320+ TUTORIALS at CARRARA CAFE
wetcircuit
Posts: 0
Hey guys, although we are still in the midst of our site redesign I wanted to let everyone know that we now have over 100 TUTORIALS posted at Cafe. w00t! Many are multi-part youtube videos representing countless hours of free Carrara knowledge, ranging from professional tips to beginner's first steps.
As part of our redesigned tutorials section I've added a tagging system to help search tutorials by topic, and offer related subjects. This is still a work in progress, so your feedback is appreciated. If you've ever tried to search for a specific topic on youtube, you understand how difficult it is to find the right video, even finding one you've seen before - search engines just aren't very helpful when it comes to videos.... Our goal with the tags is not to collect every possible keyword for web search engines, but to highlight specific features and broad topics so the Carrara community can find relevant info quickly - without ads and distractions, or unhelpful videos for other software. Tags are also being added to our older tutorial posts, while confusing/similar tags are removed and consolidated - I can't watch every video so it will take some time and evolution before all the tutorials are indexed into solid categories.... If you see a tutorial and there's a topic I've missed or misinterpreted, just leave a comment and your words will be immediately added to the search engine.
Danas has been working with me to keep the site as clutter-free as possible, while presenting the content in the fastest way to view, so you can view each video directly in the search results without a lot of extra clicking.... If you are having any technical problems getting the videos to load as search results, try refreshing the page or clicking on the link to a single page. Related suggestions will be at the bottom. Let me know how this works for you.... The related posts are re-indexed "behind the scenes" as I create the posts, not "live for the user"so this shouldn't effect page load times. ;)
There’s still a lot of work to do - and dozens of tutorials being added daily, I just wanted to post this milestone and say YAY!!! With over 100 tutorials everyone can discover something new about Carrara!
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Comments
it's actually 125 at the moment, but as I go through the old posts there is a lot of clean up work to do... so it is definitely "over 100" but I don't know exactly how many....
I am still finding more tutorials we don't yet have on the site, than tutorials we do.... I estimate we are about halfway just collecting all the existing youtube tutorials, If you know of some tutorials we don't have yet, PM me with links. I'm trying to get in an hour or two a day just to add new vids.
Hiya, Holly,
Wow, things are looking great. I admit to not visiting very often, but these tutorials all organised are just what I need. So much to have available to share.
Thanks so much, you are always helpful!
xx :) SileneUK
Hey, Holly,
I'm getting more tutorialized every day. There's tutorials on my couch; there's tutorials in my bed; there's tutorials hiding UNDER my bed; there's tutorials swimming in my bath; there's tutorials in my medicine cabinet; there's eve minuscule tutorials floating indolently in the air; and when I sit down to eat, there's even tutorials in my soup! What am I going to do?
But seriously, Holly, there's never enough Carrara tutorials for me. You're doing admirable work maintaining Carrara Cafe. I visit it from tome to tome. I appreciate the notifying emails I just started receiving. You ought to get paid.
Hey, Holly,
I'm getting more tutorialized every day. There's tutorials on my couch; there's tutorials in my bed; there's tutorials hiding UNDER my bed; there's tutorials swimming in my bath; there's tutorials in my medicine cabinet; there's minuscule tutorials floating indolently in the air; and when I sit down to eat, there's even tutorials in my soup! What am I going to do?
But seriously, Holly, there's never enough Carrara tutorials for me. You're doing admirable work maintaining Carrara Cafe. I visit it from time to time. I appreciate the notifying emails I just started receiving. You ought to get paid.
I'm becoming a tutorial addict!
I just added a bunch of links to this thread where people might look in the information manual thread. I always took it for granted that everybody knew this already... but how would they? Thanks for the reminder, Holly!
Yeah, there are a lot of very helpful topics in there.
Hi Holly, do you guys have an animated dynamic hair tutorial for Carrara? I'm hoping that someone has cracked the secret on how to get Pixar's Monster's Inc fur for animation using Carrara. :D
I also notice your tutorial section doesn't have a search function... though maybe I'm missing it.
Boojum
Nice collection of tuts! Will have to give it a better look later this weekend.
With construction there is no search yet...
Anything on Architools?
You can use the basic site search (magnifying glass, top right corner) to get started.... But the tags need some cleanup before I can get proper "hooks" in a directory to get you quickly into a topic. There are holes, and many variations of the same words, I haven't even started editing the actual tags yet, just the posts....
There are a number of hair tutorials on the site already, don't know if I've ever seen that "magic" one that names all the secrets to animating. I think if you stay a way from certain shader functions and turn off hair colliding against hair it does fine (pretty sure you still have to set up the physics properties in the usual physics place, not just the hair room..., but it has its limits and there is a give and take with any physics where simpler objects seem to behave better than complex high-poly objects. IMO you have the option of a very complex hair style with shader tricks and "full" guide placement for non-animating, or you can animated with a streamlined simple hair style, or you can break the hair into zones or completely separate models so they won't interact.... Terms like "quality" (the slider) are misleading because they don't necessarily make the sim "better", it just adds more calculation between frames which could lead to over-reaction or too much settling. With sims, less is often more.... Faster too.
Haven't seen one for Architools, we definitely need more tutes for all the plugins!
Thanks so much! :)
Holly, you're doing a fantastic job for the Carrara community. Much appreciated.
A few more added today. Some cool ones for the Vertex Modeler....
We need more Spline Modeler tutorials. Lots of great tools there that are under exploited.
We're now OVER 200 TUTORIALS!!!
Our youtube videos were not able to go fullscreen, they way I was displaying them.... I use an html5 video loader so I had the fullscreen option.... Fortunately someone let me know. I've fixed the issue so the default Youtube Flash loader also now has the button to go fullscreen on all the videos.... If you tried before, they should all be working now.
I've also added a basic tag cloud to the sidebar so you can jump into some of the most popular tags from any page on the site. This will probably evolve over time as well, but it's a start.... The search also works.
Unfortunately with so many new posts I had to restructure Cafe's directory. This has broken some internal links and probably any external links to specific posts are now probably broken (sorry Dartenbeck). I will be spending some time this week getting the featured articles and news posts back on the front page....
Thanks for all the helpful feedback! Please dive in! There's some amazing information here and I'm still trying to get it all tagged and formatted....
Man! The changes are so cool! The place is lively now... I love it. I can fix my broken links as I find them... no biggie compared to having a speedy Cafe!
Thanks a bazillion, Holly!!! :ahhh:
We hit 250 TUTORIALS! :coolgrin:
Still a few out there that I know about (maybe many more I don't?) and this is just the youtube videos...., but I need a break and we gotta get the frontpage of Cafe back in some decent order... But this push has been really fun... and inspiring! So much information out there!
Kudos to Cripeman who has over 70(!) video tutorials online! Another massive contributor is GKDantas who put so much effort into the early life of CAFE as a training resource I was able to merge his original "video manual" into our tutorials category. ScifiFunk has at least 20 after they are grouped together 1 topic per post...
Maybe we need to do a RANDOM TUTORIAL A DAY kind of thing... once we hit 365 tutorials... Hahaha
Or user voting so the useful tutorials can rise to the top somehow...?
And I just saw that Dartanbeck is prepping a video that is over 1hr long.... :bug:
LOL!!! I have redone Carrara 8.5 First Look - Part 2 without the baby giggles, frequency scratches, or music. Just plain old talk.
I've also added a new tutorial to the mix, which Holly kindly added to the Tutorials section here ;) Thanks Holly! :)
And that's just the introduction! :lol:
And that's just the introduction! :lol:When I went through that Carrara 8.5 First Look, part 2, you wouldn't believe how long it took to remove all of the "ummmmm"s from it! I try really hard - and practice - to say what I want to say, without ummm, interrupting... ummmm, what I'm saying... ummm, with an Ummmm. But they tend to find their way in anyways. After a while, I've even grown to recognize where they are by merely looking at the audio waveform! Ummmm has a particular look to it! ;)
It's still a little over a minute longer than an hour. But when I watch it back, I agree with myself that I wish I had that babble session (along with the first part, too) when I first bought Carrara. Don't get me wrong, though. I had great help!
You and Holly, 3dage, DAZ_Dell, McGuiver, Sub7th, Dimension Theory, Fenric, faba, z3, Argus1000, Jetbird, GKDantas, NASSOS, HeadWax, Roygee, man... this list could just keep growing, were all there when I was a Carrara Pup, helping me with all of my millions of questions. Back then even Indigone was active in our old forum, helping me to figure out shaders. I never knew it, but some of the help was coming from other new Carraraists whom have just learned how to help me! LOL
Holly brings up an excellent point about videos. GKDantas "show you how" videos went a long way towards showing me how. Cripeman had some excellent topics in his thread that contained all of the links to his videos. I spent hours reading his thread, with pros coming in and adding their knowledge, Holly has always been brilliant as long as I've been reading her posts, same as yours - as you weren't all that quite either. Cripeman really is a super hero. Or is that spelled: Super Hero? Yeah... that's better. I hope he just keeps on teaching topics in Carrara!
Tim Payne was much less silent then, and had that whole series (thread) on realistic skies. I was getting involved pretty well in that thread just before the fall of the old forums. I know we can still access them, but at a huge cost of frustration and mayhem.
It brought a bit of a disappointing tear to my eye to come back to this new forum to find it so dark and full of 'Down with DAZ' complaint threads. DAZ 3D has never done anything but help me. It really bothers me when they get bashed unnecessarily. Eventually, I started fighting back. Every negative thread I saw, I would counter it with one of love, hope, and inspiration. I contacted my Super Hero, Cripeman, and asked if I could post an index of his videos and, in doing so, more ideas from that emerged and hence was born the Carrara Information Manual thread. A living, breathing spot where we all got together and made this place a prosperous and positive place again.
It took everyone. Some would post me in private. Others would post in the thread, or start a new one. That place has grown from the requests, inspiration, suggestions, complaints, and guidance of everyone here... and I love it. I use it all the time.
Through all of this mayhem, however, those two wonderful diehards, JetBird and GKDantas, and a small band of rebels kept the Cafe rolling. It might not have been brimming with overwhelming new stuff... but it did always have some activity and it was always a beautiful haven for all to come and see the infinite wonders of Carrara! Some new Carraraists joined the ranks and helped out - some very much behind the scenes and quite, while others a bit more aggressive and out-going. Just before the birth of Luxus for Carrara, Holly steps in and starts building a whole new forum system - turning the Cafe into a really hip hangout. I ran out of time for much more than a post or two here and there... and that was it. Many others, including Holly, started getting nailed with Real Life - that dreaded thing that pries us away from our Carrara and our forums. So the Cafe remained a bit quite.
Really cool to see this whole speed rush. Truly, one of the biggest reasons I couldn't travel too far within the Cafe was the time it took to do so. Whatever you did to fix it.... I am very grateful and plan to hang out there much more now. If you ever need me to do something for the place, all you need do is ask, and I'll do my best to come through ;)
Wait..., so you have a list of every tutorial ever? So why am I doing this again...?
:P :coolsmirk:
Hey Holly, can anyone point me to a tutorials to accomplish the following?
I have used Carrara for quite some time for illustrating. But, I am requesting guidance/advice on the best approach in using Carrara to accomplish two animation tasks:
Task 1 - animate the shape of one soft material (FlexWrap NF) conforming to the shape of a second rigid material.
Task 2 - animate a semi-liquid material coming from a tube, such as caulk from a caulk-gun.
Specific examples that I would like to replicate can be viewed in this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqP4liutJFs, timeframe 0:22 to 0:25 for the Task 1, and timeframe 0:34 to 0:39 for Task 2.
If anyone can provide steps using Carrara, or reference any known tutorial, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
I would use particles for the caulk (change the particles to metaballs.) guided by a path (or the shape tracing a windo may be so simple that it's just a few keyframes to position the emitter) http://carraracafe.com/tutorials/writing-with-the-particle-emitter/
for the other material that conforms to the window, I would use Morph Targets http://carraracafe.com/tag/morph-targets/
then animate the morph.
Of course there's more than one way to skin Carrara, but I hope that helps get you started. :)
:P :coolsmirk:List? I have no such list! It was in the Cafe under tutorials: GKDantas :roll:
:P :coolsmirk:
I have a list of all Carrara Tutorials, but cannot release them as they are part of the anticipated package to be released within 24 hours of March 31, 2015.
Hey Holly,
Where you looking in your crystal ball when you put up the star wars image?
Just heard on the radio that Harrison Ford, Amy Fisher and Mark Hamal have just started filming a new episode of Star Wars!
Spooky or what!
Eyesee (Jedi Tea Master - The Saga Continues - Yaaah :lol:)
Love that picture, Holly. A truly small band of rebels! ;)
Haha, you look different in the Cafe Forums...
I can only HOPE that Princess Leah wakes up and realizes those horrible prequels were JUST A BAD DREAM.... Instead, they've all grown older and wiser and live happily ever after with lots of grandkids! lol
Really? I do know that there are many that look upon the prequels in dislike. Perhaps it's because the die-hard original trilogy fans grew up? I don't know. I am rather lucky to be cursed (blessed?) with an unstoppable flow of immaturity. Anyways... I love them. Sure, there are parts that I wish would have got cut. Some of the horrible attempts at humor could have been cut altogether or at least lessened a bit. And then there were scenes that got cut that I really feel like dubbing in myself! ;)
The Clone Wars animated series that ran for five seasons on Cartoon Network, and is being followed up with a grand finally of sorts, is a masterpiece to me. I like it just as much as the movies and sometimes even more so. It's darker. Less forgiving. Less family viewer style. More heart-pounding and very well animated with the use of a fantastic cast. The art/modeling teams really made an excellent feel for the series. I haven't seen much on its successor, "Rebels", but it almost looks like they're going for a more Disney/Cartooney style. I kind of hope not. In Clone Wars, much of the concept art for the original films as envisioned and painted by the legendary Ralph McQuarrie is quite evident. Grievous kills Jedi mercilessly, and he's not the only one killing people horribly. They do a fantastic job of showing how brutal the war was on those poor clones! They just drop like flies, even though you also learn that they were definitely born of the right stuff... they're just overwhelmed. Senator Padme is also a true action hero, which is very cool.
So if there are any Star Wars fans out there that might feel that the prequels were a bit of a disappointment, I strongly suggest picking up the first season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Fasten your seat belt and enjoy the ride. My bet is that you'll go out and get the rest of the series as well. BTW, I won't spoil it for you, but the ending is superb! Still crying my eyes out! The final chapter of the Clone Wars, yet to be released is not the ending, just another chapter - I guess. "The Lost Missions" (link goes to trailer), where we begin to find out about "protocol 66", Master Cypher Dias (sp?), and other cool stuff.
Another of my favorite aspects of the series is how they really portray how beneficial and heroic Anakin was in his life as a Jedi Knight. You actually need to watch the 2d animation of The Clone Wars (which is also excellent - just a different media) to find out how he elevates to become a knight, how he first meets, Ventress - Agent of Evil, and when General Grievous makes his first appearance. Very worthwhile stuff! Wow, have I just painted myself as a Star Wars nerd? That's okay. My Rosie loves me anyways! :)
LOL. I completely disagree about the prequels... In fact I was writing a whole longazzz post on facebook about how Star Wars is really just a big silly monster/disco/mashup of all genres done with a straight face - psychic druid fights Hitler IN SPACE...Boy rescues Princess she is tougher than he is IN SPACE.... Humphrey Bogart is a smuggler for the good guys IN SPACE.... Shakespearean servants for comedy relief IN SPACE... if you like BIG '70s movies, it was all about cross-genre and mixing up wildly different influences (Disco Dracula, is like my iconic example...), so it was a BIG movie but it wasn't meta until MECO remixed the themesong and that got played every 5min on the radio at the height of disco being disco, and then the toys hit big, and Star Wars became ULTRAMETA with TV specials, toys, radio.... Like Michael Jackson big. Comicbooks, novels... then came a huge wave of imitators following the same mashup formula IN SPACE, there's a movie with Sybil Danning - Battle Beyond the Stars! It is essentially SEVEN SAMURAI/MAGNIFICENT 7 mashup of all genres... IN SPACE...
So Star Wars 2 couldn't follow their own formula because it was already done to death, but they literally had UNLIMITED MONEY for the sequel so they bought the best talent in the business and the biggest sound stages and the best talent - Frank Oz, etc.... ALL the iconic moments we love from Star Wars come from EMPIRE STRIKES BACK - Yoda, Boba Fett, the "full" Millennium Falcon, Han Solo as a clever pilot, sarcastic 3PO, gadety R2, the AT-ATs, actual swordfighting (not Cirque de Soles).... They all came from this movie.... And it's GORGEOUS! And it's directed so well. AND THE HERO LOSES! and the LOVERS ARE SEPARATED! and the BADGUYS WIN! it's just such great operatic cinema, and it's deep, and thrilling.... and GEORGE LUCAS DID NOT DIRECT IT he hired the greatest talent his money could buy.
The 3rd movie, the story effort is there but the characters are hollow, and the puppets look like puppets.... What SHOULD have been amazing, Like Leah walks into Jabba's castle with a bomb, pretends to be a sex slave, saves her bf, then MURDERS JABBA WITH HER OWN SLAVE CHAINS - this is a kickass first half of the story! Instead to play to fanboys, Luke shows up with superpowers (Luke, the guy that got his ass kicked and his hand cut off and is at his lowest ever) is now superman and *yawn*. Boys buy more toys so lets have him fight some more monsters.... That just took it all downhill. The end battle is cartoonish and obvious and over-acted. There's no grown up story anymore.... The prequels only make it worse. If you really believe the prequels are ok, you should watch the reviews by Plinkett (they are funny, and intelligent, and entertaining). He eviscerates why those prequels are a sad joke so much better than anyone I've ever read: http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star-wars/
I liked the Clone Wars cartoon
Plinkett? You and I disagree about several things, evidently. I accidentally ran across that, thinking of Killian Plunkett, not Plinkett. The first few words out of his mouth turned me (and his program) off! LOL
Killian Plunkett, on the other hand, I am always happy to listen to. He is the art director on the 3d animated Clone Wars and now for Rebels.
While I can totally understand where you're coming from, and respect that... that sort of judgement is actually part of what is refreshing about Star Wars and the entire franchise: "Who really cares? we've only really come to have fun!"
George knew, right from the start, that Star Wars would be torn apart by that sort of thinking... it's to be expected. Overrated? Perhaps. I don't actually like the movies as much as I enjoy looking at them as they play. Personally, I like to watch for artistic scenes, listen to the music, and of course, have some fun!
There are things that I don't care for, but as a whole, I love the whole thing. But what I really love about it all, is what it does for my imagination. It's not always about the story at hand, for me. Even though I happen to like the Star Wars story, it also propels me into entirely different stories in entirely different places.
I enjoy the "Behind the Scenes" look of the Star Wars movies and other stuff. The work by Ralph McQuarrie is truly stunning. I actually never really saw these concept painting before fairly recently, except in a short glimpse here and there. But I'll see similar art in my mind as I'm watching any one of the movies, and especially the 3d animated series. I enjoy watching how they developed the separate lift for the pilot of the gunships for the Clone Wars - not through some behind the scene special, but just by watching the show. While everyone else just walks down the ramp, the pilot's seat lowers the pilot down to the ramp level, vertically. The pilot gets up, the seat elevates back up to the cockpit! :) Just cool stuff that the modelers and animators did under Plunkett's direction, whom is quite meticulous, and always tries to keep McQuarrie's original art, and Lucas' original vision in mind.
Plinkett though... I have a hard time that you've added "intelligent" to the list. His introduction to the program doesn't sound very intelligent - at least not if he wanted to captivate an audience with those whom may like Star Wars. Anyways, I didn't give him a chance. So you might be right. But I'm never really in the mood to watch a show regarding how much something sucks. Peter Jackson made an amazing adaptation of the Lord of the Rings, and is doing a fine job with The Hobbit as well. He has a better way of putting thing, I think. He wants to make something that can stand the test of time, not to be a glaring special effects attempt that can later become dated. That, to me, is a much better way of saying that something else sucks. By doing something better, without bashing the other openly and rudely.
The first words out of Plinkett's mouth are rude - period. It would have been better if he would have re-written the story and made a new movie that illustrates how to do it better. Man Stan and I had an argument going on once. Okay... not just once, but... I'm talking about one of those times. Somebody came in and said that they looked through my posts of renders over the years and didn't think that I was any good, so that I had no merit to argue with the Stan. I explained something in regard to the fact that I am not a still artist, and that most of my pictures that I post are some unfinished frame from some unfinished animation that was posted as some sort of explanation about something or other. As for the stills that I did post and that you may not like, to each his or her own, I say. Man Stan came back a said something to the order of: "How dare you say anything bad about another person's art! Telling someone that you don't like them or what they say is one thing, but don't go messing with another person's personal expressions!"
I almost pooped!
What the...?
I thought for sure that I was making a small post this time... what on earth happened? :ahhh: