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Uh oh....

tring01tring01 Posts: 305
in Carrara Discussion

I've been using Daz for several years.  I just bought Carrara and started learning it.

The first brick wall I ran into with Daz was that the 3Delight render engine results just looked cartoonish to me.  Even with the best lighting products, scene setups, etc., the characters came out looking like plastic dolls.  Just a little better than a screenshot from a video game.  I wanted something more photo realistic.  That meant IRay and all the headaches that come with that (special shaders, special lights, souped up graphics cards, and on and on).

I just did some renders of V6 in Carrara with gama correction and realistic lighting turned on - and - uh oh!  The results are what I was looking for all along from Daz - and are lightning FAST.

Did I just spend years chasing solutions with IRay that were always available to me in Carrara?  Oh boy.  Time to go get a cup of coffee....

Comments

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,165
    edited April 2017

    Welcome to the Carrara forum.  smiley   Don't hesitate to ask when you have questions.  People try to be helpful. 

    .

    With that out of the way, to the extent that you are interested in Carrara lighting and realism, may I suggest that you take a look at PhilW's forum thread on realistic lighting in Carrara?  It is 19 pages so maybe just skim it first and see if it is interesting.

    https://download.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/25644/make-your-most-realistic-renders-ever/p1

     

    PhilW also has a Carrara realism course in the Daz store.

    Post edited by Diomede on
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,165
    edited April 2017

    Also, many of the monthly challenges have included a requirement to use a particular Carrara feature, function, or tool.  When you get interested in a particular Carrara topic, it can be useful and fun to skim through a challenge WIP thread that focused on a related topic.  The challenge links are stickied at the top of the forum.

    Here is a challenge WIP thread that might be related to your interests (Just Say no to flat 3D).  The WIP thread includes terrific tutorials by Stezza and Evilproducer.

       https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/45561/the-september-carrara-challenge-just-say-no-to-flat-3d-spinning-a-popular-theme/p1

    And here is the Entry thread from the same challenge.

    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/46190/voting-thread-closed-sept-carrara-challenge-just-say-no-to-flat-3d-spinning-a-popular-theme/p1

     

    Post edited by Diomede on
  • UnifiedBrainUnifiedBrain Posts: 3,588
    tring01 said:
    I just did some renders of V6 in Carrara with gama correction and realistic lighting turned on - and - uh oh!  The results are what I was looking for all along from Daz - and are lightning FAST.

    Did I just spend years chasing solutions with IRay that were always available to me in Carrara?  Oh boy.  Time to go get a cup of coffee....

    Welcome to Carrara!

    It sounds like you were more stubborn to succed with IRAY than I was.

    I took two very good (and very long) IRAY video tutorials.  Once I finally figured out how IRAY worked, I shut it down and never went back. 

    Carrara has a learning curve (like everything worthwhile) but for me, it seems more natural to use.  IRAY, not so much.

    Good links up there from Diomede.

     

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675

    in the ambient sub tab, there's a dropdown list, there's an option to make the lighting sync with the sky lighting!

     

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,543
    tring01 said:

    I've been using Daz for several years.  I just bought Carrara and started learning it.

    The first brick wall I ran into with Daz was that the 3Delight render engine results just looked cartoonish to me.  Even with the best lighting products, scene setups, etc., the characters came out looking like plastic dolls.  Just a little better than a screenshot from a video game.  I wanted something more photo realistic.  That meant IRay and all the headaches that come with that (special shaders, special lights, souped up graphics cards, and on and on).

    I just did some renders of V6 in Carrara with gama correction and realistic lighting turned on - and - uh oh!  The results are what I was looking for all along from Daz - and are lightning FAST.

    Did I just spend years chasing solutions with IRay that were always available to me in Carrara?  Oh boy.  Time to go get a cup of coffee....

    What a beautiful, yet tragic tale! Sorry for your years of woes, but I'm glad that it landed you smack-dab into, what I feel to be, the best 3D studio on the planet! ;)

    Welcome to Carrara!

    Yeah... there can be a lot to learn in Carrara, but we just take things as they come and we do just fine. Like you (so it seems) I just started using it the way it felt that I should. Started cranking out renders (and FAST!!!) and just kept moving forward from there.

    When I was gearing up to buy Carrara, the store page where very, Very different. I had pages and pages of awesome images to look at explaining various things that can be done in Carrara. I wish I had copies of those pages to show here for fun. They were awesome!

    But I didn't really care about all of that. I wanted Carrara because of how neatly it works with Daz3d's Poser people, and that it was a modeler - more specifically, I wanted the modeling capabilities for altering clothing and hair, etc.,

    Once I actually bought it, I was absolutely floored by how fast and great the render engine is! I just love it!

    I was also in awe at the scales of scenes available in Carrara. Large magnitude scenes are miles and miles large! It's fun to work in a studio that so brilliantly scales render importance to distance the way Carrara does. I have some scenes that would likely never open in Poser or Daz Studio, they're packed so full of content. Nothing against Daz Studio or Poser... I just like Carrara so much better!

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