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That looks Really Nice!!!
Thanks! I'm wondering if I can still buy your Starr4y Skies product somewhere? i didn't grab it in time before it got pulled...
Otherwise, ow could i get some stars in my scene?
They're all free now!
Here's the landing page - Dartanbeck Downloads
Where you can get Starry Sky for Carrara, the three Carrara EnvironKits and several other new things I've made.
More to come!
Awesome! Thanks, Dart!
Man, i wish the Carrara camera had more settings like an actual camera. ll this stuff i'm reading about landscapes photography and DOF stresses on using aperture, f-stop, and all that. But all we have is Focus and Blur Strength. How do we do goodc DOF in Carrara landscape scenes?
A few different ways.
First, we can access more camera options when the zoom section is set to Custom, so we can set different apertures. It's been a while since I've messed with it because I'm not a photographer, so I don't really know what I'm doing with it.
For DOF, we can place something temporary that's easy to see within the scene where we'd lke our prime focus to be, then target that in the DOF settings pop up.
Click "Aim" and place the crosshair target on the object, and then set how much or little blur and how much quality we want applied.
This can all be animated along the timeline as well.
I normally just use Project Dogwaffle Howler for blurs and the like for the initial part and then, since I do animation work primarily, I do my final blurring effects along with my other VFX enhancements in Fusion.
I started working this way as soon as I discovered that these tools are available and figured out how to use them. The reasons become obvious after the first try - time, flexibility and a lot more options but mostly the ability to see what's going on in real time as I work was the main clincher.
I think it's amazing and cool that Carrara has this stuff built in, but it slows my animation process down waaaay too much, considering I don't like my setting and have to go through the whole process again - and w a i t !!!
But that's just me. For someone gifted in these things, it's probably better to have a ray traced DOF from the filming camera than an artistically added quasi DOF done in post - hands down. I'm finding that a lot of my 'need for speed' tactics don't deliver the best results. Just make my renders much faster - and sometimes that's not the best way to go, especially for a high quality still image render.
The aperture settings in the camera really work, however. Example being using a wide angle and getting closer to the subject compared to using a tighter FOV zoomed in from afar will give the expected results, from the tidbits that I was gleening from cinematographer tutorials.
I tested this when we were studying the "Dolly Zoom" in VFX class, which is where we steadily change between a zoomed shot from afar to a wide angle with the camera getting close enough to keep the main subject the same size in the shot, and it makes everything but the main focus object seem to stretch or contract, depending on the direction of the dolly zoom. Pretty cool effect, but it's so commonly used these days that, to me it almost feels over-used, so I don't use it much at all, if ever.
Still, it was cool to learn that I could do it in Carrara, as I was the only student without a camera - opting for all-CG filmmaking. It was fun to share my experiences with my teachers and fellow students!
This was one of my homework projects where I used Howler instead of HitFilm. We all had to download HitFilm Express (Awesome!!!) for the class so that we all had the same VFX tools for the class. As I started this homework, I told my teachers that I really enjoy Rotoscoping (what this lesson was about) and realy enjoy the tools that Howler has to offer for this, and they allowed me to do mine in Howler.
Just to illustrate that I was essentially doing the same thing but with an entirely different workflow, I made this video to accompany my homework
Warning - I really can Babble!!!
Here is the end result from the video above.
This is a technique commonly used in filmmaking - especially on a tight budget, but also otherwise.
There are only three people in the scene at any one time. Each shot needs to be at near enough the same time of day to keep the lighting similar enough to make this convincing.
As VFX artists, our job is to combine (composite) all of the different shots together into one scene, making it look like a whole bunch of people, even though there were only three.
And just for kicks, this is me using some of the things I've learned in my VFX for Geurilla Filmmakers class to add splashing water to a render of my character running through a flooded room.
Wow you've been doing your homework. I have plans for a little 3D short, using different programs like iClone and HitFilmbut two of my biggest wories are camerawork and posing
I made this with HitFilm some time ago. The only 3D object is Emotiguy.
That is Very Cool!!! Wow, the Pro version! One day... maybe! :)
I did buy that cool procedural fire as an addon, which I think also included the lightning in the same pack. I bought a few addons for Express, which is actually a pretty formidable VFX tool on its own. Things like fir, lightning and the lighting effects really caught my eye, and they had a special sale on them (this was quite a while ago) so I grabbed them.
My job, chiseling stone for l o n g hours in the hot summer sun (and rain and cold) forced a lot of overtime, so I could only learn and practice so much over all this time. Winters were my best 'dig-in' time.
A friend who I met here on the forum (and now we still get together every few years) bought the book that Jay Nola always told me I needed: Digital Lighting and Rendering, by Jeremy Birn. Once I started reading that, I started really getting hooked on making my renders look better. I was lighting everything all wrong, and being very inefficient about it.
The more I dug in the more I realized that, while I'm into all of this 3D business for the purposes of eventually making movies, I didn't know the first thing about making them. So I was sailing blind with no stars in the sky!
Studying VFX and filmmaking really opened my eyes further - especially about lighting and setting up scenes.
I've been at this for ten years now and still consider myself a noob!