Carrara Workflow Additions? Modo and Mari and Mocha, Oh My!
Steve K
Posts: 3,234
My primary goal is short animations using Carrara with Poser Gen 4 characters (M4, V4, K4). Special FX are mostly Particle Illusion, sound and music Digital Juice, and video wtih Movie Edit pro including text efects and transitions. I won the following at Renderosity's Holiday Animation Contest 2017, and am wondring if anyone has sugestions on how it might fit in my workflow.
• 1 year subscription to Modo AND Mari
• iClone Pipeline Bundle
• Mocha VR one year subscription
• Texture Transformer (w/ Add-ons)
• Continuum one year subscription
• Strata 3D CX 7.6 Windows
My impression (with virtually no experience with any of these) is: Modo and Mari are subscription only - something I avoid. Mocha VR is for VR (har), not something I do. Strata 3D seems to be for Photoshop gurus who want to expand (a little) into 3d - it has (limited?) animation features. Texture Transformer V.2 and add-ons covers a LOT of characters - V4 and M4 plus Roxie, Dusk, G2F, G2M, Paul, Pauline, G3M, G3F - but I'm not sure I need the characters or the texture transfers. iClone Pipeline bundle "brings 3D assets and animations in and out of iClone, and to other 3D applications or game engines", but neither Poser nor Carrara is on the list. I'm not sure what "Continuum" is.
Any comments appreciated.
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Comments
I'm not sophisticated enough to make a recommendation, but congratulations on the contest results!
Thanks. Renderosity does have some nice prizes, I've still got some from a previous contest that I have yet to install - Smith Micro programs like Motion Artist, MOHO, Clip Studio Paint Pro, ... the problem is so many toys, so little time. I also have Carrara tutorials from DAZ by PhilW that I've only partly finished. And of course I keep getting distracted by doing animations in Carrara.
I should have mentioned above that I am not a modeller, using purchased items from real modellers like Stonemason, Coflek-Gnorg, etc., etc. So programs like Modo (a highly regarded spinoff from Lightwave I think), are impressive but beyond my interest/ability/available time. I want to make the movie, not build the props/sets/characters. As the British actors used to say, "Let the wings do the work" (sets, makeup, costumes), just know your lines.
Wow
Modo is a modeler, animator, UV map amazing freaking suite. It's working its way up the chain to reside at the top of the 3d food chain. If you like modeling, even simple things, you might want to try (or at least look into) Modo's procedural modeling. Is it Modo you got or Modo Indie? Both are fabulous, just Indie is only available through Steam and is a taste of the latest and greatest.
Mari is the 3D painter by the same folks that make Modo
Texture Transformer helps us to convert textures from one figure's uv mapping to another. So if you have textures for figures you don't use, you can try your hand at converting them to a figure you do use. It's Textures and their UVs that make Genesis 1 so beneficial to me - I can load in Genesis Base Female (for V4's UVs) and set the shaders up with one of the cool V4 Male texture sets, and then change Genesis' shape to a male figure, for example. But there are those Creature Maps for M4 and/or V4, etc., that can be loaded onto the appropriate character preset, then just change the shape. Well with Texture Transform, you can do this stuff without needing Genesis - just change the texture maps to fit the other figure!
Mocha is a killer motion tracker software, so if you have motion footage, Mocha will allow you to lock onto a space within that movie mess and place a point on it that we can attach something (anything) to. For example, we can put a rocking chair in the middle of a busy street that has been filmed with a hand-help camera. Another example is that you could attach your particles to a specific part in the scenery even if the video is moving around. Easier to explain by showing. Watch some YouTube on Mocha tracking. I'm sure that the VR allows us to do the same within equirectangular panoramic video for VR use.
iClone Pipeline Bundle!!! You don't need that. Give it to me!!! LOL Pipeline is one of the more robust packages they offer, which includes (but not limited to) all of the plugins and stuff we'd need to very easily import Daz3d figures, including the Genesis figures, into iClone, which is a ridiculously fast animation software with built-in motion maker utilities, character builders, light props that light the scene - complete with animated properties like "broken", which makes the buld (and resulting illumination) blink intermittently, etc., It has dynamics that works on cloth and hair, physics that works on everything, helpers for switching cameras during the same render, switching whether something is parented (catch and release a ball, for example)... it's really cool. If you got the spanking new iClone 7, it also has some of the more amazing mocap features too. Either way, no matter which version you won, it's a real treat! Look up the version you have on Reallusion's YouTube channel and watch some of their excellent tutorials.
I agree. I like to think of the fine artists at Renderosity and Daz3d as my assets team - and I only have to pay them some little something when they make something that fits into my project - or that I might think might fit somehow, some day.
Modo is getting rave reviews that they're (The Foundry) making it much more convenient and fast for folks doing the work. Pro animators and modelers. I think it also has amazing particles and other pro FX features. I'd certainly poke around The Foundry's YouTube channel for clues as to how either Modo or Mari might fit into your workflow while you have that subscription. It would be a great way to find out if you might enjoy expanding your skills into other areas with some of the fastest growing tools (developmental wise) on the market.
I do enjoy modeling, even though I usually only do quick and simple things.
Congrats on the win!
Modo is available to buy outright (about $1800). Comes with a year of updates. The subscription is worth $600 a year (ie $50 a month). Dunno about Mari, since I don't use it.
Even when I'm modelling in Carrara, I'll often punt things across to Modo for its better UV mapper. (When you reimport to Carrara, the scale you want in the import dialog is 39.37)
Hi Steve!
I think that "Continuum" is "Boris Continuum Complete (BCC), I have it as plugin to use in After Effects and Premiere, I don't know if it is availlable for other applications or as stand-alone but it's a very good bundle of FX.
Dartanback - Many thanks. I don't know which Modo I get, I haven't heard from them yet. I used to have Lightwave but switched to Carrara primarily because of the seamless Poser support. I have received download links from from iClone and it sounds like I should dig in.
TangoAlpha - Thanks. I have heard glowing praise from others (including Dartanbeck above :-) about Modo, good to know its available for purchase. Sounds reasonable compared to, say, Maya at $1500 per year. I just don't use any program enough to justify subscription (except Carrara which is paid for), even Photoshop (glad I have CS5 all paid for). I occasionally think I'll get into modelling, then realize its easier and cheaper to just buy models from real modelers like you. Especially modelers who provide Carrara format, like you.
DUDU - right. "Continuum is available for Adobe, Avid, and OFX hosts (including Resolve, Vegas, and Nuke) ... Continuum features range from Image Restoration, to Extruded Text, titling and 3D Objects, to Chromakey and Compositing, Particles, and Image Stabilization." Apparently not for my video editor Movie Edit Pro. I *think* I can do most of it with Particle Illusion and the effects avaialble in MEP and its plugins.
Steve, just wanted to say congratulations on the win! I wouldn't know what to do with all of that software. Carrara boggles me enough.
Thanks. I agree about Carrara, there are still features that I have not fully explored. Jumping onto a new program learning curve will take something really appealing.
Steve, congratulations on the win! That's awesome :) I don't know what half of those apps do to be honest, in fact I hadn't ever heard of some of them (Mocha VR sounds intriguing, maybe it's a way to turn a Carrara animation into a VR experience? Would be fun to make a VR rollercoaster 'ride' in Carrara). I keep hearing how great Modo is as a modeler, I'm pretty sure that that's going to be a solid asset for you, though I agree that it's a shame it's a subscription and not a full version ownership.
I was gearing up to buy Lightwave and try to figure out how to get it to work with my Poser workflow. I needed modeling capabilities, but I don't want to have to Model/UV/Texture/Rig everything I use - not even close! I really liked the Poser paradigm. Before I saved up enough (something I didn't even realize Rosie was doing for me) to buy it I found out about Carrara 5 Pro from a guy in a hospital waiting room. What a find! Thinking there had to be a catch - how easily it was working with Poser (Daz3d's Gen 2 and 3 figures he was using) I looked it up online only to find it not at a place called Eovia, but a place I already really liked, Daz3d! Carrara 6 promo pages were like a Christmas catalog to a kid! Pages of pictures with text about features and functions and many ways to use the software... I loved those old promo pages! I poured over and into them - but kept going back to the "Native Poser Formats" portion to find a flaw in the system. I finally joined the forum (first forum for me - ever - and still one of the very few I've ever joined) and found real evidence of Carrara kicking butt!!! It's still my favorite reason to touch a computer.
Yes, you should... I think. They probably also sent you a cool welcome page with videos and tutorials and such. Man... check it out!!!
I recently got iClone 6 Standard for free during a special giveaway, not the free trial. I'm embarrassed to say that I still haven't tried it out. I know it's awesome and have watched many tutorials so I think I could just sit down and play with it. But I'm all into Carrara of I can find the time to sit at That computer - the one that can run all that stuff.
I would rather have iClone Pipeline than any of the other stuff, even though I'd love to have Modo and Mari - not for a year... I need stuff I can keep - non time-limited.
When I think about buying Silo because Silo users love it so much, then I look at Modo or even Lightwave, I drool and want them. But iClone actually plays to my workflow better, except the Standard edition that I have won't (I think) allow me to use my Generation 4 figures, nor does it have the character designer parts. Still I would love to use it to make motion background footage - cool scenes with a motion camera full of dynamic elements and even some physics. iClone can give us realtime visual feedback as we create this stuff and, according to watching the videos, it's really good at it and fast.
So if I think about the fact that I have yet to play with iClone 6 tells me that I'd likely never open Silo or Modo or maybe even Mari - though I do like the idea of painting on mesh like that, when I do it in Carrara, I only basically "Jot down Notes" on the mesh, and then finish the texture in Howler. Howler was a different thing. I really took to getting into that with a passion. I consider it part of Carrara, kinda. The Howler Rooms!
Thanks, Jon. Note from TangoAlpha above: "Modo is available to buy outright (about $1800). Comes with a year of updates." Really not a bad price, given the rave reviews of Modo, and considering that Maya costs almost that much each year.
...and don't forget to at least take a look at Silo. If all you want is a modeler (also capable of UV Mapping), Silo delivers that without all of the rest of the stuff, making it a pretty darned nice modeling interface. It has really nice tools that many modelers crave.
Modo and Lightwave are huge, like Carrara. They can rig, animate, blast particles around, blow buildings apart... it's like higher-end Carrara without the ability to (at least easily and completely) bring in fully functional Poser and Daz rigged figures. That last bit is what always brings me back to never wanting to (ever) leave Carrara.
But modeling and UV Mapping, even 3D Paint and certain other things, can be frustrating, I'm sure, in Carrara due to it not being able to give very "Live" feedback - we almost have to guess and test. That's where, if we like, we can step into another app to help feel more relaxed and confident in that area of interest.
Like modeling: Modo is an amazing suite of modeling tools wich also has everything else under its hood, like Maya - kinda. If that fast-paced and constant development isn't as important to you, then Lightwave is very competitive in mostly all of those same fields at half the price. If modeling is all you're looking for, and would rather leave everything else to Carrara, Silo is often a tenth of that price for a rubust modeler that is only a modeler. Hexagon is free. I'm still waiting to get enough (free) time to play with Hexagon's modeling tools beyond just a few tweaks to make temporary morphs to be fine-tuned in Carrara.
That's my big problem with getting another modeler... I've become quite used to (and enjoy using) Carrara's Vertex Modeler, and I still have a whole Spline modeler to play with (but haven't yet aside from watching tutorials).
hexagon + daz studio + carrara + octane can rival with modo and lightwave in many fields; mari looks great but if you own photoshop I would try 3dcoat as an alternative, it works great with ps
Still, if one is interested in painting directly onto 3d models, I would try Mari while it's free for a year. The Foundry makes some of the industry top-dog stuff, like Nuke - and Hex is (at least currently) a very far stretch from rivalling Modo or LW! My opinions :)
well, in modo: animation is still weak, NLA is absent or useless if I recall, rigging is elementary, the render engine is very good but it's a pain if you have huge scenes and a lot of instances, even with the GPU addition, weightmapping is worst than DS, generally speaking character animation is unfriendly to me (tested modo 10)
about lightwave dunno much about v.2018 gonna give it a try and then give my judgement
Those are very key items to me, some of the primary reasons I use Carrara (just behind seamless Poser format support). And based on posts I've seen here and elsewhere, Daz Studio is weak in these areas compared to Carrara. Just to mention it, it took me a long time to explore NLA in Carrara, I'm sure glad I finally did.
Hello Steve,
I just finished to test LW 2018, at a very first glance is a little disappointing: modeling needs addons provided by a third party, good but hexagon seems more suitable for that, animation looks one of the most complete ever seen but I'm not an animator so I invite you to try yourself, as for the materials a BSDF editor has been included but the one from blender/cycles looks better and faster (and with eevee will be unbeatable); lighting and rendering are physically based but are very very basic, fortunately octane in LW looks superb, better than in carrara; hair, physics and vfx looks good but never tried so far; for the same price I would buy houdini + redshift; that said, I would report the new release of Clarisse 3.6 with this good news among others:
Thanks. As I recall PoserFusion allows export of Poser animation to Lightwave, but the animation has to be done in Poser. With my very large collection of Poser format content, I am pretty much committed to that method of animation. AFAIK, Carrara is the only program that seamlessly supports Poser format based animation (no PoserFusion required), other than Poser itself which is not as capable. As Dartanbeck suggested, I have installed iClone 7 Animation Pipeline and dabbled only a little. I need to investigate some tutorials, but my first impression is that it is closer to Poser than to Carrara. Some very impressive demo animations, though ....
As an aside, I have been thinking that DAZ has not added much new Poser format content for some time (I've had no luck with DS/DUF content in Carrara). But in the last day or two I've found many very nice Poser format items that are new to me (David Brinnen/ForbiddenWhispers, Petipet, Anima Gemini/RuntimeDNA, etc.). And of course the "other" site has many new Poser items routinely, and TangoAlpha here at DAZ is producing some great Carrara format products (!). So as far as Carrara animation with Poser content, things are looking up. And of course I am very comfortable with Carrara's interface and features, so a new learning curve is not very attractive.
See? The more (and more) I see of comments like these, I am just never in a mood to use anything but Carrara. iClone looks really cool, but they want us to buy all new stuff from an entirely different store - unless, of course, we have and use Pipeline. That's the one of all of them that I wouldn't mind giving a test run - again... if I had Pipeline, which is not cheap, but not too crazy expensive either.
Already owning Carrara leaves me in a great situation, however, because I really, Really like it.
Along with that, Steve, I really like what You do with it, too!
I'm not chasing the uncanny valley to trick viewers into wondering if it's real... I want them to know right from the start that it's not.
Carrara, once it gained the ability to so easily work with the Poser-style figure system, became the number one choice for me. Like you, I'm not interested in making all of my own content. Once I got used to using it, I found that it's even better for my needs than I thought then. Loading avi files as textures, the animated ocean primitive (well, I knew about that one, which was one reason I wanted Pro) - I wasn't expecting to use the terrain tools or realistic sky and atmosphere or actually most of Carrara's amazing features. As the members of this forum started introducing them to me, along with just seeing them in action in PhilW's videos, I did myself the favor of incorporating them. So much easier to use than the panorama sky globes I loved so much then.
The thing is, this thread was about the cool stuff you've won.
Modo and Mari are amazing, high-end suites that deserve a good look, if interested.
When I saw this, I never thought of Modo as being sheepish toward animation
I like this too, and there are more at This Playlist
I really like this iClone 6 tutorial I mentioned earlier about swapping cameras within the same render
Cool stuff about lighting in iClone
SpeedTrees are cool!
Soft dynamic cloth made easy?
Yes, a pretty amazing load of prizes. I actually entered the contest just to goad myself into doing an animation, as I have in years past. I didn't pay much attention to the prize list, mostly because I wasn't familiar with any of the titles and the odds of winning are not high. Now I'm kind of overwhelmed, with stuff arriving by the bushel. I've downloaded many GB from Texture Transformer, Strata3D and iClone, with Mocha next. And apparently Modo and Mari are in the mail. I'm currently trying to figure out how to use Boris Continuum ($700!), a plugin for video editors. After much searching I *think* it now supports the "Open FX" standard (OFX - something I never heard of until now). And I *think* the latest version of my video editor, Magix Movie Edit Pro, also supports OFX. So I'm hoping that wih an affordable upgrade, it's all copacetic ...
Hopefully I'll get back to animating in Carrara soon, I've got some new models (and some old, so far unused) that are story inspiring ...
Sweet!
While my head spins on, I do find encouraging tidbits like this: "Mocha VR includes all of Mocha Pro’s features for non-360 projects." Then I realize I'm not sure if I can use any of those "tracking" features either. Remember the apes in "2001: A Space Odyssey", with their bone tools turning into space stations? When I watch the tutorials, like "new features in version 3,413", I feel like the little guy in the Pixar short "Lifted":
The big guy goes a little too fast.
LOL! Cute! ...and I know what you mean!
Trying to push forward with my new VFX/compositing education while also trying to learn new music apps for my drums, with all other life issues swirling around in the foreground of it all... Yikes! Hi, little guy... I know how you feel!!! :)
Speaking of inspirational tidbits, Garstor just sent me this - animated in Lightwave, but modeled and rendered in Modo (6 years ago) and composited in Affer Effects
Ruins short film on Vimeo
I'm getting good results with the tracking software I already have, but if I ever get HitFilm Pro or the paid version of Fusion, I'll be very happy to acquire the better ones. HitFilm Pro comes with Mocha for HitFilm.
Here's the exciting part about Mocha that I love. using this, we can do a lot with making simpler, faster renders and enhancing them in post either with effects built in to our composite software, or with rendered elements we make separately, stock footage, etc.,
Without having to watch a lengthy "How To", this very short teaser (it's old but makes the point) shows very quickly how tracking camera solves (Mocha, in this case) can really help us to enhance our final work
Pretty impressive. Some of that reminds me of Particle Illusion, which can do more than particles, e.g. logos, all as a post effect on any still or video.