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Thanks for the encouragement, Bunyip02. Please share your successes and failures.
I have another strange report. This time I have something that works with genesis but not with V4, even though it is designed for V4. There is an angel outfit called Heaven Sent for V4. It loads directly in Carrara fine, but I get an error when I try to conform it to V4. However, if I use "fit to" genesis in studio and save it as a wearable preset, I can use it in Carrara with genesis.
Very odd. Is this a one-time shot? Has this kind of thing happened to anyone else?
Hello Diomede64
Over the next little while I was going to redo Vicki6 with the clothes I did for the Challenge. I'll do the method I used first, followed by my quick attempts ending in using the obj import method from DAZ, I will then explore the various methods other people including yourself have advised.
Then I'll post the results with attached screenies in this thread. Will be from the viewpoint of a Newbie trying to understand Carrara.
Hopefully it will be of use for other Newbie's, as well as future development for Carrara. Would be nice if the process ran a bit smoother.
If I find that the problem with my first attempt at my Challenge scene was due to some part of the process that I did wrong causing the scene to lock up on me I will also post that.
I was a bit cautious about posting stuff in here until I had enough understanding of how Carrara operated.
Regards, Bunyip
I don't know if it is the cause, but in your screen shot, the highlighted item looks like it is within the V4.2 hierarchy, or parented to V4. Perhaps this is causing Carrara to choke?
I don't know if it is the cause, but in your screen shot, the highlighted item looks like it is within the V4.2 hierarchy, or parented to V4. Perhaps this is causing Carrara to choke?
Hello EP
Is it usual for Carrara to get upset if the hierarchy is not followed ?
Might be the cause of my scene that refused to work, can't remember exactly what I did but I was exploring quite a few options that day.
For myself, it has been very stable, but then, I'm using an old computer, with an old OS and an old version of Carrara. The reason I mentioned the hierarchy is basically because it is outside the normal way of doing it, and the nil-pointer error seemed to indicate it was something to do with the parameter/hierarchy thingy.
Where Carrara bugs out on me, is if I switch to rapidly between the Assembly room and Texture room, switch back and forth between shaders to fast, especially complex shaders. Carrara can enter what I call Zombie mode where you still can access menus, but nothing happens, sometimes you can switch rooms and it completely unresponsive. It doesn't even show up in my activity monitor as unresponsive.
One other Zombie mode enabling action is to close the volumetric cloud editor- especially if it is in the middle of updating the preview.
Hi, EP. That wasn't the problem. I've done some more tests with the Heaven Sent for V4 product. For whatever reason, the feathers figure is giving me an error in Carrara but not in Studio. The dress figure works in both programs. I made sure that nothing was in the V4 hierarchy and still got errors for the feathers. Strange. Open to other suggestions.
I appreciate your thoughts, especially since the subject of the thread can't really apply to you yet.
So, the icons for the different costume pieces say, parent to this and parent to that which I assume means conformed? Or do they not conform? What if you brought the piece in first, then the V4? Is there an option to bring the pieces in without parenting?
It is something about the product's feathers figure. I will try uninstalling and reinstalling. Some of the elements like the dress and feathers are conforming, and others are not. The wings are parented to the chest. The halo is parented to the head. Strange that it all works in Studio, and will all work in Carrara if run through Studio's transfer utility for genesis, but the feathers get an error in Carrara.
If it isn't fixed by uninstalling and reinstalling, I will try to contact the vendor. I don't think it is a general Carrara problem because I have been doing similar tests on other V4 and M4 content that I bought during the same sale and haven't had any problems.
Edit: Uninstalled and reinstalled. Still get an error for the feathers figure. Something specific to the product.
Did you try loading the feather without the V4 figure first? Also, you might try and import the object file to see if it is the geometry that is the issue. If it loads fine, then it could be the rig or some kind of script that is needed on load.
Thanks for the suggestions, EP and Dart.
The error I got with the Heaven Sent figure seems to be isolated to just that product's feathers figure. It is no way a genesis or genesis 2 or duf problem. Heaven Sent is designed for V4 and I get the errors when I load from the "runtime" library and conform to V4. The dress figure from the same product bundle does not cause any errors when loaded in the same way. For the feathers, I don't get the error when I convert the product to a wearable preset duf in studio and use fit to with genesis in Carrara.
If anything, the genesis / duf system is a fix for that problem (which is odd in itself).
I will notify the vendor. Not a big deal.
Edit: same problems occurred after I uninstalled and reinstalled the product
Hmmm....
I find it wierd - I get Poke-thru issues showing in the Assembly Room, yet when rendering, theres no Poke-thru issues at all, even in various poses... And this is putting together the G2F figure in Carrara, applying hair, and G2 clothing with AutoFit ...
On the very flipside - i'm finding out the hard way that Carrara is having issues with when applying more than 2 or 3 AutoFit to Genesis2 clothing items... Carrara hangs...
Anyone else find that Carrara is very slow to update the Smart Content tab when clicking between Genesis2 and non Genesis items in the Instances list? Or even between different Genesis2 items in the instances list such as G2F and Hair and the applied Outfit ?
I've got Daz Studio, Install Manager, Carrara, and all the installed content residing between 2 individual 512gb SSD's , along with 64gb of DDR3 1866mhz ram... And dual Xeon cpu's running windows 8.1 pro .... and Carrara 8.5 Pro 64bit build 243
I'll have to try some of the other suggestions mentioned in this thread, including adding the Genesis content folder as a "content" type runtime folder to the regular "Content" browser tab....
But yeah, we really need some major improvements in Carrara for better Genesis / Genesis2 generation content support... And this is me keeping the faith patiently since Genesis came out, and still buying Genesis 2 & 1 content regularly... If we can get better functionality in Carrara to the level or better of Daz Studio, this is would be awesome ;)
In the attached images below, I've loaded the A6 Battle Girl Full , Jenna hair, and the full body suit as shown (can't recall which set its from right now)... Though when I try adding individual boots, or even some other shirt & pants and sleeves, i don't get very far for auto-fitting before carrara hangs...
Very interesting result, Mohandai. Thanks for posting and please share any other results and issues with Genesis and Genesis 2 content. I never use the smart content tab so that has been a gap in my postings in this thread. I'd be interested in any other observations related to that.
The limit that you are experiencing for auto fit items looks frustrating. I was having trouble making a large scene (see posts above) but found a workflow that works for me. I have been able to load more than two items of hair/clothing without a problem, although sometimes it is slow. Your computer specifications are better than mine (more memory, for example), so I doubt it is a hardware issue. I wonder if it could be related to running smart content, which I don't do?
I want to be clear about "...adding the Genesis content folder as a "content" type runtime folder to the regular "Content" browser tab". When I used the DIM installer to install Studio and Carrara, it created folders labeled "My Library", "My Daz3D Library", and "My Daz3D Library Runtime". By default, the DIM installs content in .duf/dsf format (genesis-related) to the "My Daz3D Library", and it installs content in the.cr2/.pp2 format (V4/M4, and other poser style) to the "My Daz3D Library Runtime" folder. Just make sure that your content tab has those folders, or any other that you (or DIM) install content to. I think one potential problem that has not been discussed yet is if the DIM creates a duplicate My Daz... folder to install to, but the second folder is not added to the content tab. I could imagine that happening if someone has to uninstall and reinstall to address a different problem, but old folders are still present.
Initially, I always load items from the My Daz... folders in the content tab, not from smart content. For items that I might use a lot, or that are for a longer term project, I save the item in Carrara format to the objects tab in the browser tray in subfolders I created by figure type. For the second or third time I use something, I load the item from the objects tab rather than the My Daz... folders. I'm not sure this is really making a difference, so I'd be curious to hear from others.
In the attached images, I show
- a WIP scene with one genesis and four genesis 2 females, most with at least 3 conforming items (hair/clothing), with yamaki show poses applied (made for rrrr contest, and I described some of my problems assembling this scene in previous posts, but eventually worked out)
- some screengrabs of the content folders and objects tab that I described. As you can see, I don't activate the smart content tab. I think that saves memory and makes Carrara mor stable, but I don't really know that for sure. If people have success with smart content, please share best practices.
- one screengrab shows Genesis 2 male in the people subfolder of the My Daz3D Library folder
- one screengrab shows .cr2 style content for toon Sara in the My Daz3D Library Runtime folder
- one screengrab shows clothing for the Genesis 2 female saved to a subfolder in the objects tab in Carrara format
- one screengrab shows that the smart content folder remains empty as long as it is not activated by opening a folder
It is frustrating. However, I think if we continue to share our workflows and successes and failures, we should be able to identify what we can and cannot do with Genesis-related content in Carrara.
Thread on adding non-Daz content
There was a thread in the Commons on adding content purchased elsewhere. The thread includes some useful information that applies to Genesis-related content to be used in Carrara a well.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/46919/
I "sometimes" find if I save .car files to the objects tab for re-use, if I have applied hair or fur with Car hair tools (not using purchased hair, like PhilW's), the item comes up without the hair or fur. I don't understand how that can happen as it's applied directly to the clothing or figure and those items are listed in the hierarchy showing hair in the tree. But up in the shader view you can see from the Assy Room, the hair is blacked out and there is no shader applied when I go to the Shader Room nor in the Hair room, although the area of the object is greened as though you were selecting to create hair.
Not all the time, just sometimes! I wonder if when Car is saving to browser that it's skipping saving the hair? As said, not all the time and I have not brought it up as I assumed it was me doing something wrong.
If I save the object as a Car file and do not put it into the browser, it opens fine. So sometimes I have had to build a scene around a previously made figure, OR load from the browser and reapply the hair/fur, then apply the customised hair shader which I do save as I make a lot of them for various colours and textures.
Just to be more quirky, if I then try to save a re-haired/re-furred item again to the browser as an object, then it might be OK from then on. Once it's OK, it stays OK. Or if it never failed before as a browser saved object, it won't suddenly start doing it.
When you look at the icons in the browser object... my figure or item appears furred/haired to me, which is why it's frustrating.
Does it have to do with file size and the amount of hair applied? This is on Genesis not Genesis 2. Haven't done any on G2 yet.
Sorry if it sounds confusing, but if someone else has had had this problem, then maybe they can better explain it!
:-S Silene
"Sometimes" is the worst!
Like smart content issues, the topic of applying Carrara hair to genesis is an important topic that is currently missing from the thread. I'd be interested in any other experiences or observations that you have had.
I have applied Ringo and PhilW hair successfully to genesis and genesis 2, but I have only attempted to create my own hair a few times so I can't address your issue right now. If I remember correctly, one of the issues that I did have was that my system slowed down too much when I entered the hair room for genesis and genesis2. I abandoned that approach and made a vertex object hair cap from my base figure envelope (see above posts) and applied hair to that, which saved normally. I have a Carrara hair cap (that I haven't used) for genesis in my browser tray, but I'm not sure if it came with genesis starters essentials or if I bought it along with a Ringo or PhilW hair product. You might want to check to see if you have the "genesis hair cap" in the "people/genesis/hair/carrara hair cap" folder. I note that I don't have a similar cap in the genesis 2 male or female hair folders. I'll try some hair experiments when I get some time. You are right, it is crucial that we be capable of saving hair consistently.
Another topic that is currently missing from the thread is shading, texturing, 3D painting, and other surface treatments. If anyone has any known problems or solutions, please share.
Correction - there is a carrara hair cap for the g2 female in my "my daz3d library" browser tray. Again, I'm not sure if it came with the g2f bundle, or if I bought it along with a vendor hair product. In any case, I use my own vertex objects as hair caps.
"Sometimes" is the worst!
Like smart content issues, the topic of applying Carrara hair to genesis is an important topic that is currently missing from the thread. I'd be interested in any other experiences or observations that you have had.
I have applied Ringo and PhilW hair successfully to genesis and genesis 2, but I have only attempted to create my own hair a few times so I can't address your issue right now.
Car HAIR: I have not used hair caps so far... my people are not that highly styled or else I use a hair product, like Reby Sky hair as well with the Car hair to fill out.
I first did this with Vayne's braid. I made a short haired style and brushed it up and inward at the back and then shoved the braid into the "updo". Done out of ignorance but it worked as the braid is poseable and I did not want it sprouting out of the top of my character's head from a girly hairstyle which is how Vayne Braid comes from AprilYSH. It was easy to remove the braid from the cap without losing the bone segments.
ETA: Ya know.... I think I will make this a haircap and save it with the braid as an object. Will be interesting if it works.
As to 3D WEIGHT PAINTING.... ugh. If I have a morphed Genesis figure and go into Model Room and click on Animation Mode, it goes from the basic Genesis build to the morphed build.... but but but, when you click on the weight painting brush, you cannot apply the 3D sphere brush tool, eg if I chose scaling for the arm as below. It illuminates the basic Genesis figure and your morphed figure/area separately as indicated by the dotted mesh! Hard on the eye to apply as when you click on the 3D sphere brush, your figure will switch fully to morph, but let up on the 3D sphere brush, and it snaps back to the base figure with separate dot mesh. So I untick that tool to change to the 2D brush to get the morphed firgure to stay that way whilst moving the brush around in a 2D way only, having to turn the figure this way and that to sort my painting. Sorry, I do not know the term for those mesh dots. Helper Geometry? Or is that in Blender? Help!
ETA: Changed topic to 3D WEIGHT painting... per Diomede's post below.
:roll: Silene
Silene, that hair braid looks great. I will return to that topic after a few more experiments.
Regarding 3D paint, I meant the texture/shader 3D paint, not the weightmap brush for joints - but joints are another good topic to explore. That is another I will have to put off for the moment.
RE: the 3D paint tool and genesis/genesis2 textures. My initial tests are successful. It might be tedious and PITA, but as long as you are diligent about selecting only the material zones that you want to paint on, the 3D paint tool seems to work on Genesis and Genesis2. It seems to have the same functionality as 3D paint for Michael 4, Victoria 4, and other figures. You might need the Pro version of Carrara for this feature.
If you don't know how that works for the other figures, here is an example using genesis.
I loaded a genesis figure with the default gray shader on all material zones (repeated for genesis2 male) in the assembly room
- highlight the actor level of the genesis figure
- click on the 3D paint tool in the upper left of the assembly room
- there is a warning about no active textures
- in the upper right properties tray, click on he magic wand looking thing in the color row.
- you will get a message about which material zones to paint - beware that if you select them all, then a paint stroke on the face will also have a paint stroke on the corresponding place n the other maps (perhaps chest or thigh). So select only the zone you want to paint on.
- you will be offered the chance to name and save the texture map you will create.
- Click on the tool tab in the upper right to choose the color for the paint, the characteristics of the brush, etc
- make sure the little eye icon and the little paint brush icon is active in the row for the color channel. They should glow a little.
- use control left-click drag to set the size of the brush.
- paint as desired on the chosen map zone. You can change colors, brush characteristics, etc. as you go.
- for this example, I painted half of genesis's face green and half red, with black diamonds around the eyes.
- save the map or maps for later use
- you could paint on a tattoo, a gash or wound, tight clothing, make-up, a rash, or you could paint in the bump or displacement channel to create goosebumps. Lots of options.
Note - Because you can paint in the alpha channel, this could be another way to address targeted poke through issues.
Did some experiments with Carrara dynamic hair on Genesis 2 characters. Here are a couple observations.
1) I got Ringo's hair for Aiko 6, which worked fine by dragging it directly on the actor level of the G2F.
2) I don't know how Ringo did it, because my computer slows to a crawl when I drag a new hair group on to the Genesis 2 figures. I can "select all" for a new hair group but I lose my cursor whenever I try any of the hair editing tools.
3) As I mentioned above, it is not hard to create a hair cap to fit the skull with the vertex modeler. In my case, because I already have the envelope object described in previous posts, I made a couple of hair caps. I uvmapped them and applied a texture map of hair that I got a long time ago.
3a - I used the Daz Studio transfer utility to make one of my hair caps into a conforming genesis 2 figure. However, the hair model that I put on it seemed to be damaged in the saving/retrieving and morphing process.
3b - Instead of making it a conformable figure,I saved some hair caps as simple prop objects. I had more success with that method.
In the attached pics, you can see the prop hair caps with simple hair models. One hair cap has no dynamic hair, but just shows the hair pic texture that was applied. One hair cap has the black hair. Make sure to save the hair cap with the hair attached to your browser. Finally, you can see the hair plus cap retrieved from the browser and parented to the head of a genesis 2 female. And, you can see how much I suck at hair styling. Oh, no, I don't suck, I meant to make her look like Phyllis Diller, really.
One thing I noticed about commercially available dynamic hair sets is that they always seem to have the show generated hair option enabled. I can understand why, but it is not good for performance. My suggestion is to not display generated hairs or guide hairs in the Assembly room. The other thing that can help performance is to disable the option in the Hair room as well.
For adjusting hair shaders, I usually make note of the hair quantities in the hair group, and then reduce the quantity before editing the hair shader. After I'm done, I reenter the original numbers. I find on my older system I don't get as much of a lag when adjusting a shading parameter and then waiting for Carrara to simulated the hair after the numbers of hairs is reduced. I find it also makes the redraw of the shader preview more stable. I tend to put Carrara in Zombie Mode if I make my adjustments to fast for the preview to finish rendering.
I never let hair go above a count of about 50K for head hair and length does matter! Dio, that hair count in the image looks very high.
I found a hair product, can't recall the name at the moment, where it had almost as many guide hairs as it did hairs! That brought my CPU to its knees. Will have to see if I can find it again as I've avoided it. ETA: It's Long Locks http://www.daz3d.com/long-locks See below for guides view.
For viewing hair count, I sometimes tick and untick the Show Generated Hairs when in the Hair Room just to see if the brushing or styling is going well. Showing generated hairs all the time is cumbersome and you can't easily move guide hairs. I try to start with a basic guide count and only add if a particular area is hard to manage, like around the hair line (eg when using the subtract tool to soften the edged) or the crown where you can get flattened bald spots in spite of push. I solve that by putting in shorter guide hairs then trimming the actual hairs and pushing them up then blending them in. Unless you want big hair you don't always get a good result by pushing all hairs even if the segment count is high and they are evened out.
I think when you are in the Shader Room for using the Car hair create tool, the preview render window seems to be set at 5% for rendering. If it's a straight-forward blend of colours, it renders in the shader room OK even if I increase it to 100% for a quick view it can be OK. But if it has lots of mixers and blenders and wave/thickness etc and a big tree for it, then mine can just freeze up at even 5% in the preview render window.
I don't like whatever light is used in that preview window in the Shader room render, so seeing something at full 100% display is deceiving to my eyes anyways. It's never the same as a render from the Assy Room where I know that is how it will look. Is this something that can be controlled?
Thank you for reminding me about hair caps... will have to start doing that for Genesis 2 figures as I have tried to apply some package Car hair and the hair comes out all over the body. Did someone say that's because the poly count on the figure is different? Sorry if I don't remember the reason correctly and would like to know.
Perhaps PhilW might post here. His hair tut in his IS video gave me a great start, but his products are great and I often use Addison Hair for a base to re-style or on which to grow my own! ;)
:) Silene
Long Locks Hair Guides....eeek....I don't know how to style it! In the promo image, her head is back, but if you make your character's head straight on the shoulders, it's sticks straight out the back. Too many guide hairs to brush or move. Any ideas? It looks good but very slow to respond.
20000 Hairs
1419 Guides !
50 segs on hair
4 segs on guides
NEW ETA OK, see the last image below. I cut and layered the middle back and bottom then brushed and pulled the guides down whilst snipping selected guides to get the feathery look back. It's not the best job, but with so many guides, it's a hard style to work with. But it will be good for my scenes as they are not animated. It was on sale for half price when I got it so I can't complain. But am wondering why so many guides.
Yeah, I have that one as well. I haven't found a way to reduce the number of guides without screwing up the style, so I rarely use it.
To move it, I don't really brush it, but drag-select the guides I want to move then drag them with the mouse.
No wonder so many new purchasers of Carrara express exasperation about Genesis poke through, etc.!!!!!!
I just started writing a tutorial for folks when they first open Carrara with only the content that is currently sold in the bundle. The clothing that comes with the bundle does not work well with the character shapes sold with the bundle when the character is posed using the poses sold with the bundle.
** This is unfair to the people who buy Carrara with its associated bundle. **
** This is unfair to the published artists who made the content that is not working well with the other content sold with Carrara. **
In the attached, I loaded M5 Genesis in Carrara with the Town and Country clothes and pure hair classic hair. I applied a simple Michael 5 easy going pose.
** Look at all the poke through!!! **
The results are worse than average. I am going to illustrate a couple of ways to fix such poke through later in the tutorial, but why wouldn't Daz and the PA make sure that the items included in the bundle work reasonably well together?
diomede64 - Your breakdown of directory/file structure for finding correct Genesis/Genesis 2 assets is very helpful and clarifying. Many thanks.
Can anyone demonstate the use of poke-away for Carrara scenes?
I think this is interesting. Recall that I had used Poser's wardrobe wizard to convert a clothing pack designed for the Poser 7 male Simon to Michael 4, and then used Daz Studio's fit to function to convert the M4 version of the clothing pack to use with the genesis 2 male. See here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/45361/#675085
I've gone back to revisit that project, cleaned up the textures a little, etc. Well, the clothing actually behaves a little better as a genesis 2 male fit to than it does keeping it as the native Poser 7 clothing. In the attached pic, the lefthand figure is a G2male morphed with Freak 5 and a height change and Michael 6. The Erik the Red costume fit to nicely and conforms well with little to no poke through. Look especially at the top of the thigh where the tunic is clear of the pants.
On the other hand, the figure on the right is the Poser 7 male Simon for whom the costume was designed by content paradise. Notice the poke through on the top of the thigh. Not a big deal and easily fixed, but interesting that the costume appears to work better after being transformed twice (once in Poser wardrobe wizard and once in Daz Studio) than when it is simply loaded directly in Carrara from a content paradise runtime.
I continue having a lot of success adapting clothing and other content designed for other figures to genesis and genesis 2. Definitively inconsistent though. It seems to be item specific. This makes it all the more puzzling that clothing figures that had severe poke through issues were bundled with Carrara. Why not bundle items that worked better? Anyway, I have had a lot more successes than failures.
Can you be more specific about the steps you take to create that envelope, please?
I will explain how to get started and then link to a video that shows an example of vertex modeling in the assemble room. I hope that is enough to get going. Note - there are many ways to do something in Carrara, so this is not necessarily the best way. I recommend modeling in the assemble room, which will involve two different "hand" icons - one in the upper right and one in the upper left.
Carrara allows for many of the vertex modeling tools to work in the main assemble room, not just the specialty vertex modeling room. You know which room you are in by the icons in the upper right of the screen. The main assemble room is the hand. The specialty modeling room (for several modelers) is the wrench.
- Start in an empty scene.
- load the default genesis. It is most likely in your "My Daz3D Library" folder in the People: Genesis subfolder. But you may have done a custom installation, or you can load from smart content. In any case, load the default genesis figure.
- From the top menu, choose INSERT: VERTEX OBJECT. Then Carrara jumps to the modeling room (the wrench in the upper right should glow a little)
- From the top menu, choose CONSTRUCT: INSERT 3D: CYLINDER
- A menu will appear. Reduce the diameter and height to 1, and the number of sections to 3.
** Now, switch back to the Assemble Room by clicking the hand in the upper right.
- You should see your genesis figure and a cylinder - now the hand in the upper right should glow instead of the wrench.
** Activate modeling in the assemble room by clicking the "wrench" icon in the upper left near the word EDIT.
- Your cylinder should now turn into a vertex object, and is ready for editing.
- Use the vertex modeling tools to extrude and shape an envelope around genesis.
Follow the same basic ideas as this youtube tutorial by Marc Texeira, although Marc makes a dress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9ZsQ09ST_E
Hope that helps.
Thanks, Diomede. It makes sense. Why didn't I think about that?
Could use some help with Carrara 8.5 Pro. It cant seem to find Genesis.duf. I've attached an image that shows where my Studio is pointed to for content. For some reason Carrara cant seem to find Genesis. Any clues? I'm using Windows 7. Studio has no problem finding and loading Genesis. I also have this setup on my Mac (Yosemite) and didnt have this issue with either Studio 4.7 Pro or Carrara 8.5. Any clues what I'm doing wrong?