Tips for a Carrara "Starter pack"?
3drendero
Posts: 2,024
Time to buy carrara, on sale this weekend even.
Do you guys have any suggestions for what to get besides carrara?
Sort of a starter pack with plugins, content, training...
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I guess it depends on your experience with 3D. As a newbie / hobbyist with this, I found PhilW's training for Carrara at Infinite Skills to be a worthy inclusion; it got me up to speed quickly.
If it is content you want...any models by Jack Tomalin are worth it; as are scenes by Howie Farkes. For outdoors scenes, I've bought most of Lisa's Botanicals and quite a few other trees (Predatron comes to mind there).
Then of course there are the tons of stuff for V4/M4...far too much to list there.
Thanks, looking for carrara specific items now, training is definately on top, philw sounds good.
Vectorstyle 2 looks like a handy plugin
Carracters delphinia and v4 elite texture marie are shipping with carrara shaders, a good thing I guess.
Looking into the other tips, thanx again.
Stuff by Mike Moir (mmoir) is always useful, because there's a tutorial with it which explains why and how he did it.
Delphinia is of course useful, too, but I don't like video tutorials.
Tim Payne is great with his PDF, too.
Okay, I just get the impression I will fail to mention all those helpful vendors with more than just a product but helpful with tutorials. And not to mention the ones with only the product, where seperating all the single objects will teach you a lot about what Carrara is capable off.
So my suggestion: buy - at least - ONE piece of every Carrara-only vendor. (And "Studio Paris" by Age of Armour. That's only one special mention, because he's not Carrara-only. :) )
Dartanbeck's Starry Sky is Carrara specific and wonderful for doing night or space scenes.
PhilW also has Cloud Domes and his newest Realistic Seas and both are Carrara specific.
HI 3drendero
Welcome :)
Much depends on what you want to do, and if you want to do it all right away.
Carrara has a great set of tools and features built into it, so, I would explore those first. then figure out what you need / want
Download Sparrowhawke3D's plugins, (they're free) and great :)
Look at Dimension Theory and Tim Payne's skys, and other stuff.
Fenric's plugins
The Animate Importer plugin
Mimic for Carrara..
Ask questions here.
Hope it helps :)
I've bought a lot of Ringo Monfort's shaders and have enjoyed them very much.
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/ecomantics-efficient-ecosystems/
very quick rendering vegetation
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/posing-pack-3/
for tree duplicator
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/an-english-village/
great environment
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/carrara-skies-lightdomes-1/
wonderful lighting
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/carrara-skies-bundle/
Check out this little article I wrote a while back, listing some of the excellent and affordable 3rd party plugins:
http://www.3d.wetcircuit.com/editorials/essential-plugins-for-carrara/
A huge amount of pleasure I get from Carrara is in the shaders, so I recommend checking out the plugins from digitalcarversguild.com that add shader functions, especially ShaderOps. I also recommend Veloute2 from inagoni.com for organic noise (now half price, I think). These 2 plugins I use again and again in every scene.
that's good stuff Holly thanks for that
Thanx for all the tips.
To explain myself a bit more, the plan is to buy C8Pro now and use the 30% off for new users at Daz to get some content for both learning and building a library of ready to use or modify scenes and objects. The plan is to render stills, realistic and illustrations, of people with objects for exampl cars. Maybe some short, simple animations too. The best part for me about daz studio and carrara is the head start you get with the ready made content. I consider myself to be a rookie, though I am a pro at mechanical CAD software.
I like Franks idea of getting one item per reseller, Daz should have made this type of starter pack a long time ago, like the do with V5 and M5.
I will look into all the details and share my list for a starter pack, maybe it will help others too.
Thanx again for all your valuable input.
NOT one word on that site about AGOOS!
In my opinion if I had enough money for only ONE plug in its ANYTHING GOOS form DCG!
Thank you for pointing out the importance of AGoo, it is mentioned on page 2 of the article.
Thank you for pointing out the importance of AGoo, it is mentioned on page 2 of the article.
Thanks for reading... ;-)
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Based on what you say you want to render, I suggest you check out the LoRez series of people. They are very efficient models and look good as generic people (when the people are less important than the other objects in the scene) and great in crowds or as secondary people. These models come with a lot of options and are light on resources.
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/catalogsearch/result/?q=lorez&x=0&y=0
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Also, if you are new to DAZ, there are a few annual sales where the prices drop to 50%, so keep a wish list and don't get too hyped on buying a lot all at once. Most of us have a "collection" with items we've never even opened.... Basically anything that works in POSER will work the same in Carrara with a few exceptions (shaders usually must be tweaked, and Poser dynamic hair/clothes do not work in Carrara).
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Carrara also comes with the main figures (I think C8.1 comes with V4 and M4, plus clothes and hair props), so get Carrara first and then check what's in your downloads before you buy more...
For training you might want to pick up old the Carrara 5 Pro Handbook, by Mike de la Flour. Make sure you get one with the CD if you buy a used copy as the CD has files you'll need on it.
While it is for an older version of Carrara it does have some very good modeling tutorials in it and does cover many things in it.
If you look on Amazon they have a review that tells you what each chapter covers.