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works for me :-)
I might be coming to this discussion a little late, but someone mentioned using a unique feature of Carrara, and I am always amazed how little replicators / surface replicatirs get used in people's images. How about using that as a theme?
Great idea Phil!
What surprises me is the limited use they get. People forget that you can use the surface replicator to replicate objects on surfaces other than terrains, and you don't have to replicate just grass and trees!
Here's a recent Surface Replicator animation I did - https://vimeo.com/62060170 (When I saw Fenric's plug-in for unlocking the Teapot Primitive, I was compelled to animate a Cow being covered with teapots!)
And I used a replicator for Heart Of The Magic Forest (an abstract entry in the Garden challenge) - http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/23635/P15/#353481
So yeah, I like and use replicators often.
They are indeed good for more than just terrain related stuffs.
you could even burn it onto a DVD, stamp a cover and print out the manual!
Hya Wendy, yes I have accidently printed the manual twice _ I would post you my second copy but it would be a zillion dollars in stamps :)
Still it's down hill from my place to yours, maybe the post office could consider that? ;)
Heh, Dartanbeck probably makes them in his garage :) After a hard night drumming mind you!
Never too late PhilW, you always have concepts that are worth while paying attention to thankyou.
wonderful video, :) how did you get the random arrangement of teapots at the beginning .... let me guess, you had two cows in the scene, the same size, you replicated the teapots on one cow and then made it invisible, then you expanded the invisible cow at frame 1 and bought it back down to the original size for the last frame, but that doesn't explain the movement of the teapots - but that would give a linear movement,
(I guess you could also animate the teapots hotspot, )
so did you animate a parameter in the replicator, can you even do that - note to self steal Socrateese' idea :) ?
Nothing complicated.
I just started with the teapots all replicated on the Cow, then used physics and a spinning linear force to blow them off.
The trick was in running the frames backward for compiling into a video.
I meant plugins that extend Carrara's capability rather than software such as "Luxus' which just reworks something - you know any of the inagoni, dcg, or fenric's except of course some users may not view that as a "level field" . On the other hand it could introduce people to Carrara's extended capabilities and inspire them to try out themselves
Yes, that is very important. It must be a level playing field.
Post processing takes things ouside of carrara which may "cloud " what has been achieved in Carrara itself which rather takes away the idea of "showcasing " Carrara and as I for one am hopeless with photoshopping it impinges on the "level playing field too - moan and gripe"
I believe many wonderful things can be achieved with Carrara without PP so I reckon that's what this should be about.
Experimentation produces some awsome things and as the man said " Ask not what Carrara can do for you but what can YOU do with Carrara ?" ( yes I think some other forum member used that once - but its very apt.)
I think to showcase Carrara we have to try something Unique.
As to what that UNIQUE THING is, I have no idea. (yet)
I'm sure ideas will flow when the ground rules are set
excuse me - I must get on with drinking my beer
thanks, I never use physics I obviously should!
Ooseven wrotith
Yes you are right of course. It just depends on what you are looking for in the finished product. It's been a few years since I tried to do everything with one piece of software - to me it's like trying to buid a house with a very good screwdriver as your only tool. You can do it all with the screwdriver but it might take just a little longer, and not give you exactly the results you envisaged in the end.
But I understand where you are coming from exactly, having had that same viewpoint in the past (with anim8or at the time)
Since the rules are fluid based on who is saddled with- ummm- hosting the challenge, I'm sure at some point that no postwork will be a rule. I certainly have no problem with that, with the sole exception of animations. My system is older, so I tend to render in layers and composite in my video editor. If there were an animation challenge with no postwork, I'd have to bow out.
Heh :) Yes it's been a little work but a lot of fun :) I am glad I will not win again though! I hope being a Host hasn't put people off though.
I am quite happy to help out the next Host.
I've also had a kind offer from a Daz PA to help out if things go askew - which is very kind of them.
Rendering 2 minutes of animation ( let alone 5 or more ) in Carrara would take ages and bog down a lot of systems. So i would regard it as normal to make several short avi files in carrara and marry them in a video editor - whether it should be allowed to add more effects may be the issue.
So what about Two Challenges ?
One for stills and one for animation - I think the complexities of animaton ( especially character ) set it apart deserving of it's own challenge and ground rules..
And speaking of animation... Sockratease, that teapot animation is really cool!
I definitely use a video editor (mostly just virtualdub) as I render image series, most of the time my Carrara will not actually render a usable avi anyway, my codecs work in EVERY other software so it is a Carrara issue and length related, short avi's do work.
What kind of length Wendy? Also, do they include the sound files you use?
I add the sound file again in vdub, sometimes I render a crappy 1x1 pix video and save the .wav and add that
my carrara videos render with sound but tend to have weird issues like inverted colours and scanlines jumbled if more than about 30 secs or slow renders and I get too many that crash and cannot be salvaged esp if over 4GB on a FAT drive!, image files I can continue on.
as I said, it is a size issue mostly
Maybe Wendy means Carrara will not render a compressed file ? I dont think it works for me when I select "xvid" from the drop down box at save time . A raw avi file is too big to be useful in the sense of uploading to the web. Sound files aren't normally that big so shouldn't be an issue included or not.
I save video and audio as uncompressed avi no problem . Then again I dont attempt anything more than about 30 secs.
OR do you mean you cant save as AVI at all so have save as an image series - jpg or whatever ?
But here we go - as I said, Animation is whole different box of "considerations" worthy of it's own challenge don't you think ??
With long videos, image sequences are the way to go. I even doubled the length of a render without having to re-time keyframes or anything by simply setting Carrara to render an image sequence at 60 fps (the maximum) and then compiling them at 30 fps.
Absolutely. It's one of those areas I want to spend more time in, but just don't have the time to do it.
You mean there can be other options for AVI other than uncompressed, Microsoft Video 1 or Intel?
I've been rendering my movies as AVI uncompressed, then using a free external converter to compress to H.264. Unless I'm going to Adobe Premiere when I have to use Intel compression as it wont read uncompressed properly. The Microsoft Video 1 leaves too many artifacts on the video.
uncompressed is always my avi choice but as I said if more than a few seconds they corrupt quite frequently and I do not want to chance it
the temp folder is particulary dodgy too so I render to desktop if I use avi at all.
seems file size is the factor here
the temp folder does not like too much in it.
even image series will lose earlier frames after a point
I render as many images as I wish to an external drive no problems
You mean there can be other options for AVI other than uncompressed, Microsoft Video 1 or Intel?
I've been rendering my movies as AVI uncompressed, then using a free external converter to compress to H.264. Unless I'm going to Adobe Premiere when I have to use Intel compression as it wont read uncompressed properly. The Microsoft Video 1 leaves too many artifacts on the video.
Well Ib guess this all gone off topic but I'll just make a last comment.
The final window in my save (video) process lists the options you mention plus xvid and ffdshow. Now I dont know if these are coded into carrara or whether it has picked up something from the codecs I have installed. There are quite a lot odf settings in the configure options for them and I admit to not understanding most of it. But changing anything seems to bring up an error " unable to decode" when I continue with the save. Not sure how well this is covered in the manual( probably not) However like you, I just save uncomressed, use video editor to compile takes then save out whatever format I want - usually mpg4 .I'm not sure why Wendy has issues - are you running out of ram perhaps?
never off topic when you are helping someone or getting helped ;)