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I agree with jonstark that Carrara is excellent for fitting/tweaking clothing for characters. Like I said, that was my main Need that got me to find Carrara in the first place. No it's one of the little things that I simply take for granted! LOL
I almost don't realize I'm doing it - it's so quick and easy. For protected geometry, like stuff we'd buy from the store, which is pretty much what I use, switching to Edit mode will brign up a warning that "Topology Protection is On" and then give instructions on how to turn it off... just close the warning and go about your tweaking. We're not changing the topology, we're just ehancing the fit, is all.
I absolutley love this about Carrara. Yeah, I just said it's a little thing that take for granted. But without it, I go crazy!
Looks like they changed the pricing on Carrara Pro. I added Platinum and Carrara to my cart together and apparently discount applies with having both in cart, so total price is 58.20 if I buy both today. Bit higher than what you saw the other day, but still not bad. Or is it cheaper by just doing Platinum club quarterly as a separate transaction first and then get Carrara Pro?
You know I think you're right, but I have never used it. I need to check that out and see how it is done. Do you know if you can send textures, bump map, uv straight to photoshop and bring it back after editing?
Right now the sale price is $20 higher than it was when Jon first posted. There is a good chance it will go down again before the PC sale is over, if you are looking for more of a bargain. But if you wait, you are also missing getting some of the PC freebies. Pick your poison.
There is a tutorial on youtube. Not sure it addresses all your questions. I don't use the bridge. I went cold turkey into Carrara about a year ago. Carrara has a multipass renderer with an output that easily loads into photoshop or photoshop elements.
Ok, so I bit the bullet and grabbed Plat + and Carrara. Funny thing, I just finally figured out (after watching a few really good tutorials on YouTube) how to do the exact texture painting I have been trying to accomplish, by exporting my character as OBJ and using Photoshop CC's 3D tools. I think it is a bit clunky compared to how people are working in things like Zbrush, and despite being on an 8-core Mac with 64Gb ram, Photoshop seems to be killing my system and lagging a lot. But oh well. At least I can finally finish this Spider-Man texture I have been working on! Whoo Hoo.
On the Carrara side, I am definitely going to watch tutorials on how it all works. I would love to be able to fix some of these problematic clothes as mentioned earlier in the thread. Thanks for all the assistance guys.
I do know that, if we change the actual texture map used in a shader while Carrara is open, we have a "Refresh" button by each Texture Map, so we can refresh the map without navigating to it again, as long as it's the same image with the same name and place and such. I do this all the time ;)
Welcome aboard, Carraraist! ;)
Tip:
Edit > Remove Unused Masters > _______
Use these! Especially the "Consolidate Duplicate Shaders" option.
When ever we add a new figure from the content library, every shader domain will get its own separate shader by default, even if they are identical to another. Edit > Remove Unused Masters > Consolidate Duplicate Shaders will do just that: Consolidate all identical shaders into one.
I mention this after seeing your post on PS making your computer lag. Too many shaders in a single scene can also make for a sluggish working experience.
Also, when ever we Delete a model from Carrara, its footprint (Object) will still remain.
So if you delete a heavy model from the scene:
You're going to Love Carrara... you'll see!
Well, I am sure I have a lot to figure out and learn. But I take back that Photoshop 3D workspace is a good solution for the texturing I am trying to do right now. God this is terrible. Using the pen tool in 3D space is a joke. This is crazy. Arrrrrggghhhh. Why the heck is creating the webbing for Spiderman suit this unbelievably hard.
So, I tried opening as saved scene from DAZ (a .duf file) and trying to figure out what is happening with the texture right now. See attached.
I'm fairly certain that the issue going on is the Smoothing modifier messing with the fit of the suit - at least in the working view. Have you tried doing a test render?
In either case, while he's wearing the suit, we don't need him (his skin) to be visible. An easy (quick) thing that might work for you would be to select Actor and deselect the "Visible" box, making the character inside the suit invisible.
The more appropriate and efficient fix would be to change his skin shaders (and any other part of him that will never be seen) into an "Invisible" shader.
Open any one of the shaders in question (I've drawn a red square around each of his skin shaders in this image) and:
Moreso, just so you know this:
We can select "Actor" and then go to the Texture Room to see all of the Shader Domains of a figure.
So instead of pasting the top level into other shaders, we may also just make one Invisible shader, and then select that shader for all domains we want invisible in the drop-down on the right side of each domain's shader selector.
Then, in the end, go back to the Assemble room and: Edit > Remove Unused Masters > Remove Unused Shaders, will clean up the shaders tray of any unused shaders.
Gemini,
Iif that’s Smay’s Superhero Suit for G2M then I think I know what’s going on. The suit relies heavily on displacement maps for the seams. They actually enlarge the entire costume. So the textures are inside the figure. The displacement only shows up during a render, not in a preview. You,may have to turn on displacement and make sure the displacement map is loaded.
Aha... and the plot thickens!
Thanks BrianP21361!
Yes. It is Smay's SHS for G2M. I see that Displacement is Active and the map is present.
Ok, so when I select the Actor and set to invisible, the suit turns all black. I also noticed that when I select the SHSuit M6, the shader it is set to use was wrong and everythin set to use AoA Subsurface shader. I went through each and assigned the correct shaders, but still not working.
Try this:
Make sure of the follow - note that I'm including some things that are redundant just to be thorough - this is just a trouble-shoot
Next
Make sure you have a light in your scene (I don't see one in your scene shot)
To bring in a new light for this test (if you don't have one in) go Insert > Distant
For now just leave its default settings. It'll look icky but.... Okay now aim it away from the camera. It's a distant light, so it won't come from the light itself, but all light will flow evenly in the direction you point the light.
In the panel on the right, the panel where your character and light and camera are in, click on the word: Scene at the top of the tray. (That particular area is called the Instances Tray, for future knowledge)
Now look above that tray and at the top you'll see the word: Ambient. Click the little arrow to expand that. Set it to Basic (probably already is) and turn it up to 5
Now run a test render and tell me what you see - even if it looks like crap, I want to hear that you can see the textures working.
Note - if the suit is all weird shaped in the render, try turning off displacement - or going into Displacement tab of the shaders and take a screen shot of the settings.
I hope it works for you. I'll be back in the morning.
Oh, and don't turn Actor's visibility off. I think the suit must be parented to it.
With Actor selected, look in the panels above it for "Smoothing" options sliders. For now turn both sliders down to 0 - all the way to the left. We can always turn smoothing back on once we get this all sorted.
Also note that you're not in "Textured" mode in your working view, so you won't see detailed textures until you render. If you want to turn on Textured mode, it's the top right icon in this 3D View of Doc 1 window - you see the dark blue window top... there is a little glowing ball on the far right, but it's the second from the last to the right... clicking the next one to the right (the furthest to the right) is Textured mode.
This video starts off setting up a basic starter scene using defaults - and that means that the Ambient setting I mentioned above would be white, and set to 20, I think. Although I'm working with V4 in it, the principles are still the same... it's a very basic level for getting started. I was planning on doing some more but I ended up switching gears in life for a bit. But this should get you some starter Carrara basics to help get your figure set up
If you could stomach that one, this one covers more Genesis stuff - but 8.5 Pro was still brand-spankin' new, so I get even more babbly! LOL
An excercise in experimenting with lighting and shadows
Thanks. I will read over everything you sent and see if I can follow along. But right now I am going to take a break from all of this. I am so frustrated with trying to make this Spider-Man texture that I am ready to throw my computer out the window.
I have installed every trial app I can (Zbrush, Scupltris, Mari, Cheetah, Blender, Substance Painter, Mudbox, Blacksmith, Carrara) and not a single one of them can import this character model and clothing item properly. I have tried dozens of combinations of exports as well. I even have been trying to manually paint this texture using DAZ to Photoshop bridge and the Photoshop 3D workspace with second tile for the 2D diffuse map. Basically there doesn't seem to be any good or simple way to do the webbing on Smay's outfit. A lot of the UV seams don't line up and it is just basically driving me nuts. I have been at it for almost two weeks now and just mentally drained over the whole thing.
I did confirm with Smay that the outfit uses Displacement maps so you have to somehow adjust that in whatever app you import to. And according to him, the displacement settings are not migrated during DAZ export. Whatever all that means, I don't know.
Well, each software handles materials in at the very least slightly different ways, so materials don't often translate in an easy to transfer way.
In our case of Carrara, we can do what most other software offerings cannot - we can bring in Poser/Daz3d figures complete with morphs and rigging, etc., and in the case of Generation 4 (M4, V4, etc.,) and earlier figures, even the supplemental files, like Poses, MAT pose, smart prop, etc., also work as if we're in Poser or Daz Studio, which is immaculately handy.
However, the materials are never as expected, so we need to learn how to correct those early on in our learning Carrara phase (at least those of us that use it for that).
Displacement is a whole new ball game. Yes, we have displacement and it works great, but it adds a whole bunch of extra data deciphering that can REALLY bog down our system. It sounds strange to me to use Displacement as a means to fit the suit - especially on a Genesis figure, which has all of these amazing non-displacement ways to fit things to a character. But I'm sure there was a good reason for it.
Texturing can be a real bugger to learn. Especially on someone else's UVs.
I just grabbed this image from the web. It's a UV Template. You should be able to download a free template of that suit. The way I learned to texture models was to paint onto these templates.
But if that suit has difficult UVs to paint upon, why not try just doing your texture directly onto the main figure and not even use the suit? Just an idea.
I use Predatron's LoRez Masked Hero, which has very nice and easy UVs to paint onto. In that case I just open the actual texture and edit that - then save under a new name.
Further, I'm not sure how you're getting your figure into Carrara. Here's how I would do it for my first try:
Once that's done, your character should show up in Carrara's Content Library in the new folder you've just made.
Note that, if Carrara was running this whole time, when you go to your Content tab and get to the People > Characters part, you may have to go to the little icon on the far right of the browser, just above on the window, and Update Folder.
Well, I am getting closer to being done with this attempt at re-texturing Smay's SHS for Spider-Man. Still have some stuff that is nagging at me and I need to re-do all the seams from the original texture.
One of the things I would love to know how to do is morphy the socks to make them taller. Not sure if this is possible in Carrara. I think once time permits, I will be bringing a basic figure into Carrara and loading the pants item I am having trouble fitting to G2M. See if I can figure that out before trying to re-texture anything again.
Are the socks separate clothing, or part of the suit?
If they're part of the suit, it would be better to just lift them in the texture rather than a morph, in my opinion.
Looking Great, ny the way! ;)
The socks are technically boots. Seperate clothing piece that comes with Smay's SHS. The mask is JoeQuick's for M4 and actually on top of the mask that comes with SHS. I was able to hide the actual soles of the boots using opacity in the Surfaces. But they are actually a bit short compared to all official Spidey images I have seen. They should come up to his mid-calf. Another 2 or 3 webbing sections. I couldn't do any scaling to achieve that either.
The only other option is to texture the bottom calf of the Suit itself, but it is a serious pain to try and get that to line up, and on a close-up image you would see the top of the boot ending much shorter.
I assume that if I tried to import just these boots to Carrara, I would have same problem I am already having with displacement maps not working for SHS?
Another idea would be to use the ideas I was mentioning at the beginning of this thread - making clothing for Genesis.
*** Might not need to do that. Watch the video. Just adding the morph to the suit might be enough(?)
Then do the same with the boots and anything else you want. You'll get used to this quickly and marvel at the ease that owning Carrara has just given you regarding these sorts of Genesis tweaks!
Now, in the beginning minute of the video, he teaches us how to export the figure for use in the modeler. We can skip that since Carrara opens them directly from the library :)
Do note that he is demonstrating a morph for Genesis, but this is the same process for morphs for clothing too. Josh's YouTube channel has many videos that can help you tweak the results and get really good with making morphs for yourself or even to sell or share
I know this stuff can be a LOT to soak in.
Please be patient and read it all, watch it all, and expect that practice makes for better results. Here's the thing: you're coming in with a specific need/want, and the software has a LOT more to it than that narrow vision. So this specific task is fairly specialized. Is it something basic that Carrara can handle in conjunction with Daz Studio? Yes. Absolutely. Carrara and Daz Studio's CCTs (Content Creation Tools) can work together to amazing affect. But getting used to the new interface and features of a new software can temporarily mess with your head while immediately jumping into such a specific, specialized task... but it will become immensely easy for you as time goes on and you get experience doing it!
So if the modeling tools bring up questions... ask. This forum community (Carrara Discussion Forum) has several modelers who are almost always ready to help. It's all very standard, but then also has a lot of extra features. For what we're doing here, we just want to keep it simple with the basic vertex mesh manipulators. Soft selection with very specific selections along with symmetry should help to make this fairly straight-forward... but you'll see that practice will alway reveal better results in the end - but even some good basic tweaks in the beginning (before getting in much practice) can at least get the experience going to a point where the process itself becomes second-nature to you. Then you'll be jamming!
The boots will be a simple tweak. Symmetry may or may not work. But even if each boot is a separate figure, Carrara allows us to use that wrench icon and do our modeling directly in the workspace, so we can always have our other figures in the scene for reference - which just ROCKS!
Take your time, go through the whole process, expect the first time as a trial run - just to make it through the whole process. Don't worry yourself about turning out a masterpiece the first time - just do something small and simple to get your first morph made and installed onto the figure for future use - so it's there when the figure is loadd in from the library!!! You'll see... it's cool! It's Fun!
Also know that Daz3d has some nice tutorials available:
Daz Studio 4 CCTs
3D Figure Setup Tools
...and they also host this sweet video reel for Carrara
Natively, each of the following are possible for Genesis and Genesis 2 in Carrara.
- Make a full body morph for a figure to make skinnier, fatter, etc. Could be used on Genesis to make more muscular, like a superhero like Spiderman. Then add the FBM to genesis using Studio.
- Paint directly on model across uv seams as long as uvmaps are clean. Use the 3DPaint tool. Could be used to hand paint the spiderweb costume directly on Genesis after morphing the figure. Then export the painte map with different name. Load your saved maps for the Genesis shader.
- Model your own boots and cowl. Load in Studio and use transfer utility to make a conforming figure.
I used these techniques to make a Spaceghost figure. I modeled and UVMapped my own head cowl in Carrara. I used Studio's transfer utiity to make it conforming. I used Carrara's 3DPaint to texture the cowl. I did the same for Spaceghost's armbands, boots, and utility belt. I did NOT make a full body suit because can just retexture the figure directly for form-fitting clothig like a superhero.
See https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/747388/#Comment_747388
.Spaceghost and the twins
and Judy Jetson and the maid.
.