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That's why I was waiting for the Daz release. Now I pay only $35 instead of $50 if I had bought directly from InfiniteSkills ( I would also have paid an extra 15% tax because I'm a Canadian and InfiniteSkills is a Canadian company. Now I pay no tax). PhilW tutorials are always top notch quality.
Thank you for the vote of confidence, I'm glad we got there in the end!
Nice that it hit the Daz Stores.. I will be getting shortly after I finish! Glad you are making these. Getting from Point A to Point B and understanding the why is important even as you develop your own style.
And for future tutorial ideas.. rendering in layers and putting together in photoshop/elements/gimp and perhaps tossing in some postwork so things like rendering passes, AO, multiple light renders, shadows etc and putting together, or even postwork concepts. like http://laticis.deviantart.com/art/The-Mestophales-Dragon-Render-WIP-333750061 or http://flippednormals.com/tutorial/improving-3d-renders-photoshop/
BTW Adobe has the cloud going on at least through today that I know of for 9.99 per month for Photoshop and Lightroom https://creative.adobe.com/plans/photography?sdid=KPHZP
Hi PhilW
just added your product to my cart but I can't buy it cause there's nothing in my cart. So I add it again and it tells me that it's already in my cart, but it isn't there. Hmm
I had a similar issue recently with the DAZ cart - try logging off and then on again, I think that resolved it for me. Oh and thanks for buying it!
Thanks, downloading now!!
Watched the whole thing. Bravo!!! my first impression. There are some points that deserve a before and after render to prove the point, but I give this series a 9.5 out of 10. Stuff like this should be basic knowledge for any Carrara user
This training really is superb. With the price point on this so low (especially during the intro sale) if you're a Carrarist, it's crazy to pass this up. Phil talks about a 'step change' in the level of your rendering and understanding the Carrara engine, and I really believe that's true.
I only spent $25 over at infinite skills to get the monthly (and it will allow me to also watch phil's other advanced carrara trainings too). I feel a little like I stole it, it's so good of a value for the money. But hey it leaves me a little extra to go and purchase one of Phil's hairsets I don't have yet :)
That said there are tons of comments/questions/discussions I'd love to pose to others who have watched the training (and of course Phil too), but have to be very careful not to get too specific on anything as I wouldn't want to damage the value of the product in any way.
For example, I wanted to say how brilliant the solution Phil came up with for Carrara hair to get it to not behave crazily but be very solid 'what you see is what you get' when taking it into the 2.2 level rendering. I don't have a clue how you figured it out but that works really really well :)
And I think the SSS settings for skin are some the best I've seen from anyone yet. It adheres to the admonishment of 'first do no harm' which I have found to my dismay that SSS if overdone can be worse than no SSS at all (I'm very guilty of this myself). But I was wondering about SSS for the eyes... yay or nay? Any thoughts? I've always heard the common folk wisdom that 'if you use SSS on the skin, you have to put it in the eyes too, or else they will look weird', but I slowly have come to believe that's not true at all. Certainly I think the iris looks better in most instances if there is no sss, and if any area of the eye might look better I'm guessing it would be the sclera. Just wondering what other people's opinions on this might be.
Also wanted to say I learned tons from the exterior rendering section. This training is simply fantastic.
ProPose and Jon - thanks so much for the feedback and positive endorsements.
Just to pick up on Jon's SSS question, I think that SSS is most important on the skin and you can get away with not having on the eyes in most circumstances. If you have it there (for a very close-up view for example), you are right that the sclera is the area that would need it the most, and I would tend not to put it on the iris, and definitely not on the pupil, cornea or eye surface. As I said in the training, Carrara's implementation of SSS is not the greatest in the world, it is one area that I find Octane to be better (I can at last talk about Octane as I have been testing the "Octane Render for Carrara" plugin for the past six months but sworn to secrecy!).
Realism Rendering Traing Videos
PhilW,
I'm just wondering if this product is geared more towards Stills or Animation Side of Rendering? Because I do mainly animations but it sounds like something that might help take my renderings to the next step.
Thanks,
Turk, it really is geared to techniques to enhance realism in lighting and textures, with sections on outdoor scenes, indoor scenes and lighting, and human portraiture (realism in skin, hair eyes, etc). The examples are all static images, not animations. That said, if you're looking to enhance realism in your renders, I think the principles as far as texturing and lighting go would also apply. I don't think you can go wrong with it, for what it's worth.
Quick one from me putting some of the realism tips into practice, also playing with carrara dynamic hair. Wonder if there's a good way to keep the eyes sharp when someone is wearing glasses, guess I could take down the level of reflection in the glasses lenses so that the eyes shine through, but taking away reflection from the lenses will mean the glass looks less like glass...
Jon - great image and good to see things being put into practice - it's what it is all about! Regarding the eyes, you could try just rotating your figure a bit so that the reflection on the glasses is more off to one side (but still as strong) so that it is not sitting right over the eyes. But this is looking great as it is!
Thanks for the tip, Philw, I started to reposition camera and figure and realized something I missed the first tie around in my focus simply on skin settings, which is that the staging of the first pic isn't very good or interesting, doesn't obey rule of thirds, kind of flat and uninteresting, and seems to sort of glare sullenly at the camera. So a few tweaks to treat it more like a real render instead of a texture/lighting test only, and while the texturing is the same, I think the positioning gives more flavor/character and is less... boring.
Also discovered you are dead on right about the camera angle being crucial to making the glasses work. I'm guessing maybe camera angle facing flat on for glasses is always going to give a sunglasses/murky/unfocused look because of the reflective overlays. Camera viewing the glasses at angle does much better at letting us see more clearly beyond to the eyes, but without having to dilute the reflectivity of the glass itself. I wonder if real life photographers ever run into similar issues?
Oh yeah, I'm super self-centered so of course the first thing I did to play around with this new realism learning was a self-portrait (and adding the glasses I think I've got the morph pretty close), but now that I've got my narcissism out of the way, going to move on back to doing pretty women who are scantily clad. To incorporate all the elements you taught, I should do some scantily clad women in the outdoors, also some with scantily clad women indoors, and a perennial favorite, a scantily clad women next to a shiny car (never done one of those before, but thanks to the realism training I would feel comfortable giving it a shot).
All Carrara users, please be aware: you would be crazy not to get the Realism training, I can't believe how much I learned about how the Carrara render engine works :)
Does Phil go into the IR maps or use them?
Jon - I can confirm that it is definitely an issue for photographers taking pictures of people with glasses! Great job and I like the expression too. I never knew what a handsome guy you were!
Evil - my eyes can't see into the IR range... But seriously, no not really, did you have a particular issue?
I was just wondering if you touched on using the irradiance maps and some of the advantages and disadvantages.
So many sales are ending Aug 31st... BEFORE everybody's next pay day...
I tapped out my budget this month pretty big around here, playing a decade of catch up...
EDIT: OK... bought it...
Seemed to good to pass up.
I picked it up and now need to download and watch. As a peson sjust starting in Carrara i thought I should start out with some good training vids.
Look forward to practicing.
Thank you for buying it. It's probably not for me to say, but if you are completely new to Carrara then the Learning Carrara 8.5 title may be best suited to your needs, although I am sure that you will get value from the Realism set too, start with good lighting and rendering practices and you don't have to unlearn bad habits!
I am new to carrara but not new to 3D I have had DAZ Studio since 2007 version 1.5 so have seen it grow.
I Have some of the Dreamlight tutorials aswell and find that when he concentrates on the basics such as lighting then it really improves your work.
I bought Carrara because my daughter wants to go to college for 3D animation and thought that this was a good place for her to start and not to expensive but has lots of capability. I have considered the basic and advanced courses you have and will eventually get them. But I thought I would start with this one as it was on sale at the moment.
I intend on entering the September challenge to see how it goes.
Great - I am sure you will learn a lot from getting involved in the September challenge and good to have you on board!
Seen that the other 2 carrara tutorials are currently on sale so picked them up as well.
Great - I hope you get a lot out of them.
Phil, you're an awesome teacherist!
I know this feeling :) But if it's any consolation, I don't think you'll regret this purchase one bit. Perhaps the most indispensable Carrara product ever, actually...
You guys are just too kind...keep it coming!
Hi,
I have added the links of the free video tutorials: Carrara Realism Rendering by Phil Wilkes (Infinite Skills).
http://carraracafe.com/tag/realism-rendering/
Very good work Phil.
rk.
Watching the video of the outdoor render - Phill takes a photo of his lawn, does some photoshop wizzbangery, and suddenly has a seamless texture map.
- The tricks he uses to get that... I've been trying to figure that out since the late 1990s, and now I have it being done, step by step, right there.
Not even directly Carrara related - justified the purchase. But then some of the tricks used to make a horrid low detail model of a house into a an amazingly nice outdoor of a relatively realistic looking house... were impressive.
Is the texture map behind that grass in the files somewhere? embedded in the .car maybe? My lawn more or less isn't as a San Franciscan. Lawns are something people who live in much more spacious cities than mine get... :)
Though I am one of the very rare people who has a patch about 4 feet wide near me... that all my neighbors with dogs keep using... (sigh) Going to try to get a photo of it... but its kinda small for anything useful.