Carrara plants

Mosk the Scribe

hi.  What are my options for animating plants in Carrara?

Is it possible to take plants such as those in Lisa's Botanicals or other DAZ products - some are props, some are figures - and load them into the Plant Modeler so you can automatically animate via Wind & Gravity in the Tree Shape tab?

If not in the plant modeler, what about jus in a regular Carrara scene - can you pin the bottom of various plants to a ground plane (maybe with Target helpers as fixed spots to track) -and then have the rest of plant react to wind without tipping over or blowing away?

Considered rigging with bone tool as well - but some plants have many arms (say 8 or more).  When that's the case, is there a simple way to duplicate bone structure for arms and roate into place before attaching?  And would I have to weight paint every bone (could easily be 30 or more) - or is there a way to do that in groups?

Thanks

 

 

Mosk the Scribe

Follow up question: regarding weight painting - after attaching a skeleton to a plant, I've tried selecting the group and just the original plant and going into the Model Room, so I can go into Animation tab and weight paint - but no bones show up in that tab.  

EDIT - found that if I select the model, and then the Model in Assemble room icon in top toolbar, I can then get access to the Weight Mapping brush, and can find drop down of bones available on right side  once go into Animation Tab of Parameters.

wgdjohn

Hello Mosk,  I've never tried animating plants or even the plant editor but do have something to contribute.   When you speak of Lisa'a botanicals and props... are they simply images on a billboard... like on a vertex plane?  This might work as long as the camera does'nt rotate to reveal the thin face of the billboard.

I've made a few simple plants in the vertex room, of course more complicated ones than mine could be made.  I've never tried animatiing them.  I've also not tackled bones just yet so don't know how many would be required... from what I gather not many if Constraints are set up properly... wouldn't what those leaves or plant stems folding over on themselves.

evilproducer and perhaps others have been experimenting with Dynamic Hair for grass... I've seen some very good renders of this method.

Regarding pinning plants to the ground... I've watched others do this by creating a texture map, Export Map I believe, of the terrain and placing white spots or areas where you want the plants to be.  See Building Carrara Terrains Intro or No one asked me - Diomede posts screenshots on whatever  for some examples.

hopefully others will have better advice than mine.

Mosk the Scribe

Thanks wgdjohn - 

Regarding Lisa's Botanicals - those are mostly props (not billboards).

Just tried with a figure (with structure LgGrass04 containing Model and Grass04 beneath it - and I'm not able to attach skeleton to that.

With props, however, didn't have such problems (and for my purposes right now, can take simple approach of just one vertical skeleton if the plant is symmetrical, and can then have it waving back and forth) - becomes much more complicated and would require lots of weight painting (I think) to actually rig multiple individual arms for plants.

 

wgdjohn

Thanks for the info on the Botanicals... I have a few but not investigated them.

I seem to recall 3DAGE stating that a once bones are added to an object or Prop it becomes a Figure.  I'm thinking, and might be wrong, that LgGrass04 and Grass04 could be protected??  Are they from another source or did you model them?  If from another source I would try loading into Vertex Modeler... remove the protection then save out as diff filename or export as object and load back in... also while in VM room check to see if they have any thickness which I would think come into play if adding bones.

You are welcome to ask in Modeling Objects in Carrara - Q&A - Come One and All or Animation in Carrara - Let's Animate - Q&A - Come One & All also. :)

Here is a Cripman video for creating bones and attaching a skeleton... if you haven't seen it yet.

Mosk the Scribe

Yep -actually watched that video recently to refresh my memory on the process - and had done just what you said about exporting out as an object, after which there's no problem attaching a skeleton.

 

wgdjohn

Kewl... glad my suggestion worked.

DUDU

To animate a plant in the wind, I use the Bend and twist modifier but it's not so sophisticated than the bones solution.

WendyLuvsCatz

you can also repurpose the parts of plants as Carrara tree leaves bearing in mind each needs one non overlapping UV map not separate shading domains

3DAGE

Before you export out an OBJ,. check in your library that it's not already supplied as an OBJ model,. most are.

The difference between a "Prop" and a "Figure" is ,... a Figure has bones ,. that's why you can't simply attach a skeleton to a figure,. it has one already.

a Prop is a model,. it has no bones,. if you add bones to it,. it's a figure (animation group).

 

As far as weight mapping and rigging,.

Unless you want absolute control over each branch and leaf,. you would just add a simple set of bones to control the stem,. the branches/leaves would be effected by those bone influences.

if this is the star of your show,. then you would take the time to rig what you needed to animate.

 

DUDU's elegant solution of using the "Bend and twist" modifier to make the plant bend or sway would be the best and easiest solution. 

unless this plant is the main focus of your scene and you need to animate something specific.

The Plant editor in Carrara has some simple Wind/ Rustle animation controls,. but they only effect "Carrara planets made in the editor.

you can't take an imported object and use that. even if it's an imported object which looks like a plant or tree.

 

Try the Carrara plant editor,. it can be used to produce a variety of plants or trees,. which can be saved to your library.

Other options would include Dynamic hair,. for distant grass,. or Low poly grass,. with a couple of morphs to make it animate.

Hope it helps :)

Mosk the Scribe

Thanks for all of the replies.

The plants in this case were not the star of the show, so to speak - but as I go through this project, I'm trying to use it as a learning experience (as opposed to just finding a solution and moving on).

I ended up just using a simple skeleton combined with Fenric's IRC to get the plants waving back and forth.

Hadn't thought of the bend/twist modifiers, which would indeed have been an easier solution, which would likely have given very similar results.

Good point about the .obj files as well - I did not think to go looking in the geometries folder.

Diomede

Might want to check out Jonstark's windy trees in this monh's challenge.  The particle leaves seem to help the effect quite a bit.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2791086/#Comment_2791086