Project Dogwaffle Howler
This discussion has been closed.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Thanks! I can't wait to SHOW some animated footage! It's turning out really nice!
That image above... the post effects brought out a lot of detail on her, but it also took away the eeriness of where she is and how she's coping. The atmosphere is actually a lot more dense, so in the actual animation, much of that clarity and warmth of color doesn't come into play until we get up close, which is why I liked that frame for the still.
I made a really cool, adjustable set of shaders for her. I can dial all of her skin texture from fully dry to completely drenched and dripping (the same as the one from the contest), but instead of varying complete shaders with a multichannel mixer, I use individual mixers on color, highlight, bump, and reflection which bring a whole new level of control to adjusting and even animating it. For example, I can still use the highlight of the wetness without bringing up the bump or color of the droplets or I can tweak the droplets to show on the surface, but keep other parts of the skin still looking rather dry... it's really cool!
DOH, had a play last night, lots of fun, but how exactly do I export an OBJ?
I'm using PD Howler 9.5
you are a master of lighting , looking forward to the avi
Thanks! Carrara makes it pretty easy! ;)
To export an OBJ from Howler, we need to be in 3D Designer (Filters > Transform > 3D Designer)
It's at the very bottom left of the screen. Mine looks different as he's added a bunch to Howler 11
thanks for the quick reply dart and the graphic - we'll be calling you the On Board Wiki soon
I just happened to have it open, so I shot a quick screenie! LOL
thanks OBW :)
ROTFLMAO!!!
New video up on my YouTube. An ad for the Webinar in 5 days. Are you signed up, yet? Hope to see you all there!
Sweet!
Glad it will be available for sale in the store as I wont be able to attend.
Sorry that I won't "meet" you there, chickenman.
I had my "dry run" today with the host, and it went very well, so that I'm ready for Saturday!
He also said that he would be interested in hosting other Howler webinars in the future, so there may be more to look forward to!
My lack of experience with Carrara though, has stumped me for figureing out how to use an exported obj and put it into Carrara to render. Had the same issue with Poser. It imports, but can't find it! lol.
me aswell, looking forward to seeing this
Hya
On the bottom right in Carrara assembly room you will find a list of things in ypur assembly room
eg:
Select the landscape obj (left click on it) in this list.
This will also select it where ever it is in the assembly room.
Then hit the 'zero' key on the number keyboard. This is the default key for 'view selection'
You should be able to see your landscape.
When working in Carrara always use the director's camera until you need to render (see top left of window - it gives you a chouice of left right top bottom etc directprs camera and (other cameras)
...just as Head Wax instructs, but also another way:
After selecting the object in the "Instances Tray" (that bottom right list of scene elements), use the scale tool and Shift + Drag to scale up the object (OBJ) evenly across all dimensions.
All (most?) 3d software import OBJ at different, often massively different, scales.
So yet another way, especially if we have a mental vision as to the size of the imported object, is to select the object and, above the Instances Tray select the "Motion" tab. Toward the bottom of that tray, we'll see the scale properties. Put a check in the "Uniform" box and set one of the (x, y, z) axis dimensions to what we envision it to be - the rest will scale along with it. In Carrara, the z axis is the height, unlike many others. In Poser, for example, y is the height dimension.
The neat thing about bringing these things into Carrara is that the Terrain shaders work on them, using math to place the colors or textures where they belong, like snow, rock, grass, etc., and we can then tweak those shader elements. For example, where the Carrara sample Terrain shaders use procedural colors, I replace those colors, highlight, and bumb, with Texture Maps. Makes a huge difference if we want the terrain to be in the foreground.
Now... that said, we can also use Howler to output various maps to use to either control or alter those shader elements... it gets more and mofun the more we experiment!
Okay, more issues than I thought, once I select the obj to import, when I click on the object in the instance tray, Carrara just sits and spins, and if I click again it dies. So, I must have some other issue going on. Maybe obj is too big?
Sometimes it might be easier on both the user and the PC to export the various maps instead of the OBJ, and simply use Carrara's terrain modeler/editor instead. But that's mostly personal preference as well as depending upon what we're creating.
Hint: Carrara's Terrain Modeler works for making all manner of models, not just terrains. If it can be made by altering the shape of a sheet, it can be done in here.
hmm... are you importing the obj from File>import?
Carrara seems to handle pretty big stuff okay - how big is the obj?
Here is how I work with Carrara's base terrain shader that comes applied to a terrain when we Insert > Terrain in Carrara:
For this example, I use texture maps for Color, Highlight, and Bump. You could make your own or you can download the example files I'm using Here
I'll be texturing the Global Shader for the terrain, but these same steps can be done on any of the tabs on the left called "Shader" (under each Distribution tab) as well.
So to get started, let's shoot a quick test render on the basic terrain object. Notice that, in our test render, this color
corresponds with this color in our Terrain shader (Texture Room)
I change "Color" to "Multi Channel" so that, instead of only having this entire material being just Color, we can also have highlights and bumps and anything else we might want to add, like reflections, transparency... okay, I'm getting ahead of myself.
The image below shows a lot. So let me explain a bit first. This shows our new Multi Channel shader properties in that tab that used to have only the gray color.
We're going to Tile the example image maps I made, so my first step will be to set the Color tab of this new Mutli Channel to Texture Map, and load in the Color map. Before moving on, I'll set the map properties to Tile. The images shows that I tiled 15 times in both V and H (Vertical and Horizontal respectively) but in the end I only used 3 in my example.
Instead of having to set tiling on each of the three maps individually, this is where I Ctrl + Drag "Texture Map" tab (left in the Multi Channel) to both Highlight and Bump, and then just change the map with the loaders in each.
In short, I end up with Limestone_Color in the Color tab, Limestone_Highlight in the Highlight tab, and Limestone_Bump in the Bump tab, each tiled to 3 in both H and V
I like to set everything I'm not using to "None", to reduce the render engine having to look at it for a value.
In this situation, I like to have a fairly low Shininess value. The lower the shininess, the more light will spread across the surface without stopping at an angle change. The 6.52 in the image will still show a bit of shininess, but will still mostly look dry. 6.52 is because I used the slider, so I just stopped on one of the values it offers. Likewise, I could have just typed in 6 or 5 or whatever. 0 would even work nicely here, but so would 10, but 10 would start to give a somewaht wet appearance. 25 would be fairly glossy. When we get towards 50 it may start to look more like imperfection artifacts in the render and 100 would eliminate the effect altogether, unless using insanely large resolutions that most of our machines would fall apart trying to achieve.
...and here's how it looks now, with just that simple change
If you like this sort of Terrain Training, I have a thread on the subject (where these came from) here:
► Building Carrara Terrains Intro
Yes. That is why using Terrain Modeler can be a lot easier to manage.
I've still yet to explore how heavy OBJ are compared to resolution of the image used in 3D Designer, but I think you normally like to work large-ish, right?
Try doing one at a much lower resolution like 800 x 800 or even lower to start with and work your way up. Perhaps some of those settings in 3D Designer help to determine the outputted OBJ resolution? If so, I don't know what they are. I'd like to find out though. Should ask.
Say, a friend just passed this on to me from the Lightwave forums.
Dan Ritchie could use some support (Been in the Hospital), here's his message there:
Dan Ritchie ROCKS!
164 MB. Don't know if that's big or small...
Going to try a smaller image to create the obj, see how that goes.
164MB can be pretty big for an OBJ, but that's not the whole story. What matters is how many polygons and such need to be calculated.
An example:
In Carrara's Terrain Modeler, we can set the "View" resolution of the resulting mesh independent of the "Renedered" resolution, which makes it easier to get super-detailed terrain meshes created without bogging down the OpenGL view. Default is a viewing resolution of something tiny, like 127 x 127 or something like that with a higher render resolution.
We have to take care in using different values, however, if we intend to place other elements directly on top of the terrain's surface. What looks right at one resolution is not at all correct for another. Simple fix - just set the viewing resolution the same as the final render resolution when placing the elements that need to sit just right.
I prefer to use lower resolutions when I can, and further alter them with the shaders - but that's me, and how I work. Currently my terrains that I make in this way are used as non-focal elements rather the being the star of the scene. They look beautiful (I think) at a distance, but kinda plain up close because it's what's on them that I'm trying to draw the eyes to.
Anyway, when it comes to OBJ and other meshes brought in from other software, there may not be such a resolution adjust for working views - like in this case (Importing Howler OBJ)
One way we can implement such a thing is by using Howler to export a lower-resolution mesh (though I'm not yet certain how) and then using Subdivision in Carrara along with displacement painting, etc., to carve in higher resolution details. Carrara allows us to model with SubD on the render level, leaving the actual mesh (in working view) at a much lower one.
Hey tiffanie
The poster only says from 8-930 but not the time zone.
so which time zone is it. I might be able to attend depending on timezone
This one does
3:00 pm EST, 2:00 pm CST, Noon PST
I really hope Dan is okay!
I've never done one of these Digital Art Live webinars before. I've signed up. How do I join in when the time comes?
They will send you a link. Do you have FUZE? if you don't, I suggest downloading it slightly earlier, it's better to watch from the ap instead of the browser version.
Once the time comes (about 15 minutes before) click on the link, it will open Fuze for you if you already have it downloaded and then you check your audio and you are in! It's pretty simple. There is a chat box in the ... area, open that to start interacting with folks.
The host is Paul, and he is very knowledgeable about the FUZE program, so if you have technical difficulties, you can ask him. Often many things can be fixed by signing out and back in again.
Oh, and he sends countdown reminders on the day of, 3 hours, 1 hours, etc.
Yeah, I'm thinking it's too big, I did get it to import into Bryce (though I don't know how to use that, either!) And it had hundreds of millions of polygons....so I'm guessing that's the issue. I'll have to talk to Dan about how to reduce it, so that it has fewer polys, but it imports fine directly into DAZ, so maybe I can play around with it after the webinar is done, and look at exporting from DAZ to Bryce or Carrrara or Hex. or to another obj file that is optimized.