Carrara Challenge #50 - A Special Carrara Anniversary Celebration - WIP thread

Diomede

 

UnifiedBrain said:

OK, with experienced users like Dart, Stezza, and Diomede in basic agreement, I have gone back and clarified the original rules.  We are going "old school" for category 1.

In category 1, plants and terrains must be created by the artist using a Carrara function.  No premade plant or terrain products offered outside Carrara allowed.

 

 

A couple of final questions - does the above rule include shaders?  In the original Challenge, was it OK to use shaders created outside of Carrara?  And how about premade Carrara trees and terrains that came with the program (original content)?  I can go either way with these items.

I don't remember a restriction on shaders, but that doesn't mean there wasn't one.  The following comment makes me think stuff like presets, etc. were OK for challenge #1.  https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/332304/#Comment_332304

My guess would be that at a minimum if it came with Carrara it was OK.  Wouldn't bet my life on my memory though.

WendyLuvsCatz

not an entry but I tried a Nepenthe entirely in Carrara

its even a Carrara render

I want to take it into Zbrush and Zremesh it so badly but maybe later for my own renders elsewhere 

Stezza

I forget where  I  seen that!

great work 

WendyLuvsCatz

StezzaKarara said:

I forget where  I  seen that!

great work 

Pitcher Plants

my attempts to dial up a suitable Carrara tree base as a shrub is not successful

I may try duplication instead,

I used to have some in hanging pots at my old house in my Sunroom but no suitable place to grow them here or bromiliads and other tropical plants, you should be able to grow them easily enough 

UnifiedBrain

Diomede said:

 

UnifiedBrain said:

OK, with experienced users like Dart, Stezza, and Diomede in basic agreement, I have gone back and clarified the original rules.  We are going "old school" for category 1.

In category 1, plants and terrains must be created by the artist using a Carrara function.  No premade plant or terrain products offered outside Carrara allowed.

 

 

A couple of final questions - does the above rule include shaders?  In the original Challenge, was it OK to use shaders created outside of Carrara?  And how about premade Carrara trees and terrains that came with the program (original content)?  I can go either way with these items.

I don't remember a restriction on shaders, but that doesn't mean there wasn't one.  The following comment makes me think stuff like presets, etc. were OK for challenge #1.  https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/332304/#Comment_332304

My guess would be that at a minimum if it came with Carrara it was OK.  Wouldn't bet my life on my memory though.

Thanks for the feedback.  Since there seems to be a general lack of concern about the rules - at least regarding the small details - in Category 1 I've decided to allow premade Carrara native plant content (that came with the program under "basic plants" and "basic leaves"), and permit shaders from any source.  I will modify the rules in the original post, hopefully for the last time!

UnifiedBrain

WendyLuvsCatz said:

not an entry but I tried a Nepenthe entirely in Carrara

its even a Carrara render

I want to take it into Zbrush and Zremesh it so badly but maybe later for my own renders elsewhere 

This is pretty cool.  I looked at some original photos, and the shapes are very close.

Can you give the steps of how you made this plant, particularly the part about adding the flower to the plant?

Below is something similar you did in the first Challenge, of which I would also like to know the steps:

 

 

UnifiedBrain

Diomede said:

Vicky on a cylinder with a tree man.

That is so overdone.

WendyLuvsCatz

it was basically polylines joined then fill polygon and create  organic model like much of my stuff then some sculpting with the displacement and smooth brush, soft selection, bits deleted thickness added stem path traced and bridged to cup, leaf polygon bridged to stem and placed just below 0,0,10 where the stem needs to join the plant, usually needs a bit of adjusting and retrying to get it right, adding leaf if not right moving in vertex room resaving and trying again, I roughly UV mapped and painted it then tidied the texture in Gimp afterwards which is probably against your rules.

UnifiedBrain

WendyLuvsCatz said:

it was basically polylines joined then fill polygon and create  organic model like much of my stuff then some sculpting with the displacement and smooth brush, soft selection, bits deleted thickness added stem path traced and bridged to cup, leaf polygon bridged to stem and placed just below 0,0,10 where the stem needs to join the plant, usually needs a bit of adjusting and retrying to get it right, adding leaf if not right moving in vertex room resaving and trying again, I roughly UV mapped and painted it then tidied the texture in Gimp afterwards which is probably against your rules.

Thanks, a little over my head, particularly the part I bolded.  I've never added a specific leaf or bloom to a plant.

There is no rule against postwork in this Challenge.  Before and after postwork images would be nice, though.

Diomede

UnifiedBrain said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

it ...

Thanks, a little over my head, particularly the part I bolded.  I've never added a specific leaf or bloom to a plant.

 

Creating a Custom Leaf for a Plant Created in the Carrara Plant Modeler

I have an older post that explains custom plants.  See the entries above and below the following post for a discussion of the plant modeler more generally.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2413736/#Comment_2413736

I would highlight three common pitfalls.  These are discussed in the posts following the link above.

1)  The leaves for the plant editor are modeled across the X axis as viewed from the top camera.

2)  The hot point is slightly off where I thought it would be.

3)  You can load multiple leaves, and adjust each leaf's percentage using the weight option in the plant editor leaf tab.

Dartanbeck

UnifiedBrain said:

Dartanbeck said:

Bunyip02 said:

UnifiedBrain said:

Hey there Bunyip and Wendy.

I'm struggling with the rules a bit for category 1, and your posts have made it obvious that I need to clarify things.

In the very first Challenge, HW said that plants and terrains must be constructed in Carrara.  My modeling skills are poor, so making plants is a big challenge.  However, I had planned to suck it up and honor the rule as set forth by HW.

So, the question is, do we stick with the original rule, or do we allow plants and terrains from non-Carrara sources? (or even from pre-made Carrara sources like Howie or TA?)

Appreciate some feedback.  Honestly, I'm leaning towards honoring the original rule, which I think implies making plants and terrains from scratch.  But if there is strong resistance to this idea, I will reconsider, thanks.

"RULES - plants and rendering must be made in Carrara. If you use any premade objects etc for the non plant based parts of the scene please say what they were. Up to TWO entries can be made by each participant. "

To me that is saying that premades can be used as long as they are credited. Half of the plants in my scene are Carrara items, the rest are premades.

The part you highlighted is talking about the non-plant parts of the scene. I believe the actual rules were that all of the plants are supposed to be created in Carrara. We'll see what UB says though. Maybe HW will chime in as well?

This is the way that I interpreted it as well.  As for using Howie plants, I think that the idea was that those of us who have never made a plant are supposed to stretch our skills a bit.  Sure, making trees is easy enough - but a garden is usually more than trees.  It's those pesky smaller plants and flowers! :)  I've looked at some tutorials, but I've never even made grass, so I am in deep water here.

FYI - Carrara's Plant modeler can make a LOT more than just Trees! ;)

When I did deep into it, we can make all manner of amazing things, especially since leaves can be pretty much any mesh, and trunks and branches can be shaped in incredible ways....

Just sayin'! :)

UnifiedBrain

 

A Golden Challenge

 

For me, this render was four challenges all in one.

Challenge #1 - Getting G3 into Carrara.  Surprisingly, that was the easiest challenge.  I converted her as blended in DS, and then exported her as Collada.  No morph controls, but pose controls worked fine.  There were also a couple issues with her ear and her shoulders, but I fixed them with Carrara tools.  The texture maps are terrific, and work very well in Carrara.  For me, G3 is worth the effort for the maps alone.  In the near future, I'm going to try Misty's preset. 

Challenge #2 - Modeling the coin.  My modeling skills are weak.  I had read in an old post that Sci Fi Funk had made a video of how to model a coin in Carrara.  How lucky could I be?  Unfortunately, when searching for it I discovered that he had taken it down!  So, I fumbled around in the vertex modeling room until I figured out "a way" to extrude a coin shape.

Challenge #3 - Replicating the coin.  I started by making a small pile of coins before replicating.  I've used the surface replicator before, so getting around in it was pretty easy.  But no matter what combination of controls I used, the piles of coins would have at least a dozen collision points and look weird.  So I tidied them up in PSE, and reloaded them onto a background plane in Carrara.

Challenge #4 - Carrara hair.  I wanted to use some Carrara hair, until I discovered that the hair I desired would only work on M4.  Grrr.  So, I went instead with one of the the humble freebies that is part of the native content, blonde ND (what does the ND stand for?).  It took a fair amount of tweaking, requiring me to go in an refamiliarize myself with the basic hair controls.  Kind of fun, actually.  It's astounding the level of control available in the hair room.

A bit of prework (coins in PSE) on this one, but no postwork.

Dartanbeck

In case you'd like to try - or even perhaps next time you're doing something like this, here's a nice trick:

Instead of feeding a coin into a replicator, since it's a vertex object (or even a cylinder primitive would work) just duplicate it enough time, nudging them, rotating them, etc., to form a small pile of overlapping coins. So after I get several duplicated and laying nicely, I'll end the repeated behavior of the duplication by now selecting all of them and duplicating that, and continue until I get a nice pile without going too overboard - then feed that pile into the replicator. For even more variety, we can then take that pile and duplicate it - even while it's in the replicator (Surface or Standard) and manipulate the coins around a bit to make this new pile quite different fom the first, and then do that again.

For this (Wonderful, by the way) image, you wouldn't need that many as I'm describing, but it's a great way to make massive amounts of objects.

Lovely render UB! Bravo!

UnifiedBrain

Thanks Dart!

I did make piles before replicating.  Probably didn't make them big enough, :)

Dartanbeck

See, I misread and thought you did the piles in PS! LOL... My Bad!  Sorry!

UnifiedBrain

No, your comment was reasonable.  I forgot to mention the piles.  I will go back and edit.

Dartanbeck

That technique I was explaining - I use that with various ground elements poking through one another, gentle rotation, slight scaling and movement, rinse and repeat, to get some pretty nice looking wild terrain.

Dartanbeck

Okay, I need to take a break from what I'm doing and see if I can come up with an idea for this. The themes leave us pretty wide open to conjure our imaginative juices. I love modeling plants and such too. Hmmm....

UnifiedBrain

Diomede said:

UnifiedBrain said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

it ...

Thanks, a little over my head, particularly the part I bolded.  I've never added a specific leaf or bloom to a plant.

 

Creating a Custom Leaf for a Plant Created in the Carrara Plant Modeler

I have an older post that explains custom plants.  See the entries above and below the following post for a discussion of the plant modeler more generally.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2413736/#Comment_2413736

I would highlight three common pitfalls.  These are discussed in the posts following the link above.

1)  The leaves for the plant editor are modeled across the X axis as viewed from the top camera.

2)  The hot point is slightly off where I thought it would be.

3)  You can load multiple leaves, and adjust each leaf's percentage using the weight option in the plant editor leaf tab.

Thanks, I finally got a chance to take a look.  However, that was even further over my head. :)

I will open the plant editor and start poking around, and maybe things will get clearer.

de3an

UnifiedBrain said:

Challenge #3 - Replicating the coin.  I started by making a small pile of coins before replicating.  I've used the surface replicator before, so getting around in it was pretty easy.  But no matter what combination of controls I used, the piles of coins would have at least a dozen collision points and look weird.  So I tidied them up in PSE, and reloaded them onto a background plane in Carrara.

 

When you want to create a random pile of something, and not have any of them intersecting one another, try using the physics engine to drop a bunch of copies onto a surface or into a modeled container. After they settle and stop moving they'll all be positioned with no intersections.

I used that method for both of the attached images.

WendyLuvsCatz

particles can work too

UnifiedBrain

de3an said:

UnifiedBrain said:

Challenge #3 - Replicating the coin.  I started by making a small pile of coins before replicating.  I've used the surface replicator before, so getting around in it was pretty easy.  But no matter what combination of controls I used, the piles of coins would have at least a dozen collision points and look weird.  So I tidied them up in PSE, and reloaded them onto a background plane in Carrara.

 

When you want to create a random pile of something, and not have any of them intersecting one another, try using the physics engine to drop a bunch of copies onto a surface or into a modeled container. After they settle and stop moving they'll all be positioned with no intersections.

I used that method for both of the attached images.

An awesome solution, thanks!  Playing with physics is on the list, but it will have to wait until I get more renders done for this Challenge.

Hope you can enter this time around.

Stezza

Burn Burn Burn a Category One

used G2 with G2 firemans set and AM's koala with Carrara hair for this, took a bit as it would crash Carrara a fair bit till I worked out a sequence of loading that prevented it from happening!

modeled the Christmas Gum Tree, bauble and Gum Leaf and used Ron's tree, smoke, splashes & fire brushes for the background and bucket water splashes.. 

UnifiedBrain

Very poignant, Stezza.  Great use of Carrara tools and Ron's brushes.

Hope you get some rain soon!

shlomi laszlo

garden

with v4

Diomede

WendyLuvsCatz said:

 

WIP update - Brash and Moxie on the Planet of Tree Gardens

UnifiedBrain

shlomi laszlo said:

garden

with v4

 

Looking very interesting, shlomi.  Maybe it could be a bit brighter?  I feel the desire to see it more clearly.

UnifiedBrain

Diomede said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

 

WIP update - Brash and Moxie on the Planet of Tree Gardens

Ha!  I thought that you were joking in the original post of this guy.  The tree characters are very creative.  Lighting and textures are terrific!

Stezza

Carrara Banana

I'm selling this one for only $90,000 .... bargain I thought. 

all setup and rendered in Carrara with no postwork. Used @Diomede 's bow with and additional bit of modeling from his freebie pressie, used Carrara's text tool, modeled the pin and tape.

Diomede

WendyLuvsCatz said:

 

.Thanks for the nice comment, UB.  Just a WIP.  Brash and Moxie have very stiff poses, and other problems.  Hope to clean up some.One thng that I am happy with is the sky and stars.  Just a very simple bigradient in the scene tab to get the dark blue sky.  Then replicated tiny spheres on an invisible plane to get the stars.

Happy me.      I just had to do an entry with replicators and water reflections.  My new machine had no trouble rendering quickly.