if this was the full asking price... it's a screaming deal. I absolutely have to have my Carrara Pro!
And, my first full render in Carrara 8.5 following PhilW's tutorial for loading V4, adding a character morph, clothes, hair, posing the figure and using Point At.
I'd be disappointed if this were a DAZ Render. I suspect I'll be spending most of my time in Studio still... but I can see the potential for Carrara, for sure.
nice to see intelligent new users coming along
maybe Daz did something right by Carrara at last..
not bad for your first one!
a few check boxes
1) 'always' turn ambient down to zero (looks like you have) - it's wone of the scene properties
2) in the render room you'll find a gamma thing - which is turned off. Try using it at 2.2 - it increases the tonal range of your renders
3) for a portrait like this a three point lighting system will work pretty well
4) PhilW has a good BrightEyes product which will be handy to get at some time if you like doing people - puts a glint in their eye. Also things that reflect need something to reflect - so maybe a sky in the pic would add more reflection in her corneas?
5) some objects come in which can benefit from smoothing - maybe the hair in this could ??? not sure- If you select the hair object and go into the mesh room you can access smoothing in there
6) a lot of objects come into carrara with too much shine and no bump textures - you can address that in texture room - Fenric also has a shader plugin which fixes those things automagically
Thanks for your kind words. Carrara is a much more complete 3D environment than Daz Studio, and it is fun exploring it. I've been using it for years and still find things that I don't know about it. And regarding your other post - yes, Carrara's hair system is built-in and is very powerful. I think whoever designed and made Carrara were ahead of their time.
Head Wax... Thanks for the pointers! For this render, I was just happy to get a character loaded, clothed, posed, and rendered! It was much more challenging than doing the same thing in Studio... but along the way, I saw that I could do a lot more with landscapes, creating my own objects, and customizing my scenes with my own custom created content. That is very exciting to me.
Carrara seems far more complete, and complex - but just what you've shown me so far has gotten the gears going on up in my head. I can see how easy it is to morph and manipulate the primitives into any object you might want to design - then it is just a matter of wrapping it in the right custom mat and sizing it right. That is what I'm excited about - the ability to create my own rooms, objects, props, scenes.
Try this, too. The sooner we start getting familiar with shaders in Carrara, the better.
Your shaders look pretty good though... just offering some tips is all.
Also, if you know where the dome maps are for Iray in Studio, they'll also work in Carrara's Background as a Map, which you may then use to contribute to Global Illumination, if you like.
Donovan you might want to check this item out... DP Genesis 2 Females Carrara Shaders Collection which should be very good since it is by RingoMonfort who always has great products. Note that this is a bundle for ?all? G2 Figures and that you can get the shaders for only one or more separtely. I don't have it *yet*... missed it during the last big Carrara products sale.
PhilW's video tutorial covers skin shading very well. Be sure to what Dart's video also.
Indeed... The further I travel, the more I appreciate Carrara.
Similar hair system plugins in pro apps will cost you at least 2 copies of Carrara at full shelf price.
Dev effort is duely noted - Carrara's hair system is also almost fully integrated into the main interface too.
The best thing about it, from the ecology and growth standpoint, is a robust dynamic hair product line.
Maybe the question could be " Reasons NOT to buy Carrara "
I can think of only one which is it is that it appears it is no longer supported by DAZ [ apart from help desk that is ].
It is several years since they released C8.5 and theynever give any information about future develpment.So I wonder why they should offer Carrara at the rediculous price of $20 or whatever - I haven't seen the offer -Its a mystery to me . But wait, maybe there is a new version on the horizon and they want to increase their user base who might then upgrade ?
I would say to anybody using Studio to just go get Carrara at this silly price because ultimately you will probably love it, even with its weaknesses. People might say its complicated to learn but not really it just seems that way because it does so many things and if Daz truly got behind it I'm sure it could be up there with the big boys like Maya, C4d etc.
Those glossy highlights can be modified in the shader room but an easier faster way is to get Fenricks "shader Doctor " plugin which allows you to do the job in a flash. You will also learn Carraras lighting system can create some interesting renders. Here are a few of mine not claimed to be masterpieces but to illustrate the variety of work you can do. None of these have any post editing. Everything in Carrara.
I bought the tutorial by PhilW during the last sale. I'm at lesson 0408, light effects. Obviously Carrara is more powerful than Daz Studio as far as the choices with built in scenery, lighting, hair, and the ability to create your own general content. Of course, this comes with far more complexity, requires far more effort on the part of the artist, and really seems to inevitably lead to the conclusion that some sort of paid training is required to get to the point where you can do those things. There isn't the same kind of free tutorial community that exists for Daz Studio to get the neophyte creating renders, and honestly, Carrara is a lot more complex for just setting up a simple character render, as far as I can see.
Regardless of the limitations with using later generation character models from DS... I can see the various ways that Carrara is more powerful out of the package. For the sale price, it offers a lot of content *and* features that would be additional plug-ins or effects in DS... but it is clear that I'm going to have to put a lot more effort into learning how to make those features work right.
Ultimately, for the sale price, with Phil's tutorial, regardless of the bundled content (V5 and M5 and their bundled content, etc...) the features that replace a host of DS plugin features (the hair studio vs. LAMH, the light effects vs. the various packages to create God Rays and atmosphere effects like fogging, the ability to model and create your own objects, landscapes, etc... things that are like terradome for DAS Studio..) if you learn how to leverage all of those things - it seems like that alone would save you a ton of money over doing the same things in DAZ and buying all the 3rd party utilities, tools, plug-ins, etc. required to do the same thing over in DAZ.
I'm on lesson 0408 of PhilW's tutorial, adding lens flare to a scene. Haven't figured it all out and it is insisting on saving it as an .avi - somehow I turned it into an animation... but it is very cool, these kind of features that I've wanted to be able to do in DS and every time I've looked into it the answer has been, "buy more paid content..."
if you look in Darts information manual thread he does link to some youtube video's as well, but you cant go wrong with Phil's tutorialsI have them all and I like Dart and a few others go back through them continually to look at things.
Check the timeline in the sequencer.
It's easy, at first, to tap the scrubber while working, hence adding a keyframe when something's changed, hence creating an animation. ;)
Just scroll the list in the left of the sequencer (bottom of screen) and find where the keyframe is. Select it, delete it, set time scrubber back to 0:00
In the second tab of the render room, set to render only the current frame.
You'll see that eventually everything becomes very simple, fun and powerful to use. It just takes this initial learning time to make the switch to this interface with this immensity of tools! ;)
Welcome to the addiction, my friend! :)
Not sure how you would achieve effects like this in Daz Studio... but I bet it involves plugins or additional content. :)
I just started over... doing the tutorial a couple of times can't hurt, right? :)
But thanks for the advice. Now I wish I had saved the copy I messed up on so I could apply your advice to fix it!
It is also amazing... I'm doing the tutorials on my Surface Pro i7 with Intel HD graphics... and I get it that it isn't an IRAY render engine... but it renders so quickly! I'm sure as the renders get more complex, I'll want to use a more powerful rendering machine, but for now, The Surface Pro 4 is doing fine. For DAZ, I do all my renders on an i5 with a NVIDIA GTX 750ti - and I'd like a more more powerful machine than that still for doing renders. I frequently set a render for 28800 seconds and 10,000 samples and just leave it to run all day.
If you are after mor realizm when you are done the current set of tutorials try the Ralism one by Phil.
http://www.daz3d.com/carrara-realism-rendering-training-video
Carrara's native (fast!) render engine (my favorite in the Whole World!) doesn't care about your graphics card, but your processor... so keep using your Surface Pro i7! :)
So fun and easy (with a bit of practice and imagination) to get exactly what we want, visually!
This is the kind of thing that gets me excited about learning Carrara. The text was created in Carrara 8.5 using PhilW's tutorial, then exported as .obj, imported into DAZ Studio, posed with Stephanie 6. It was just a real quick little render to see how it would work...