Carrara 9 feature request

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  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,543
    edited December 1969

    Very nice presentation of a very fine tool! :)

  • IamArtistXIamArtistX Posts: 119
    edited December 1969

    Poser weight map support would be nice ;-)

  • MysticWingsMysticWings Posts: 226
    edited December 1969

    Tim_A said:
    "An error occurred while executing a save" - Fix it!!! >:(

    OK, this is really urgent... especially when the saving takes like 10 minutes so that in the end give this message.

    Also... in my case carrara is always "closing unexpectedly" if I double click in something as a way to insert on the scene, or if I try to open a file from double clicking it or using the menu (always have to drag the file to carrara).

    And really important - better way to do UV's... I don't ask for to much, just one option that really keeps proportions (kind of atlas uv map). Carrara always stretch the maps... Is a time waste... Of course there are complicated situations, but there are simple ones to.

    I would say some more things... but I already read all of this things around the thread, and also things I don't know what they are yet...

    And I have to say, I agree with the person who said we should calm down and let them finnish carrara 8 instead of making a v9 that is not really much more than the v8... I would rather prefer to see good updates for my version of carrara, than having to buy a new one :P

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,987
    edited December 1969

    Tim_A said:
    Thanks dot_bat, I'll look for that. I like to get more than one setup from a scene, and quite often want to switch between portrait and landscape.

    (I suppose the other way to do it would be to rotate the camera through 90 degrees, but that then means un-rotating the image in post)

    Nope. Just set up the cameras separately. Enter the appropriate ratio with the production frame on during setup of each camera, and name them so that you know how you want them rendered. Save the scene.
    Now go to the render room (the scene can be closed by this point), and use the Batch Queue to Add the same scene for each different camera you've made, and set the aspect ratio to match your intentions.

    I often take two to four shots of each animation I do, so that I have more to choose from in the editing phase of production ;)

    oh Dart, are you saying you can render one camera at 230 by 450 pixels, and another at 67 by 5677 pixels etc?
    that would be a godsend!

    I;m at work so I can't check, but withe eacher camera you could select different render passes as well ?
    ,

    wow, never knew that, thanks for the headsup

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,987
    edited December 1969

    dot_bat said:
    DUDU_00001 thats it thanx

    Thanks to "CarraraCafe"...;-)

    http://carraracafe.com/news/border-rendering-tool/

    that's a great tool, thank you

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    Tim_A said:
    Thanks dot_bat, I'll look for that. I like to get more than one setup from a scene, and quite often want to switch between portrait and landscape.

    (I suppose the other way to do it would be to rotate the camera through 90 degrees, but that then means un-rotating the image in post)

    Nope. Just set up the cameras separately. Enter the appropriate ratio with the production frame on during setup of each camera, and name them so that you know how you want them rendered. Save the scene.
    Now go to the render room (the scene can be closed by this point), and use the Batch Queue to Add the same scene for each different camera you've made, and set the aspect ratio to match your intentions.

    I often take two to four shots of each animation I do, so that I have more to choose from in the editing phase of production ;)

    oh Dart, are you saying you can render one camera at 230 by 450 pixels, and another at 67 by 5677 pixels etc?
    that would be a godsend!

    I;m at work so I can't check, but withe eacher camera you could select different render passes as well ?
    ,

    wow, never knew that, thanks for the headsup

    You can, but as Dart says, there is some work to do first. Let's say you want a wide angle shot and a portrait style shot. Name your camera for the wide angle, and then name the camera for the portrait so that you can identify them later.

    Now go to the Render room and change the resolution to the wide aspect and go back to the Assembly Room and frame the wide angle camera. Next, go into the Render room and set the resolution to the portrait aspect and then go back to the Assembly Room and frame the portrait camera. Save the scene.

    Load your scene in the Batch Queue and choose the output camera- either the portrait camera or the wide angle camera, and set the resolution of the scene to match the camera. Make sure to use the file name option and give the rendered file a unique name. Next, load the scene into the Batch Queue again, and set the output to the remaining camera and change the resolution to match the camera you selected. Repeat the other steps. Click Render and each version of your scene will render with the parameters you set up.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,543
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:

    oh Dart, are you saying you can render one camera at 230 by 450 pixels, and another at 67 by 5677 pixels etc?
    that would be a godsend!

    I;m at work so I can't check, but withe eacher camera you could select different render passes as well ?
    ,

    wow, never knew that, thanks for the headsup

    Yeah... I know! :)
    Anything at all that can be changed from within the Render Room can be edited when you load something into the Batch Queue.

    So if I need a tall promo pic, I set up a camera with the taller resolution loaded into the render settings. Then I save the camera with those settings in the camera name, like: 8x6 Tall, so I know that any ratio of 8x6 in the render settings will work as I have planned, since I save most of my files at 1280 x 720 wide.

    So if I ever want to increase my resolution to 1080p, I can leave aspect ratio locked, and type 1080 into the height field. The framing stays the same, but the render time increases dramatically, without any other render changes.

    The only time you might get something unexpected is if you use a different aspect ratio than how you've originally set up the camera to shoot. So as long as you set up the view for the aspect ratio you want.... ;)

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,987
    edited December 1969

    thanks Dart and evil, appreciate those responses!

    cheese :)

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    thanks Dart and evil, appreciate those responses!

    cheese :)


    And cheese to you as well, and Dart and I know cheese! We are in America's Dairyland after all!
  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    that would be a godsend!

    Actually it is a Carrara-send...but close enough! :cheese:

  • eyeseeeyesee Posts: 172
    edited December 1969

    I've been looking at how to use Smart Content. In Carrara you often need to change the shaders on the imported DUF content. This then is saved as a .CAR file.

    It would be very useful to either:

    1. Allow Carrara to export in .DUF format as content management will not categorise .CAR files.

    or

    2. Add .CAR support to content Management

  • vyncevynce Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Just thinking aloud...

    - What about an integrated 3D tracker ? I think people see more and more 3D objects used in real footage. It could be a feature to attract attention from more people. I know there's SynthEyes, but it's still expensive, and it might be easier to do everything in Carrara.

    - Moreover, I often find that one disturbing thing in CG footage is the unrealistic camera movement. So, I think a great addition would be : realistic camera movements presets. For example you could add some some natural camera shake to a straight trajectory line, you could set the camera to point an object, but with a slight delay, just like a real cameraman... etc, etc...

    - I would like to see a realistic flame generator, for candles or camp fire, with a linked light source (so that it flickers just like a real flame or fire). There's already a fire object, but it's not very good. This is one thing I really missed in my latest video (check the animation thread, if you haven't seen it... candle flames are a bit static)

    - Obviously, cloth simulation !

  • wetcircuitwetcircuit Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    vynce said:

    - Moreover, I often find that one disturbing thing in CG footage is the unrealistic camera movement. So, I think a great addition would be : realistic camera movements presets. For example you could add some some natural camera shake to a straight trajectory line, you could set the camera to point an object, but with a slight delay, just like a real cameraman... etc, etc...



    I took a gander at this one. Tried to figure a way to create a formula or camera modifier plugin (could simply load as a modifier).

    Alternately I was considering a "dynamic" point at object with a similar floating modifier....

    Writing and compiling a Carrara plugin is beyond me, but using the free Camera Shake files (downloads at Cafe) made me consider what sort of controls it might need:

    Wobble (pitch yaw) frequency + amplitude
    Float (translate in space) frequency + amplitude
    Drift (same as above but slower)
    Swing (a kind of "bounce" movement where the motion overshoots a keyframe then settles) loose - tight
    Anticipate (similar to Swing but before the keyframe) loose - tight
    Zoom (based on keyframes) Loose - tight
    Focus (based on keyframes) loose - tight

    And a random seed generator, I guess... Hmmmmm....

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145
    edited December 1969

    Please please please can we have a checkbox to optionally disable SSS on a render, it would be SO useful when doing test renders to temporarily disable this, it wastes so much time waiting for it to calculate sometimes...like while I am typing this!

  • dot_batdot_bat Posts: 373
    edited June 2014

    In my opinion there is altogether too much unnecessary mousing thru dialogs and such in carrara-could be streamlined by better use of the rite mouse button like fig 1 and keyboard input ie command, option and shift key. take your choice of operation, or command, anything. Use the rite mouse button in conjunction with the option key and the shift key. 2 Tear offs as in fotoshop. Selecting lights [for example]-rite click lights and get options. Using lites again as an example why not have check boxes after lites to hide and show, or something else?
    as an aside, i would NOT like to see HEXAGON absorbed by carrara. i like that its specialised and unencumbered with the extraneous. would like to see a 64bit version of hex

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  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited June 2014

    Carrara used to have the RMB options in the assembly room- they were done away with in V7, IIRC. No idea why and sorely missed by me :)

    I second the motion re Hex - don't think we have anything to worry about on that score!

    Post edited by Roygee on
  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584
    edited December 1969

    I *would* like to see some of Hexagon's features in Carrara - since Hex doesn't even run on a Mac (at least anything produced this century), it'd be my only way to use them.

    (or make a modern 64-bit OSX version of Hexagon... yeah right)

    Oh, while I'm here, I'd like to be able to specify number of segments *per axis* in the vertex room. The amount of time I waste creating objects and then laboriously deleting segments in 2 out of 3 axes is huge.

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145
    edited December 1969

    Tim_A said:
    "specify number of segments *per axis* in the vertex room. The amount of time I waste creating objects and then laboriously deleting segments in 2 out of 3 axes is huge.

    Yes that would be a good one! And surely easy to do.
  • bighbigh Posts: 8,147
    edited December 1969

    I can't understand why you all still post in this thread - No body from
    Daz reads it - they didn't even put out any fixes for C8.5 yet and it JUNE .
    Spooky posted what the were going to do in C9 ( when they get to it )
    and it will not be what you want !
    Heck they have not started DS 5 yet - that version is suppose to add more animation tools .

  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    bigh said:
    I can't understand why you all still post in this thread - No body from
    Daz reads it - they didn't even put out any fixes for C8.5 yet and it JUNE .
    Spooky posted what the were going to do in C9 ( when they get to it )
    and it will not be what you want !
    Heck they have not started DS 5 yet - that version is suppose to add more animation tools .

    I'm in the same camp as you bigh. I've given up on DAZ truly supporting Carrara and making it what it could be.

  • edited December 1969

    Well, on the off chance that someone reads this... things I would like are really simple. I was going to make some suggestions but apparently some are already possible, so first, I'll ask for BETTER DOCUMENTATION!

    I like Carrara. I like the render engine (although GPU processing would be awesome). I have DS 4 on my system for one reason only, as a runtime structure for Carrara. I use Poser normally, but Carrara is MUCH better for complex scenes. Trouble is, complex scenes take a long time to render. The one I have running now will take 20 hours. I'd like to have the ability to play games during my waking hours, so the one thing I'd like to see is rather simple; a pause function in the batch queue. Tell Carrara to start rendering at a particular time (which apparently you can do, but be buggered if I can find where the info is on how to do that) and a stop time. Let's say I set the batch queue to run from 11pm to 7am; Carrara starts rendering (if it's open and the scene is loaded) at 11pm... as it gets close to 7am it thinks to itself... "you know, I'm not going to finish this... so I'm going to finish this bucket and not start the next..." and around 7am (give or take a few minutes) all cores are free, the render is on hold until 11pm that night.

    Now it seems you CAN set the start time for a render in batch queue, but there is nothing obvious to set that, and nothing I have seen in the manual (although the manual I have has TBD under Lighting). I have seen no capacity to pause a render.

    Anyway, there are other things I'd like to see, but the ability to control WHEN the render engine is running in batch would mean I'd be using Carrara a lot more often; the ONE thing that stops me playing with it more is how long the renders take (although they would take a lot longer in Poser and Vue, and from what I've read, a lot longer in DS as well... ).

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945
    edited December 1969

    20 hours of render, I suppose that it's an animation…
    Why don't make you images sequences, you stop when you want and you start again later with the following image, I do that all the time…
    A function that I would like, it's like Nero: when the render is finished, we can schedule the stopping of the computer.

  • wetcircuitwetcircuit Posts: 0
    edited June 2014

    Setting up a timer for the batch queue is an interesting idea... especially that it stops rendering once it hits a certain time of day. I really like that.

    Maybe this will help with some of your other points:

    Once you have started the render, the LAUNCH button turns into a PAUSE button. (see pic)

    The interface for choosing the start/end frames for a render is in the same place it is for the "current scene" renderer (see other pic). I'm not sure how this could be made clearer.... You have the option of the frame number or the time (in minutes:seconds:frames).

    Not trying to be sarcastic or anything. The lack of "official" documentation is annoying. I bought the Carara book back in the day and I had several Ah-ha moments. It definitely improved my understanding of the interface. All these things you mention are in those books, as they are "original" features. (links to that book and lots of other Carrara resources on Cafe)

    To speed up rendertimes you need to look into optimizing your scene and lights. Carrara's renderer is actually pretty fast when you do things "old school" the way the pro studios do it: render in layers, "fake" GI with scene lights, reduce and blur the size of your HDR when you do use GI, bake shaders that reference geometry when possible, and use shadow buffers when possible....

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  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584
    edited December 1969

    bigh said:
    I can't understand why you all still post in this thread - No body from
    Daz reads it - they didn't even put out any fixes for C8.5 yet and it JUNE .
    Spooky posted what the were going to do in C9 ( when they get to it )
    and it will not be what you want !
    Heck they have not started DS 5 yet - that version is suppose to add more animation tools .

    Because if I admit to myself how poorly supported Carrara is, I'd end up going and finding a different hobby (probably equally badly supported - such is my lot!)

    Anyhow, posting what I want is cathartic if nothing else.

  • edited December 1969

    I'd never noticed the change to pause... and no, it's not an animation. Breaking frames I could do, but this was a single frame. It's woodlands with sun, GI and raytracing. I like the look, understand it will take a long time, I'd just like the capacity to manage when I have full access to my system.

    I'll have to look for the pause button and see if that's what I wanted... thanks for the 'heads up'!

  • lakeivanlakeivan Posts: 9
    edited December 1969

    For the "move tool" in the Assembly Room:

    It would be wonderful to be able to choose to have the axis oriented either with the World coordinates, or with the local orientation of the selected object, or with the current view coordinates. You can do this with the "move tool" in the vertex modeler right now, but I would love to be able to do it to move objects in the assembly room, so that if an object was rotated, you could very easily move it "directly away" from another object.

  • wetcircuitwetcircuit Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    lakeivan said:
    For the "move tool" in the Assembly Room:

    It would be wonderful to be able to choose to have the axis oriented either with the World coordinates, or with the local orientation of the selected object, or with the current view coordinates. You can do this with the "move tool" in the vertex modeler right now, but I would love to be able to do it to move objects in the assembly room, so that if an object was rotated, you could very easily move it "directly away" from another object.


    Ugh! Yes! So needed!
  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584
    edited December 1969

    Another thing I'd like to have, which can't be very difficult, is the ability to align all selected vertices, edges etc on a particular axis. -- A "straighten" tool. So it would move a set of points into a straight line, or flatten an uneven plane, or make a set of roughly upright edges exactly vertical, etc. Again, a big time saver.

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145
    edited June 2014

    Tim_A said:
    Another thing I'd like to have, which can't be very difficult, is the ability to align all selected vertices, edges etc on a particular axis. -- A "straighten" tool. So it would move a set of points into a straight line, or flatten an uneven plane, or make a set of roughly upright edges exactly vertical, etc. Again, a big time saver.

    Unless your points are at an angle, you can do this with the scale tool - select all points in a plane and scale the z-axis to 0, or for your vertical edges example, scale x- and y-axes to 0. When the scale tool is selected, you can enter values in the window on the right.

    Post edited by PhilW on
  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584
    edited December 1969

    Ah, thanks Phil - I didn't know that!

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