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Nice looking pit
Thanks John
Displacement painting is a great way to add details to a low poly model, to make it look like a much higher poly model,. using Sub division smoothing to virtually divide the polys, so you have a sculptable surface to paint surface deformations, then you can go back down to a single level of modeling smoothing, so your working with a low poly model,. but have all the details of the higher subdivision smoothing applied to the model at render time.
If you think about modeling the tread on a wheel,. you can quickly get lot's of polys, and some may not be exactry the way you want them. but by using displacement,. you'll still have the basic low poly wheel, which has the tread displacement applied when rendered,.
In the shaders list,. at the top,. there's a Displacement tab,. where you can create a shader to add displacement.
you can use any of the shader patterns and functions to create really complex looking surfaces from simple objects,.
here's a quick example ,. using a Plane, and a displacement shader,. made of Tile and Square patterns,. you get an instant little cityscape.
no modeling required.
The main blender is a Tile pattern,. where the "grout",. becomes the streets (no values) and the "tiles" become buildings (with the squares patterns adding the irregular details)
you can easily make his more complex to get more variation.
If you use those same values in the surface Shader, you can create the colours for the streets and buildings
Stick that plane (city) into a replicator or surface replicator and a add it to a terrain....
Cool Andy,
Can I assume that Displacement Painting can be baked onto an object using Baker?
I had to giggle a bit when you mentioned a tire tread afterwhich I checked out how you created the tire tread for the Bike "Tyres" since it avoids using the Displacement Tab... instead it shows how to creatively create a tread pattern using other Shaders and settings including, most important, Bump. The Bike you created is impressive and shows how to use Shading Domains on a single vertex object.
Notice to Everyone: I just updated the first and second posts on Page 1. Most important is the addition of at least one link... and some minor spelling/grammer changes.
Thanks John,. :)
yes,. it's an important point,. Bump and Displacement,. Carrara's bump options are really impressive,. (minus 250 to plus 250)
it can create bump effects which can almost look as good as real displacement,. from the right angle,. but bump doesn't physically change the geometry,. displacement does. and sometimes you want to really deform the geometry,. like the peach pit,. and bump won't cut it.
If you check this image,. I've made a red Brick shader,. where I'm using Displacement in the shader channel to physically change the geometry of the "plane" wall.
However,. the other "Tiled wall",. is only using Bump,. at a value of 13
In the Vertex modeler,. there's an option on the File menu,. to "export displacement map" then you'd select an image format. probably tiff or psd.. then you could further edit that in an image editor,. and load it back into the shader displacement as a texture map.
In the Shader,. where the displacement could be a simple pattern, or function,. it makes sense to save those setting in the shader, as values,. rather than convert that math to pixels to create an image.
Baker can be very useful if you need to export/convert shaders to a set of texture maps,. (for use in other software) It also allows you to bake the Light maps, for use in game engines,. and to create Normal maps from the bump settings.
Plugins are great,. when you have a need for them,. but as a starting point, I think it's important to get to grips with the main programs feature-set, without clouding the waters too much with extra features. ...just my 2 bitcoins.
There are a load of really great (and very low priced) Plugins for Carrara,. Sparrowhawke3D.com has a bunch of really useful and really free plugins,. but if you load them all and try to learn all of them,.without a practical purpose,. then it can become a pointless excersise of confusion.
Get a plugin to add a feature you really Need,. once you've reached a limitation of the software, and arrived at the point where you realise that you need that plugin.
for example,. You can create a plane,. apply a procedural shader to it,. select, File / Export,. choose OBJ, and in the export panel options,. select, (convert procedural shaders to texture maps).
This will create a set of images from the colour channel and bump etc,. Not as good as Baker,. and no Normal maps or Light maps,. but it converts whatever you've made in the shaders, into an image which you can edit in photoshop, or any other image editor.
Since displacement is driven by just greyscale values (I think??) you could just swap your displacement settings into the color chanel and Bake the Diffuse chanel from Baker. I just tried with a simple sphere, one with a Noise function in the displcement chanel, the other with the same noise function copied into the color chanel, then Baked using the Diffuse chanel in Baker, then applied as a texture map in the Displacement chanel. The results are almost the same...my baked map is 2048x2048 and I cranked a default vertex sphere up to 5 for smoothing.
Thanks for the pointing that out 3DAGE, that is so cool. So much to experiment with in Carrara!
Yes, what 3DAGE says here. The primary reason I bought Baker though was to export higher resolution maps...I think the OBJ export from Carrara maxes out at 2048? Anyway, that may be sufficient for many needs, but I was experimenting with high rez terrain textures back and forth between Carrara and another app and...ugh don't ask...
HI Desert Dude :)
I agree,.. Baker does higher res export,. and has a whole load of options,. it's one of the few plugins I use often,.
There are some really great Carrara plugins available,. for shaders(terrain tools), Modeling (Architools, shaper), and to add more functionality to the program such as VWD Cloth and hair,. or Octane for Carrara and of course, Luxus, plus a bunch of others.
I'm not trying to put anyone off getting all of them,. really,. get them all if you can, but when you're learning anything,. it helps to simplify things, and learn the tools of the program first.
Carrara has so many things to learn,. so much to experiment with :)
Nice Idea on passing the displacement through Baker,. :)
Yes,. Displacement is driven by the greyscale values
One really nice feature is that you can create your own brushes for displacement, and for painting,. although there is a nice set of default brushes,. once you create some greyscale images, and add them to Carrara's /Data / Displacement brushes,. or make your own sub folder there for your brushes.
then you can create ornate design elements to add decoration,.. or even nut's n bolts, screwheads,. whatever..
Yes, that is really awesome, I have experimented creating a few "noise" brushes for displacement in the past. Limitless options!
One thing that struck me this morning after fiddling around in Carrara (when I should have been tending to other things...) was it would be nice to have an "Import Map" option for vertex models, much like the Terrain Editor...maybe tied to the Displacement Painting tool, where the displacement gets stored with the model and one needs to dial up the subdivision level to see more detail at one's discretion. I don't know if that makes sense, but sometimes I feel Carrara is more stable with displacements at the "object level" as opposed to the shader. Depending on the shader function, for me, Carrara can just hang up or flat out crash, and I'm not doing anything wild with ridiculous subdivions or anything at the shader level. Well, just a thought. Of course, at the shader level things can be animated nicely, with procedurals, but it would be nice to have that option.
Andy, You're brick if far more realistic than my simply adding a brick texture and cranking up bump.
I agree that one should learn the capabilities of Carrara without diving into *any* plug-ins which is how I've been using it since day 1 with Carrara 4 Pro. I've always tried to steer away from using using Advance Pack and PowerPack plug-ins. This has helped especially now that I've a lot more plug-ins but I know when I'm using one as opposed to Carrara's built-in shader functions/options. If only I had forked out a bit of cash on a tutorial book long ago I'd be a lot further than trying to learn things on my own... yes... if only....
DesertDude, I've used displacement maps for trerrains since an early version of Natual Scene Designer. Quite interesting and unusual results.
I've tried 3DPaint tool only once... didn't seem to work, knew it was something I need to learn more about first... gotta tackle that next... gotta tackle a lot of things next... lol.
Lamentably...I was trying right now to create a contrast between painting displacement with 3D painting vs Displacement Painting in the Vertex Room using Carrara 8.1 and using 3D Paint it keeps hanging up on me when creating a "new texture" and trying to 3D paint...I know I have "painted" displacement in the past...agh it's late here so I will return to test in the morning...frustrating...I even just now tried super basic scene and "dislpacement" chanel in 3D painrt locks up Carrara 8.1...I know I have experimented before so...I don't know...Mac bug?
I am glad that you speak about Baker, I wonder for a long time how Dimension Theory did this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nx-HNZkEdg
Any idea ?
Wow! That is cool. Somebody should site message @DimensionTheory and see if he is willing to explain the basic steps used. Not me though, PA's intimidate me.
Done !
If we manage to get his attention, please a few clues/breadcrumbs about this kind of work:
I remember seeing these kinds of wonderful examples in the past. Such awesome examples, thanks to Dimension Theory for inspiration and DUDU for reminding me of inspiration!
I believe that he did that by stacking large number of planes with noise shader applied to alpha channel
Thanks for chiming in FifthElement. I suspected it as somtihng like that, and now thinking (with your tip), maybe with a replicator one could get a ridiculous stack of planes with very little overhead. It's stuff like this that got me into geometry based volumetric tricks that use procedurals to simulate fluid/cloudy/smoke stuff and away from trying to shepherd particles with render times that turn me into Rip Van Winkle.
Questions... I have questions...
I created a simple stone shader... below is a pic of it in use, a pic of the shader settings, the default UV map and a zip file containing the .car file. Ok... now the questions... some are related a diff project using this shader, some relate to this project and more relate to adding text.
I've submitted my Grave Marker for mmoir's Animators Club for Carrara thread . Lets create a simple animation every week. Week 1 Angry Skeleton.
Hi John !
Why booléan ? You could make your own brushes: http://www.bond3d.byethost18.com/index.php?topic=133.0
Unfortunatelly that's probably not gonna happen, DT stopped participating in these forums long time ago ...
No, it's not necessary, it can be just a texture with high bump or normal map, unless it's a close-up, and then, like DUDU said, you could do some displacement painting, dunno if Carrara's displacement map is exportable (never tried it), but, if it is, you can use it as mask in a shader ...
Booleans are almost never a good thing to do
DT has made an upload on YT seven months ago, perhaps we have a little chance...
Could you explain more in details what you mean with "I believe that he did that by stacking large number of planes with noise shader applied to alpha channel
" ?
Thanks.
Hi DUDU
In carrara,. some shaders, like Wood or fractal noise,. are three dimentional,. but if you apply that to a model you don't always see that,. since there's no internal geometry
What DT did was to create a stack of planes,. and apply the same shader to all of them.,. so,.. using a replicator to create hundereds of items and space them out, seems like the simplest and easiest way.
Thanks for your answer Andy, but I don't understand how he made these waves wich interacts with each other.
Have you time to build a very little exemple ?
Here is example Carrara file, fell free to explore, lol
Double post, lol
Nice FifthElement, you beat me to the punch.
I just uploaded an animated example on YouTube here:
I got carried away describing the method used and didn't realize I had solved a problem animating noise when set to Global until I went back to visit my own old thread. Lol. Added a few more comments for correction. The old thread is here, sort of "solved" in my last post:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/58383/noise-functions-won-t-animate-transform-tab-when-set-to-global#latest
I was looking at Dimension Theory's examples last night and I'm not convinced this is the method he is using, but, well it seems to work.
DUDU, FifthElement, Why boolean indeed... when things work out well the results are very good... on the other hand when it does'nt work out, more often the case, it can be a disaster.
DUDU, thanks for the brushes... I'll take a look at them later.
FifthElement, Here is what I'm now thinking... Create White text on a Black background in PSP and use gaussian blur to make a nice transition between the two to get the embossed look. I've not taken the time to learn 3Dpaint and displacement painting yet.
Hmmm... I was thinking that I'd need a white background with black text... no problem I can always change it to a negative/reverse if one way does'nt work.
Thanks for the help folks.
HI DUDU
If i remember correctly,. the waves effect was done in after effects or photoshop to create the B/W animated lines (radio waves in after effects)
that's then converted into normal maps using Baker in carrara to convert the BW animated bump, into normal maps sequence
It's also a lighting effect,. like bump, so ther's no surface geometry distortion.
Thank you Andy !
I suspected that Baker couldn't do that alone...
I played with Radio Waves in AE, not easy to do that !
5thElement & DesertDude, I will eat your "cheese" this evening, interresting approach, thanks too !