Carrara Challenge #47: Structured/Unstructured...or "Unstructured Structure"

DesertDude

Carrara Challenge #47: Structured/Unstructured...or “Unstructured Structure”

Create a render the contains anything Structured or Unstructured, or a combination of the two. What does this even mean? Pretty much anything and everything has some underlying structure, even things which at first glance appear unstructured.

Some examples of “Structured” would be architecture, a carefully designed garden, vehicles - cars, planes or spaceships, a computer chip, a skeleton, or a beehive.

“Unstructured” could be ruins, a fallen rotting tree in a tangled forest, scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, a crumbling statue, a weed choked lot, or a nebula in deep space. Going further, one can see images in nature’s infinite and beautiful abstractions, and patterns. Gazing at clouds, or seeing figures or animals emerging from the randomness of a stucco wall, or the splotches on the floor.

“Unstructured Structure” could be: micro organisms in a petri dish, a detail of coral under the sea, falling snowflakes, or ‘The Big Bang’.

These terms could also be applied to the composition. Is it a calming structured scene? Or haphazard and wild and crazy - seemingly unstructured?

Your Structured or Unstructured element(s) can be the focus of the scene, but don't have to be to the exclusion of any other elements that help create your scene.

Let your imagination go wild! Hoping the theme is open to broad interpretation.

 

To help stimulate the brain here are some synonyms.

Structured: analytical, careful, deliberate, disciplined, efficient, exact, fixed, framed, logical, ordered, planned, regular, systematic, together

Unstructured: formless, chaotic, hazy, irregular, nebulous, shapeless, unformed, vague, abnormal, amorphous, asymmetrical, embryonic, malformed, mutilated, undeveloped, obscure

 

Carrara Function Requirements: None for this challenge; Carrara is packed with tools to help you create very orderly scene elements, like a Replicator, or the Replicate tool in the Vertex Modeler. Or for a more organic feel, a Surface Replicator using a procedural shader. Modifiers can be used to help create an “Unstructured Structure”. Particle Systems, Terrains, Clouds, Fog, Metaball Objects, the Spline Modeler, Bone Rigs, Displacement Tools, Physics  -  all and more can be used and abused to perfect your vision.

 

Rules: You are required to post at least one WIP image to this thread with an explanation of how you achieved your Structured or Unstructured element(s).

You can enter as many images as you like, but can only win once. In the case of any ties I will use the method Bunyip02 used in the previous challenge of flipping a coin 5 times to determine the tie breaker.

Images must be rendered in Carrara or any Carrara render engine plugin.

Animations are welcome!

Images must be new (previously unpublished)

Post work is allowed, but it would be nice to have an explanation of what was done so we can all learn.

Use any and all content that is allowed under the Forum Terms of service. Any content that is used should be credited in the Entry Thread.

The 1st place winner will become the host for the next Carrara challenge, decide the theme and set the rules. If the 1st place winner is unable to host, then it falls to the 2nd place winner, and so on. If none of the winners are able to host hopefully someone will volunteer.

Prizes:

Thank you to our generous sponsor DAZ3D for offering the following awards to the winners:

1st Place: $70.00 towards DAZ3D owned item(s)
2nd Place: $50.00 towards DAZ3D owned item(s)
3rd Place: $40.00 towards DAZ3D owned item(s)
4th Place: $30.00 Towards DAZ3D OWNED ITEM(s)

(Can only Win Once)

 

Dates to Remember:

WIP Thread Opens: Friday May 31
Entry Thread Opens: Sunday June 23
Entry Thread closes/Voting Begins:  Monday July 8
Voting Ends: Sunday July 14 at midnight MDT

I chose Monday July 8 to close the Entry Thread because July 4, a national holiday here in the US, falls on a Thursday and I don’t know if anyone might make a long week end of it.

DesertDude

PA Sponsor - Vyusur

A huge thank you to Vyusur for generously sponsoring the Challenge - THANK YOU!!

Vyusur will award the author of her favorite picture to choose any one item from her store.

She is an incredible modeler of the human figure in addition to being able to model...anything!  And her skills are not limited to modeling but include texturing, rigging, posing, lighting and composition. She also generously shares many of her workflows via tutorials on YouTube.

AND, her skills are not just limited to the digital arts, she is an accomplished painter of many mediums and subject matter. I encourage any and all to view her Fine Art Gallery.

We are fortunate to have her as part of our community.

Her Store: https://www.daz3d.com/vyusur

Link to thread ‘Experiments, discovery and experience’ :

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/207651/experiments-discovery-and-experience/p1

Her Fine Art Gallery: https://vyusur.com

DesertDude

reserved

Stezza

I posted my ghost who can be unstructured to quickly lol

awesome challenge here...  

 

DesertDude

Stezza_Carrara9 said:

I posted my ghost who can be unstructured to quickly lol

awesome challenge here...  

Thanks Stezza.
Now it's my unstructured bedtime in my ustructured time zone

VIArts

Unstructured like my hair in the morning?

Bunyip02

Woo-hoo, now to get that thinking cap on !

Diomede

My thinking cap is on also.  

Thank you, Vyusur, for sponsoring.

Mistara

structure could be archvis ?

haven't dusted off the old asbru crossing in half a decade, 

 

anything glows lights need idl and or caustics on? cant remember.  brain farting.  

DesertDude

MAJourney said:

Unstructured like my hair in the morning?

It's been man, many years since I have had such a problem...
Would make for a great render though! 

 

 

Mystarra said:

structure could be archvis ?

haven't dusted off the old asbru crossing in half a decade, 

 

anything glows lights need idl and or caustics on? cant remember.  brain farting.  

Of course it can! 
As for Anything Glows...I don't have the most experience but just did a quick test:

I made a vertex cube and isolated one polygon for a "window". I gave that window a shader with a light peach color in the the Glow Channel and inserted an Anything Glows Light and tied it to my window object. I set the Color from the chooser to "Object Glow". That should do it. I did a second render just for fun and for the window object and turned on "Aura" in the Effects Tab and dialed in what I thought looked ok.

Mistara

DesertDude said:

MAJourney said:

Unstructured like my hair in the morning?

It's been man, many years since I have had such a problem...
Would make for a great render though! 

 

 

Mystarra said:

structure could be archvis ?

haven't dusted off the old asbru crossing in half a decade, 

 

anything glows lights need idl and or caustics on? cant remember.  brain farting.  

Of course it can! 
As for Anything Glows...I don't have the most experience but just did a quick test:

I made a vertex cube and isolated one polygon for a "window". I gave that window a shader with a light peach color in the the Glow Channel and inserted an Anything Glows Light and tied it to my window object. I set the Color from the chooser to "Object Glow". That should do it. I did a second render just for fun and for the window object and turned on "Aura" in the Effects Tab and dialed in what I thought looked ok.

it looks beautiful.  Thank yoo.

i was trying to use a floor as a light, and i couldnt get it to work  >.<
think i missed the 'facet' part

Diomede

Freebie

Hexagon hive structure in Carrara format.

Lets see some bees. Little bees doing the crucial pollination of our gardens.  Giant bees in Jules Vernes Mysterious Island.  

Or, forget the bees and do anything else you want with a hexagon lattice.

See zip file attached.  Yucky simple procedural texture because I plan to use a wax shader purchased, and not sure I can share.

 

Headwax

nice choice @DesertDude

thanks for the freebie Ted :)

here's a quick proof of concept

melted m3 RR onto p4 skeleton with VWD

quick play as usually full g4 are too much

 

UnifiedBrain

Excellent work there DesertDude!  It looks like this Challenge is pretty wide open. :)

My thinking is to explore GMIC a bit more, and create some semi-abstract renders.  Hope that at least partially fits the bill.

Headwax

second proof of concept - parented m4 skeleton to genesis - not sure why i di  but it worked 

i addede lots of alpha maps to the clothes and one side of genesis 

 

 

 

Diomede

Way to start us off, Andrew.  I'm assuming that the pirate army of the dead represents unstructure, but would be cool if there i get surprised.  Either way, thanks for the workflow.  Clever use of VWD.

DesertDude

UnifiedBrain said:

Excellent work there DesertDude!  It looks like this Challenge is pretty wide open. :)

My thinking is to explore GMIC a bit more, and create some semi-abstract renders.  Hope that at least partially fits the bill.

Thanks UnifiedBrain - and yes, some semi abstract renders totally fits the bill!!

DesertDude

Diomede_Carrara said:

Freebie

Hexagon hive structure in Carrara format.

Lets see some bees. Little bees doing the crucial pollination of our gardens.  Giant bees in Jules Vernes Mysterious Island.  

Or, forget the bees and do anything else you want with a hexagon lattice.

See zip file attached.  Yucky simple procedural texture because I plan to use a wax shader purchased, and not sure I can share.

 

Thanks for posting that Diomede! Looks cool. I'll see what I can do with it later this morning. 

DesertDude

Headwax_Carrara said:

nice choice @DesertDude

thanks for the freebie Ted :)

here's a quick proof of concept

melted m3 RR onto p4 skeleton with VWD

quick play as usually full g4 are too much

 

That looks super cool Headwax. In addition to a cool image, I love the choice of words..."melted m3 RR onto p4 skeleton..."... like an abstract lyric from a song. 

 

Headwax_Carrara said:

second proof of concept - parented m4 skeleton to genesis - not sure why i di  but it worked 

i addede lots of alpha maps to the clothes and one side of genesis 

 

 

Awesome! Looking forward to more.

Persona Non Grata

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Persona Non Grata

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WendyLuvsCatz

Would make good relaxation videos 

DesertDude

Awesome Selinita! Glad to see you here

Just curious how you went about making the cylindrical shape. I had a go with the freebie Diomede posted. I used Modifiers in the Assembly room, but once you dial in what you like you can jump into the Vertex Modeller and apply the same under Model>Deform and scrap the Modifier. So in the first picture I applied Bend and Twist and manually typed in 364 and changed the axis to 'X'. (360 degrees left a slight gap...)

(That's how I made the chain of ovals on the lampshade in the last challenge, I modeled one oval to my liking, duplicated it, moved it, welded them together, duplicated the two, welded, etc. I then applied Bend and Twist  using 360 degrees under Model>Deform and welded the final seam together. I used a similar technique to model the bowl in that same picture.)

Meanwhile, I went a few steps further and started wrecking the Hexagon Structure Hive with more modifiers.

Some of the Modifiers aren't avaliable in the VM, but you can always apply those in the Assembly room and export as OBJ and import and carry on.

 

 

DesertDude

Selinita said:

Another short animation (unstructured?) water molecules 

;

Beautiful! 

Diomede

@Selina - Magnifique!  Show me the honey.  Wonderful textures and animations.

@DesertDude - Great results with the assembly room modifiers.  I think the assembly room modifier will suffice for a great many concepts.  

If for some reason, there is need for more control, here are two more suggestions.  First, the vertex modeler often offers the ability to enter numeric values to edit selected vertexes.  Second, can attach a skeleton and pose an object to add twists and turns.  In the following test render, the circular shape of the cross-section of the tube resulted from joining 6 hexagons at 60 degree angles (for a 360 degree circle), the spherical indentations are from extruding the hexagons twice with a taper.  Then applied smoothing, The curve in the tube resulted from attaching the model to a skeleton and posing.  Could have had several turns in different directions, or even closed the circle.

 

Persona Non Grata

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Stezza

wow... !!

melting undead people and advanced honeycomb maths ( for me anyways ) gotta love it 

all I came up with was a modeled concrete building block 

then I duplicated it three times.... 

rendered without postwork .. apart from my sig. 

Building Blocks

 

Bunyip02

Wow - plenty of progress.

Misty - hope you can join in with the Archvis.

Desertdude - very nice workflows - hope we will see more.

Diomede - the bee's knees - awesome work

Headwax - "Deadly" pirates - cool

Selina - great aimations - have you got time to join in with an entry ?

Wendy - is an animation forth-coming ?

Stezza - very nice Mr Bean surveying the castle

 

Bunyip02

Future City - due to high density living would need very structured living and work spaces - traffic streams would be vigourisly enforced.

Went for a crowded dystopian city that gives a highly structured environment look.

DesertDude

Diomede_Carrara said:

@Selina - Magnifique!  Show me the honey.  Wonderful textures and animations.

@DesertDude - Great results with the assembly room modifiers.  I think the assembly room modifier will suffice for a great many concepts.  

If for some reason, there is need for more control, here are two more suggestions.  First, the vertex modeler often offers the ability to enter numeric values to edit selected vertexes.  Second, can attach a skeleton and pose an object to add twists and turns.  In the following test render, the circular shape of the cross-section of the tube resulted from joining 6 hexagons at 60 degree angles (for a 360 degree circle), the spherical indentations are from extruding the hexagons twice with a taper.  Then applied smoothing, The curve in the tube resulted from attaching the model to a skeleton and posing.  Could have had several turns in different directions, or even closed the circle.

Sweet!! Thank you for the detailed explanation Diomede. 

DesertDude

Selinita said:

DesertDude said:

Just curious how you went about making the cylindrical shape. I had a go with the freebie Diomede posted. I used Modifiers in the Assembly room, but once you dial in what you like you can jump into the Vertex Modeller and apply the same under Model>Deform and scrap the Modifier. 

Yes, that's exactly how I did it, but I didn't guess the actual angle to use for a perfect fit of the cells...

1. Count the number of cells in one row along the axis you are going to bend, say 16;
2. Double it (32) and divide 360 by this number, say 11.25
3. Multiply the result (11.25) by the doubled number plus 1 (33) to get the exact angle needed, say 371.25

Hope that helps 

Yes...except for me it made my head spin....ha ha I'm a total math F-.  Lol .
Yet again the brilliance of the Carrara community shines at how we approach different problems in different ways. Thank you Selinita