Oh My Stars! (or rather the lack of them)
BlumBlumShub
Posts: 1,108
Hi there,
I'm not a complete newbie to Carrara, but I haven't done anywhere near as much as I have with other software, mostly DS but also Vue.
I am trying to make a night scene and one thing I noticed in Vue is that I can say "Show stars" and there they are. I can't find any option to do that in Carrara. Am I missing something or do I have to draw my own stars with Tip-Ex?
I don't want to use a pre-rendered skydome or backdrop for this, but any other suggestions are very much appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Barry.
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One of the things that some people are hoping for (myself included) are enhancements to some of Carrara's aging features. One of those is the Realistic Sky Editor (RSE). Right now you have a couple options for stars. Put a spherical image of stars in the scene background (they will appear "behind" any atmosphere you may use and you can pan and move the camera. You don't need to use a sky either, which is useful for space scenes. You also can put an image of stars in the scene's backdrop, but the image must be the same aspect as the render aspect. This will also appear behind any atmosphere you use, but it is static (unless you use a movie or image sequence). It's no good for animations where you move the camera.
There's also Dartanbeck's Starry Skies (sold here at DAZ) which is series of large scale invisible spheres with replicated stars and constellations.
One of the things that some people are hoping for (myself included) are enhancements to some of Carrara's aging features. One of those is the Realistic Sky Editor (RSE). Right now you have a couple options for stars. Put a spherical image of stars in the scene background (they will appear "behind" any atmosphere you may use and you can pan and move the camera. You don't need to use a sky either, which is useful for space scenes. You also can put an image of stars in the scene's backdrop, but the image must be the same aspect as the render aspect. This will also appear behind any atmosphere you use, but it is static (unless you use a movie or image sequence). It's no good for animations where you move the camera.
There's also Dartanbeck's Starry Skies (sold here at DAZ) which is series of large scale invisible spheres with replicated stars and constellations.
I didn't really want to be using a background, but if that is the easiest way then I guess I could render a spherical in Vue and use that.
Since this is to be used as the basis for various freebies in the future I don't want to be using other peoples' products, so sadly Dartanbeck's Starry Skies isn't an option in this case.
The only reason I want to use Carrara for this project is because it sometimes renders quicker than Vue, though in this instance not so much. It does render differently though, so I will be able to produce two different styles.
Thanks,
Barry.
Take a look at this digital carvers guild plugin, it might be what you need:
http://www.digitalcarversguild.com/plugin.php?ProductId=14
That sounds like a really cool plugin. Thanks for posting that!
BlumBlumShub stated he didn't want to use backgrounds, etc. But now that you mention this plug-in, why not Starry Sky? It is about $12 versus $30 and the results should be just as good.
BlumBlumShub stated he didn't want to use backgrounds, etc. But now that you mention this plug-in, why not Starry Sky? It is about $12 versus $30 and the results should be just as good.
He said he couldn't use it as it was going to be the basis for various freebies in the future.
He said he couldn't use it as it was going to be the basis for various freebies in the future.
Yup, I skimped over the second post. My bad.
Well if I can do my own spherical in Vue it shouldn't really be a problem, but I must admit if it wasn't for freebie sets I'd rather pay $12 than $30.
If rendering a spherical in Vue is easy, I'd guess that's the way to go.
I don't have Vue though, and never shelled out for DCG as it was too pricey, and only recently (during the sale) picked up Dart's solution, but awhile back I had very good success in simply taking s primitive sphere, making it invisible and huge, then putting lots of tiny other replicated simple primitives (so there would be slight size and color differences) randomized on the sphere, and having each one with an active glow channel. Worked really well, as I remember, and doesn't take long to do.
But the original question about whether there is a default way to do this in Carrara by clicking a checkbox or moving a slider for night scenes to give a starry sky is a good question, but as far as I Know currently the answer is 'no'.
There *really* should be, as this would be a very basic necessary atmospheric control, it's weird we're all the way to version 8.5 and they still haven't made some of the basic atmospheric upgrades they really need to do. Maybe it'll be addressed in version 9?
I actually don't know how to do the random placement of primitives. I am quite new to Rara despite having three versions! I'll have a look and see if I can figure it out.
On a whim, to see if I could remember (it's been a while since I messed with it) I just did a quick and dirty reprise that seemed to work ok. Here's a quick step by step.
Open scene, drop a sphere primitive into the scene. Increase the scale (in the motion tab) to 10,000 (as an example; you can make it bigger or smaller at need of course). Make the sphere invisible (general tab, unchecking visibility).
Next drop a surface replicator into the scene. It's the symbol between the fire primitive and the hair primitive, just have to click the symbol then click anywhere in the scene. It puts in a surface replicator that isn't really attached to anything yet.
Next in the general tab for the surface replicator you just dropped in, you're going to see a place where you can choose a source object. Make the sphere that you dropped in first the source object.
Next drop in at least one and preferably several different primitives. They can be spheres, cubes, cones, cylinders, whatever shape you like, and the more varied the better. The idea is that you want your stars to be slightly different from each other to give that sense of 'twinkling', so different shapes is good, but you can start with just one primitive and see the effect, then add more as you go.
So let's as an example say you dropped in a cone primitive. Now you want to scale it down so it's small, say 10 to 12% (again the motion tab for the primitive). Go to the texture room and change the color to either red, blue or yellow (to mimic the different star colors that are out there). Now go to the 'glow' channel for the shader and make the glow an operator selecting multiply, and in the first channel create a color, in the second channel a 1 - 10,000% value. And crank it up high (for example 5000%)
Now back in the assembly room, uncheck the visibility box on the cone primitive general tab, to make it invisible.
Select your 'surface replicator' from the instances and then go to the modelling room (the wrench symbol at the top of Carrara)
It goes into a special room just for the surface replicator. You can see the source object is the sphere you selected earlier, but now you need to add that cone as a 'replicated object'.
Now increase the number of replicated objects to something that will fill the scene with stars (there's a preview window to give you an idea).
Like I said, you added the cone but you can go back and put more primitives in the scene of different shapes and after making them glow, you can go back to the surface replicator and add them as replicated objects as well. Additionally you can enter values in the random rotation and random scale fields in the surface replicator, so that you get slightly different sizes and rotations for your 'stars'.
Over on the right there's a button to 'shuffle' your replicated objects, so you can click that as many times as you like til you get a 'constellation' pattern that looks good to you.
Go back to the assembly room and do a quick preview render. There you have it, a spherical starfield you built all in Carrara. :)
Was really easy to do, it was more complicated explaining the steps then it was to just do it. Might want to give it a quick try to see if it is a possible solution
Oh wow, thanks, something new to play with later *happy dance* :D
In the meantime I'm hoping I'm rendering a starscape in Vue (hoping since it's a massive image, too big for an on-screen render) which I will try to set up as a spherical background in Carrara as someone suggested. If that works, I'll post a link to the image so others can use it.
Not gonna be around to play much today, got loads of stuff to do. Will certainly have a look at your method later though.
Thanks again,
Barry.
{EDIT} - I think I did use the surface replicator to make this forest a while ago... http://blumblumshub.deviantart.com/art/The-Curious-Mrs-Fox-332984862
This makes me appreciate LightWave all that much more. It has a built-in primitive for doing starfields. This would make a great new feature for Carrara.
I do heartily endorse Starry Sky though - I realize that the OP cannot use it. Shame, because it is wonderfully easy to use and produces great results.
What about going into the Model Room, create half a sphere with decently high polys, kill the polygons and then delete some random points that remain until you are happy with the result. Oh wait...you can't attach anything to the remaining points... Scratch that...sorry...
There's nothing really stopping me from using Starry Sky, thinking about it, since I'll be using the rendered image, not the original objects. I just think if there's a way I can do things all by myself then I will :D
And it'll save me $12.95 too!
Starry Sky is great, I recommend it, and really 12.95 isn't all that much IMO. On the other hand if you're up to play around a bit I think you can build yourself a not-fantastic but workable star sphere in really just a couple of minutes. Here's a shot of what I came up with in around 2 minutes or so, quick and dirty:
"Starry Sky" is a great product, and I have used it quite a few times.
But it can be fun to play around on your own, too. :)
Here are two replicator source spheres - one for smaller white stars, one for bigger random color stars, and a primivol cloud for a nebula! The stars are all sphere primitives with glow-only shaders.
This is how I made Starry Sky:
Instead of going entirely random onto spheres, I mapped them and then made a vague 'constellations' like map for the earth-based viewing globe. For the non-earth based globe, I made more of a noise map to help to cluster the randomness.
The stars are all made to varying degrees of pale red, yellow, blue and then white. The brightest are the largest, and they also include a bulb light parented inside them to give them a slight flare and/or star effect.
"Objects Try to Cluster" is a must, in my opinion, as that's how it works in Space, and everywhere else. That's gravity.
I then decided that I wanted more stars to show up - so I added inner and outer star field globes, which use no map, but do use clustering.
Have fun with it! ;)
I should add: It took me a long time to get SS to turn out the way it looks. I messed around with the maps and the replication over and over... I am an amateur astronomer on the side, although it's truly been years since I've taken out my Criterion RV6 (Restored by me, older US Made Reflector Telescope), and have always been less interested in "Astronomy" as I am in "Star Gazing", or rather, Galaxy hunting and gazing at delicious globular clusters, open clusters, nebulae and planets.
Well sadly I got no chance at all to play yesterday, and I was somewhat disappointed with my attempts in Vue. Not because it didn't produce stars, but because the stars it produced were all the same size. Uniformity is unnatural!
Thanks for the replies, I will be playing this afternoon when I get home from my trip to town.
In the meantime it's 5:30am and coffee is most definitely required, omnomnom!
http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/docs/worldwidetelescopeuserguide.html#MultiProjectorPlanetarium if you can follow it has some stuff, I am still trying to decipher
dumb things
I used this http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1105/3000_CC_BY-NC.jpg as a diistribution map on a sphere for a tiny sphere in a surface replicator, sort of works
sort of related, I found the Milky way http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/cobe/vrml_models.cfm think carrara can import vrml, will try later
nup
Blender imports it though, can see in 3D but no exportable mesh
That looks very cool, but not sure about the nasty copyright crap involved with using it for my own nefarious tasks.
Also, I'm not necessarily looking for a 3D solution, a spherical render would do nicely. All this is for is to add some stars to a night or sunrise/sunset sky.
Had a play yesterday but I kind of went off on a tangent while playing nice! I hate having an imagination sometimes, it stops me from concentrating on the task at hand!
try the NASA image http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1105/3000_CC_BY-NC.jpg in greyscale maybe, I think this one is creative commons,
Nice image. Not what I need for this but I downloaded it for a future art project! Thanks for that.
Ok, so, since Dartanbeck's goodies are currently at 50% for PC members I've decided to go ahead and buy the starry night. Since I'm only going to be giving away renders of the product highly modified by my own renders there won't be any copyright issues and it solves a problem for me without mucking around.
I am highly addicted to this idea of surface replication though, can see a myriad of possibilities for it, so thanks for everyone's help.
Barry.