Rockin' out with Phil Wilkes!
Dartanbeck
Posts: 21,323
So, I am really bummed that there is no longer some official means to purchase Learning Carrara, Advanced Carrara Techniques, or Realism Rendering courses by Phil Wilkes, previously sold via Infinite Skills, whom also sold them via DAZ 3D. I see that they are often still for sale through Amazon, which I think is just lovely - because I think that anyone like me, who just cannot get enough tips n tricks about Carrara should own these incredible titles.
Anyway, with what my life has been lately, I haven't realy been able to watch them much over the last year and a half or more... probably more like two years.
So recently I have been coming home from work without a lot of time before bed time, so I'd unwind with some Carrara TV goodness.
Starting with Learning Carrara (with the 8.5 updates - also sold as Learning Carrara 8.5) I am so amazed at these cool videos. Okay, even if I have no questions whatsoever about a particular session, I watch it anyway. Sure enough, Phil always has something fresh I can gleen from the session.
I really had to come in here and write about how cool it is to be able to load a series of videos into Media Player and enjoy a really nice and thorough runthrough of Carrara's modelers and a lot of the functions they offer. Yeah... it's amazing how much more they have too... I mean... Carrara is SO vast. But Phil gives such a great walkthrough!
The same can be said about Shaders. He takes us on an excellent journey through such a wealth of shader information it's just crazy!
So many hours of really fun Carrara TV in just that one title - still just working my way through them.
I already recall, since I've watched it so many times, that when I get back to Advanced Carrara Techniques, that I will get treated to a much deeper look into each of these subjects - again, in a very fun, entertaining Carrara TV style. Perhaps it's the musician in him that makes him such a natural entertainer, but he really rocks these things.
I can't wait to get my hands on his latest work on Animation in Carrara, sold right here at DAZ 3D.
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Comments
Really... I go into Carrara's vertx modeler quite often and the tools just feel so natual to me from how I used to model as a total newbie in 3DS Max 5, back in the day, that I don't often really have much for questions. When I see different techniques and such, yeah... I try to add new approaches as they might apply....
But watching these video over again is so cool for me. The way he just goes through the different aspects with quick examples of how they work is such an inspiration for so many things - it's no wonder that the replayability of these lessons are so valuable. If I try three, or even one new technique from this the next time I model, it'll always leave a bunch more that I can try and add the next watch through - but the way I work in the modeler, I'll likely bot remember to add more than two, three, or maybe even five of these at any one time - and then it'll truly stick.
When I started collecting these courses, Advanced Carrara Techniques was my first purchase. I was (am) very impressed. So much material that I can only really absorb only so much at any one time, since I haven'y really had time to just practice everything as I went as if I was taking it as a college course, which would be a really fun thing to do. No, when I open Carrara, I get really busy on something that's been in the works or somethign I've been planning for quite some time - so since the videos cover the entirety of Carrara, I'd only actually put some things to practice right away, while the rest was just fun viewing.
So then, being all inspired by seeing him demonstrate something I've never tried, that would stick to the point where I'd remember that I want to try it, so I'd watch that particular sesssion to learn how to do it - then go about making what I wanted to use it for. Particle emitters is a goiod example of that. I never used particle emitters before getting that course. It looked fascinating to me then, it's still fascinating to me now.
I guess that another really cool thing is that, since I self-taught myself in Carrara via tinkering combined with this (actually the older version of this) forum before ever getting the course, it was really interesting to see how very differently Phil and I work in the same software - but that is very, very common.
That makes the whole thing even more replayable for me. His work style is so different from that of my own, that the videos are always a great source of inspiration for me.
...and like I said, when I'm not watching them to actually learn from them, I'm watching them as a wonderfully entertaining Carrara TV!
Thanks Phil! Yo're trul fun to Rock with!!!
Would you characterise those differences more in the rendring approach or would you say there were other main factors between yourself and Phil ? Purely as an observer, your artwork evokes to me the Edgar Rice Burroughs paperback covers from the 70s, or the classic Boris Vallejo Conan covers. I really like your images.
I understand your main two characters are based on yourself and partner. Was it a difficult workflow to nail the likenesses ? The tutorials I see rely on reference material which are more like official passport photos front and side view with a neutral facial expression. However, if trying to nail the likeness of, say an actor or rock star, the reference is not so conveniently available and if there are twenty different photos, the lens distortion factor could be different for each one, so I think there must still be some hand/eye coordination needed.
Phil on the other hand seems to be fond of as much photorealism as possible, which I think is a great aspiration. I bought that Lux Core engine, but haven't managed to play with it yet.
Dart's gone silent again - come back soon Dart !!!
Haha - I just spotted this thread! Many thanks to Dart for putting the spotlight on these again. Maybe I should watch them again and discover how much I have forgetten! That is despite using Carrara virtually every day still.
Glad you found it useful.
I watching "Learning Carrara" and "Advanced Carrara Techniques", I noticed that nearly everything we do in Carrara, we do in a somewhat different fashion, which is delightfully awesome! I'll be able to give some better examples of that once I get a new computer. Right now I can barely run Carrara, which is sending me to a very dark place lately. It's a nightmare!
Wow, Thanks! I've been a big fan of Boris Vallejo, Frazetta, and others in that realm nearly all my life, which is likely why I tend toward that style - even if by accident, even though sometimes it's been fairly intentional! LOL
Generation 4 was Morph heaven for me - so getting Genesis Generation X2 has been a real treat for me! Now I can have those morphs on characters that relied on them before, and even better, I get my cool expression morphs collections I've bought for V4, and can use them on male figures as well!
Anyway, back to your question:
The morphs that came with Morphs++ were extensive and very well named. I used those to tweak and tweak my Rosie character for quite some time. I used to run up to her and gaze at her face while she was reading, watching TV, or whatever. Eventually she got used to it! LOL Even after I had a pretty good start, like the version of Rosie we see in my Just a Bit of Fun video, I still have made tweaks here and there. Michael 4 was actually almost already shaped like my face - kind of - so I didn't really do a whole lot with that one. Then I exaggerated the strength and beefiness to turn Dartanbeck into much more of a strong man than I am! LOL I mean, he's an imaginary Super Hero... he's supposed to be beefier than me, right?
I mentioned my Expressions morphs collection. Real difficulty came to me when I started trying to make Rosie 4 talk and smile. I just couldn't quite get the right moth shapes while it was moving or during a smile. This bothered me immensely, so I'd just move on to working on other things I needed to learn, like optimizing texture sizes to use less RAM, lighting like a cinematographer, learning the differences between shine and reflection, etc., When Facial Expressions for V4 came out, and I noticed that, unlike a lot of other "expression" products, this one actually added morph dials, I had to have it! With that, I then decided to add in the Girl 4 expressions too, and I could dial a little here, a little there, and back and forth, to get results that I was overjoyed with. Some of those results are in Just a Bit of Fun.
Textures were a different story altogether. Well, not for Dartanbeck. Those are just plain ol' M4 High Rez. For Rosie, I bought these and those... then I bought some more and more, and just kept buying. Okay now here's the funny part. You know what I'm using for Rosie's textures? V4 High Rez! LOL However, they're not just that. I've spent a lot of time in Howler painting them to be how I need them to be, and then repeating each process for the highlight and bump maps as needed.
Getting Arki's EYEdeas 3+ product, along with the Natural Textures add-on, was a real game changer. When I was completely satisfied with the eyes previously, it was only because I didn't know any better. But once I got my hands on Digital Lighting and Rendering, by Jeremy Birn, and read the part about rendering and lighting eyes, I needed to do something different. Well, the timing couldn't have been better - and it was funny for me. I made a custom morph to concave V4's irises, so that I could get the "Eye Sheen" phenomenon that is so important to cinematographers. It worked... kinda. It was just an experiment, so I worked quickly on it, and it was successful enough to urge me on to try and make them better.
It was just then, when Runtime DNA merged with DAZ 3D, and Arki's wonderful product hit the store shelves, and t caught my eye right away - it comes with iris morphs for just such a thing - along with a whole lot more. But also, Jeremy Birn talked about "Light Linking" - setting lights to only affect the eyes, and not the rest of the figure. Well, we cannot do that with Daz Figures in Carrara since the eyes are technically part of the same mesh. Arki's EYEs conform to Gen 4 figures and work beautifully. And that makes light lnking very easy. But even when using individual EYEdeas 3+ eye models on Genesis or Genesis 2 (or 3 or 8, for that matter) and parenting them to the eyes on the main figure, it turns out that we can still Light Link to them - so it truly is a win Win!
Yeah... with figure technology working much faster than my hobbiest learning curve, I'm still tweaking my two main characters! :)
I love Phil's Photo-Real approach as well - and he's always introducing something that I haven't tried yet, so I love to pay attention whenever he has something to say!
You'll be amazed at how thorough you were at teaching us all about Carrara!
I can't wait to get that one! It's the only one I'm missing
Well I learnt something in the first five minutes - terrific learning tool! thanks PhilW - et Dart too
It really horrible that so many great Carrara items got removed from the store (poser items too). I DID get these videos and they are excellent. And I got most of the plugins, except I never did get the BVH exporter and I see it is gone now. :/ I am very glad I got what I did when it was available. It really surprises me these videos were removed since Phil IS active and producing new items. I thought they only did it when nothing new is added after several years.
Those videos were done through a video training company called Infinite Skills, who were bought out by another company which never continued to make them available through DAZ 3D. I don't think they made them available at all, but I still see DVD copies on Amazon from time to time.
Yeah, I really get frustrated seeing things disappear from the store too. Really, really good things. That BVH exporter also exports Poser PZ2 files - animated or still. I love it. It's a real bummer that it's not available. Maybe Fenric will put them back up for sale one day?
Damn... mmoir is culled too? Winter is not only coming... it's here! :(
The video's were taken over by O'Reilly, they offer a free trial for individuals but if you want to view the corses you have to sign up with O'Reillys. Would have been nice if they were still available on DVDs or as downloads.
here the tutorials > https://www.safaribooksonline.com/search/?query=phil+wilkes
i would love this for Janette, Aiko3, or Leon.
https://www.daz3d.com/dynamic-skye-hair
is it sprouted from a skullcap by any chance?
every time i see it, i'm just like wwowwwed it looks amazing.
Thanks.
Yes that version was based directly on V4's mesh. I did launch a new version this year for G3F and G8F, it is available elsewhere.
It is good that the turotials are at least still available SOMEWHERE even if by subscription only. I am VERY glad I got them when they were in the DAZ store. :)
Phil's hair is amazing to be sure. I have a couple of them, and want to get his dynamic hair bundle but haven't caught it on sale yet. I also really would like to snag the Addison hair.
oh. ty
seeing the V4 version on sale. it was so tempting. it shows a pic of M4 too.
what about a collision helmet?
V4 and M4 (and any characters based on them) all share the same mesh and so hair for V4 can be used on M4 too.
Not sure what you mean by a collision helmet? If you mean could you apply it to a skull cap mesh, the short answer is no, you'd need to remake it.
I suppose you could try conforming a V4 to another figure, apply the hair to V4 and then hide her so that only the hair and the new figure are visible?
i saw some threads, was a ttime ago, they were experimenting with using hidden collision obj over the figure's head for hair simulations.
Ah I see - yes, I have used that sort of thing myself, mostly to prevent hair draping across the face when you don't want it to. It works fine.
Is the other version in a skull cap? Thanks
The new version is a mesh hair so it works in Daz Studio for G3F and G8F. I can't post a link but it is for sale on another 3D asset site. It is still called Skye Hair so shouldn't be hard to find.