An Entire City For $210 - Works In Carrara (I think)
Steve K
Posts: 3,226
Renderosity is selling the Poser product "Movie Sets, City Block ____" (blocks one thru thirteen) as a bundle for $210 (40% discount). It also includes the "Movie Sets 81 City Blocks" as a kind of overall layout to fit the rest. I emailed the vendor to ask about Carrara compatibility, he didn't know. So I bought another of his products, "Movie Sets, Car Patio" (not included in the bundle - "Thrift, Horatio"), and it works fine in Carrara. The bundle is available through 30May, I'm pretty tempted. Anybody else used this in Carrara?
Renderostiy_Car_patio_-_F4_Shot_For_Summers_Last_Day.jpg
720 x 480 - 187K
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Comments
I've got 1 of the city blocks (Block 10) and it's pretty cool.
I haven't done much with it. I just started on a picture and never finished.
I've considered getting some of the other blocks but not the whole shebang.
For that full city feeling, I got Urban Sprawl 2, which is pretty cool, too.
They render very well in Carrara with minimal shader adjustment
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2222912&user_id=654859&np;&np;
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2238676&user_id=654859&np;&np;
Of course I bought the blocks gradually as each went on sale, so I didn't feel the pain of the cost.
Wow, I must have spent that much.
Holy cow, what a deal! I've been drooling over his work for quite some time now. He has plenty of amazing products.
So far I've been purchasing scenery made for Poser without fear of it working in Carrara. Is gthis going to changenow with the new Poser? Are they changing formats or something?
I bought the entire 2260 set of starship interiors from 3-D-C over there, and they feel as if they were created for use in Carrara- but they weren't. I do still have to add the glow maps where those are called or - but I've become accustomed to just running through all shaders, when I first buy a product - set them up to what I consider a great default set for Carrara - then save the whole thing to my browser. I use the compression setting in Carrara - which seems to work beautifully at keeping my storage at a minimum, while not taking too long to save and load.
If I can beg for yet another toy by the thirtieth, this bundle will certainly enter my workstation!
Oh, and Steve...
I like your render!
I have to get that droid! He is just too cool standing there all numb! Reminds me of me, right now! LOL
Seriously... did that scene come with the trees too? Looks cool!
It is a nice render. The set looks nice. It's a bit rich for my blood at the moment. Of course a bleeding turnip has more going for it at the moment than I do. ;-)
How about a link to the BUNDLE! I'm not finding it even in the sales section.
It's the third bundle from the bottom!
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/product_bundle_list.php
Thanks, RP, that's the answer I was looking for (and the renders support it).
I agree with ThePencilNeck that the Urban Sprawl series is great, but this set seems to extend into the burbs. I'm a sucker for city settings, part of my addiction to the GTA games.
Dartanbeck - I agree most Poser content works OK in Carrara, but I have had problems. The "Skull Cove" island works after some fiddling with the texture mapping, but the buildings don't load with the textures for some reason (not a big problem to me since I use the Ant Farm's "Never" buildings anyway). I also run through the Poser items textures in Carrara - changing all the "Shininess" to "None", copying the texture maps to the "Glow" channel for lighted signs, etc. I don't recall using Carrara's compression, this doesn't happen automatically? Thanks on the render - the trees are "billboards" that come with FirstBastion's "The Neighbor's Yard", now permanently in my Carrara browser (there is another with "bungalows", the only ones I've found so far) The droid is the Ant Farm's "Rock Golem", just thrown in tongue-in-cheek - he was not actually on the "set" of our 48HFP video.
Lindsey - Thanks for the link, I didn't know Renderosity had a "Bundle" page.
- Steve K.
In Renderosity, I have a pretty full wishlist (including all of the Dreamland Movie Set stuff). Whenever anything in my wishlist goes on sale or gets bundled, I get an e-mail.
DAZ used to do that (at least when things went on sale) but the new website doesn't send out those notifications anymore.
Anyway, if you haven't gotten that set up, you should look into it.
Hi Dartanbeck :)
yes and no,. Poser 9 onward has a different Weight mapping,, so there are issues using New Poser figures in anything except the new poser versions.
This only effects figures as far as I know,.
The basic format for Geometry (OBJ) and texture maps (JPG) remain the same,. so where "Props" are concerned,. Carrara, or any other program which can work with OBJ and JPG files, should have no problems.
If the materials don't load on a Prop,. it can be because "that's the way it was saved", or there's a function being used in the Poser shader which Carrara cannot convert,. either way, you can load he texture maps onto the object, then save your Carrara shader to the browser for use later.
so, no issues with props set's etc,. but some issues with Poser's figures and their weight mapping.
For city stuff,. you may also want to check out www.videocopilot.net
http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/metro_city/
check out the video for the Metropolis City Pack
These are models in OBJ format,. intended to be used in the Element 3D plug-in for After Effects,. but they could be used in any program that works with OBJ
Element 3D is also worth getting if you already have AE.
Thanks to the feedback here, I concluded the "Movie Sets, 13 City Blocks" bundle wouild work OK in Carrara. So I got it. A couple of test renders attached, okay for first tries. The bundle includes a lo poly block for distant backgrounds, a sky dome which I used in the longer shot, and a "block mover" which I'm not sure is needed in Carrara (it seems to overcome some layout limit in Poser allowing only 9 blocks instead of the 81 laid out in the bundle "plot plan" ... or something ... I just turned off the limits and moved the blocks anywhere). The sale runs thru 30 May, so last call. Thanks to all for the feedback.
Anyways, most non Daz stuff I've picked up so far are just buildings, scenery and starships. I'll dig pretty deep if I ever look to getting a Character figure or the like.
Thanks 3dage!
Steve K,
Bummer. I'll be missing this sale. But that doesn't mean that I won't b e joining your club later - sale or no
Say, I can't help but notice the trees in your top render. Just as an FYI, Dimension Theory has a Carrara/DS/Poser product at Daz that can expand the look of those trees either in that, or any any other scene. It's called Ecomantics - Efficient Ecosystems. I love it. Very versatile and renders faster than fast!
Right, the "Forest" is just a large group of pairs of two perpendicular planes with a tree picture. Its intended to be way in the background, I just threw it in as a test. I do own the Ecomantics product, and its on the list of purchases I should really try to use ... a long list, in the category of "He Who Dies With The Most Toys Wins". As I'm sure you realize, the point of the renders was just to show that the product works in Carrara.
I'm guessing that you'll love how easy it is to work with - as well, I have a feeling that you'll like how well it will work in with what you've picked up here. Yeah... I knew what your shot was about - and appreciate you showing it with the camera backed off like that.
After you've had these for long enough to play with a bit, I hope you come back and report how you like them. Such a great deal! From what it looks like from the ads, and from your shots, there is a good amount of detail in each set. I'm excited for you! Bravo!
I'm hoping the Ecomantics product is easy/fast ... I like Howie Farkes Carrara landscapes, but fast rendering is not their long suit. More like backgrounds for shadow catchers.
Yes, the Movie Sets City Blocks seems to offer plenty of detail, albeit no moving parts (doors, windows). The render time is reasonable, but still a background/shadow catcher might be needed, at least for the 48 Hour film contest.
But way better than trying to get game footage from Rockstar's "L.A. Noire" ... these game programmers seem to insist on keeping their characters in the scenes ...
B-{
Ecomantics is very fast, very worthwile.
With the grass a good hint is to duplicate it and rotate it slightly and will look thicker
Oh yeah! Ecomantics is developed to be like lightning. It's a cool set of billboard-style untis of all various dimensions needed to create a super-fast rendering background. It's very much like having a background map construction kit for the horizon line.
I bet those MovieSet kits would be great for:
Put together a reasonably close background scene - yet withing the scope of the immediate surroundings.
Behind that, just to fill in gaps, use those trees and/or Ecomantics or similar fast BG solutions.
Either use Realistic Sky or a background image sky. If the latter is the case, you may not need to even perform step two, above.
Render a background image of the scene with a spherical camera for use in many scenes.