Retopology in Carrara?
petar_kz
Posts: 0
Greetings all!
I'm a newcommer to Carrara, I used to work with Cinema 4D but the version I own is too old and lacking functionality I require.
I purchased Carrara today and started exploring its tools and help documentation.
So far I'm pleased with the variety of tools and options the software has to offer, however when I looked into shrink wrapping / retopology I couldn't find any materials.
So I hopped on here to ask if any of you have done Sculpting followed by Retopology for a character and how do you go about doing it?
Even if your methods are unorthodox, I'll be glad to see.
Thank you in advance!
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I am afraid I use Blender and Zbrush for those, Carrara doesn't do either
well retoplogy one could manually one line at a time but you would have to be very keen
Welcome to Carrara
I will warn you though DAZ has pretty much dropped all development for it
that doesn't deter us from using it though.
welcome to carrara
Sadness ... I'm glad I found a reasonably-priced 3D software for modeling, texturing and animation at least.
I couldn't figure out Blender even with its new interface ;_; it's a completely different beast in comparisson to C4D.
Carrara seems to at least have an active community, so it's good that I can at least turn to the forum for help.
First, Welcome Aboard!
Okay - for shrink wrapping you can use the native cloth 'soft body' modifier to create a conforming / shrink-wrapped mesh...
With regard to retopology; if you mean 'sculpting' then there is limited support for painting mesh deformations in the vertex modelling room. The honey drizzle was created this way...
Welcome to Carrara.
As noted by Wendy, the program is no longer supported by Daz3D but there are plenty of additional resources, many of which are free. Here are some.
1) CarraraCafe - has info and links to more resources
https://carraracafe.com/
2) Dartanbeck website links to resources (some free and some not)
https://sites.google.com/view/dartanbeckcom/carrara-zone/carrara-info/carrara-plugins
3) Cripeman tutorials - free short youtube demonstrations of Carrara topics by the late great Cripeman.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCE038B4C72040A2C
https://carraracafe.com/tag/cripeman/
4) Many Digital Carvers Guild Plugins (DCG) are free and open source now - add a lot of functions to Carrara
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/266831/digital-carvers-guild-going-open-source/p1
5) SparrowHawke free plugins - and I will highlight the instance randomizer to addvariety of shaders to replicated objects
http://www.sparrowhawke3d.com/Sparrowhawke3DPlugins.html
That should be enough to overwhelm you at the beginning. When you are ready, here is plenty more.
- Virtual World Dynamic (VWD) cloth draping by Gerald and the Carrara bridge by Philemo
- Genesis 3,8, and 8.1 Character presets by Mystarra that prevent carrara from crashing from later figures (Genesis 3 and later)
- Philemo plugins for hair, for lighting, for DUF files, and more
- Fluidos fluid simulation by Alvin Bemar
- YAToon cell shading plugin
You said unorthodox welcome, right?
Here's something of a crazy thing that might motivate... something:
Sculpting Alternatives in Carrara
It's a thread from a while back. It doesn't cover retopo, but it can help us sculpt in Carrara.
Here's another thread that goes on a vast journey regarding UV Unwrapping in Carrara and also has a bunch of topics about other software as well.
I have an Index of many topics on my Carrara Info page. Scroll down a bit to the Forum Help Links and have fun browsing. I also have a bunch of other articles, videos and such on the site. Have a look around and, if you have any advice, comments, suggestions, etc., please let me know.
Also, since you're now a Carrara user (Welcome Aboard!!!) you should know that we also have some great videos and magazines specific to Carrara as well as another great site: Carrara Cafe! I love exploring these things while Carrara's busy rendering my animations! :)
These are just part of what I've built so far for my Carrara Zone section, which is kind of where I live - I Love Carrara!!!
There's a bunch of other fun stuff too, like a fun exploration of Particles and Physics in Carrara, a new section for a collaboritive effort to use Carrara along side Daz Studio and will be adventuring into other directions, like perhaps Blender: Bridging Technology, and I've also made my previous Daz 3D Carrara products available for free, which can be downloaded in my Gallery's Downloads section: Starry Sky for Carrara and the three Carrara EnvironKits products. There are other downloads, too which pertain to some of my tutorial Video/Article hybrids. And that's all still just tidbits of the depth of the site, It's fun to explore - well, for me at least! LOL
Thank you all for the resourses!
I think I used the wrong term when I initially wrote the topic.
When I sculpt a character for example, is there a way to retopologize the model by building polygons on top of the sculpt and have them snap onto the model as they are built?
I see it's possible in Hexagon (link below) , but I'd like to do all the modeling and texturing within Carrara if possible.
I probably used the wrong term for this.
What I meant is, when you sculpt something and you want to retopologize it, Is there a way to build polygons over the pesh and have them snap as you build them?
Hi petar_kz,
I watched your suggested video and can confirm that you can:
You can retopologise a mesh - but it's a slow, process there's no magic button for a clean result. you can either:
There are other useful tools such as magnetic to bend a mesh to follow an underlying shape. Carrara offers a lot once you start jumping in and using it. The best way to learn is have a go and ask when you get stuck, there are many on here who can model, texture, animate, light, story tell, colour, etc you name it - they are here!
Looking forward to your WIP posts :)
Nope. "Retopologize" is the correct term for what you want to do.
Carrara was actually coded before that was really much of a thing, except for perhaps in Zbrush.
Daz 3D recoded it to 64 bit, but they already had a Lot on their hands with what Carrara already does. One thing they Did do for this, however, is to build a GoZ bridge to/from Zbrush, which is what they were using for such things at the time.
GoZ for Carrara
you can also dissolve and add polylines to improve topology, often without destroying the UV mapping depending on how you go about it, one needs to constantly check the UV doing it though in case.
Also adding things like edge loops through extraction.
This is what I was assuming you meant.
Well, Zbrush, 3D Coat, Modo, Blender(?), etc., give the UV artist the ability to look at the completed mesh and literally draw the new "Topology" (polygon shapes) directly onto the mesh shape to "Retopologize" the new, final model for use in games, render studios and/or movie house production.
I believe that Zbrush and Mudbox were the first to have this, and then 3D Coat came along followed by high-end modeling software as they took on scupting abilities.
This Retopology allows artists to simply sculpt away regardless of how many millions or even billions of vertices they're creating along the way, and still end up with a mesh with a polygon count that works in the target software, like X-Box, Playstation, PC Games, etc., etc.,
This is also how "Normal Maps" were born - the High Resolution original can be used to "Bake" it's high details onto a special displacement result onto the retopologized lower resolution counterpart.
Although I was more into animation and posing at the time, I remember when all of this was coming to light in the gaming world - which was (I think) simultaneously going on in the rest of the CG world.
I began my whole 3D mesh experience making textures for existing models, and then came UV Map optimization - tweaking the UVs and the textures to get game models with minimal texture stretch.
Learning this stuff made the game models available to me in 3ds Max, where I discovered I could pose them, and then I discovered the timeline.
Screw texturing... I want to make a movie!
And so here I am - 20 years later still working towards getting a movie made! LOL
I'm not positive, but I think that Daz 3D might begin with 3D Scans, like the ones that Magaremoto uses (see some of his renders in Carara Community Art Gallery) except that I think they do their own, and then retopologize the result into the amazingly sexy topology that their incredibly morphable, shapable figures turn out to be.
Whatever era of figure they produce, they've always been using some of the latest 3D articulate figure technology of their time when building them.
Genesis 1 introduced their first SubD cage - with exception being the SubDragon. This Cage tech takes retopology to a whole new level, allowing the SubD levels to use specific data rather than just a SubD-smoothed result. The Cage keeps everything consistent across the family of shapes, but the individual data folder can contain specific data that the SubD levels add to the cage - at least I think that's how that works.
So to me, Genesis = Genius.
I was just getting into Poser around the time when Victoria 2 was quite popular, though I didn't know about her yet. Once I found her and Michael, Vicky 3 was just about to be released - and she was the best thing anywhere - short of a personally made custom figure with the costume built onto the mesh.
I'm fairly certain that these earlier Millennium People were modeled by hand beginning with a cube, like everything else. Dan and Chris were just really good at making humans since they did the 'visible human' musculature and skeletal charts we see in Doctors offices - they know the human body inside and out.
I know... Daz fanboy here. But for good reason.
The DVD for the (no longer available?) Premium Bundle is really quite a cool thing to see! The texture maps collection of Reby Sky is why I use it for Rosie 5.5 (Genesis 1 figure using V4 and Genesis 2 Female shapes)
I think she was one of the only V4 Elites to come with Subsurface Scattering maps. I could be wrong. I know Mec4D's Homo-Erectus generation 4 characters (now Daz Originals) also have SSS maps, but not sure of any others. I'd have to dig.
V4 Elite - Reby Sky
Homo Erectus for V4
Homo Erectus for Kids 4
Homo Erectus for M4
Read more about how Rosie 5.5 was designed and built, along with our future endeavors with her on my website - Rosie 5.5, a subpage of our Bridging Technology page.
I'm interested in trying C4D. Is it much easier than Blender? I made almost all my content with Blender.
Vyusur, you would be able to make Any modeler Sing!!!
You're Amazing!
I have Zbrush and use it to create neanderthal facial and body morphs, but I keep the existing mesh and just pull and push. It is expensive, but I wonder if GoZ would work with ZBrushCoreMini? I am not sure if that takes the place of Sculpturis or not. It's free, but there is a purchase option for a perpetual licence. $179 .95 ONE TIME PERPETUAL.
https://zbrushcore.com/mini/
Welcome to Carrara! I am not advanced like the previous posters, they, and others, are the stars of Carrara and full of knowledge, creativity and are always willing to help and encourage. I'd be lost without them!
Oh my! Thank you so much!
First I must apologize to the moderator team, for the life of me I cannot tell when my reply is sent out, I don't get the "your comment will be posted after approval" window every time I try.
It's a lot simpler to understand than Blender, at least for me.
The object hierarchy panel is one of its best features IMO. All modifiers, splines, lights and meshes can be intermingled with like files on your computer :
https://imgur.com/a/4wSyHgk
I use it primarily for basic renders over which I draw with a tablet.
It allowed me to make models out of multiple meshes and rig all of them together with IK chains.
I'm hoping that Carrara will be as simple to understand and handle.
we have an anti spam system which means that you have to make a certain number of posts to prove you are real. Your posts have to be moderator approved. keep sending the same post actually duplicates some typical spambots actions, so hasn't helped at all.
Hmmm... it's been a while since I had too few posts!
EDIT: ...and the count even restarted with the new (quite some time ago) forum software! LOL
Cool info!
I think you'll enjoy Carrara. It's not the spiffy UI of C4D, but the right side panel (Instances Tray) is like you describe, I think - I'll have to check that link.
But unlike Studio, we can Group (Ctrl + G) anything we want without (in most cases) breaking things.
For example, if I have an outfit on a character that has ten separate pieces, in Daz Studio there's no way (that I've found, at least) to Group them to be able to hide them in the list with a click - it breaks them from being conformed (fit) to the figure. In Carrara, I have a separate group for all clothing of each character, and I can even make several groups within that group if it helps me further.
The interface may have some Poser-like icons and appearance (It was initially built by folks who use to code for Poser) it's actually a lot faster, easier and simply more elegant than Poser - at least to me.
At the bottom of the Insert menu is an item called "Target Helper". These are a Null with an icon visible in the viewport. If we create a group and then empty it, it will remain and can be used as a Null that is Not visible in the viewport. I use both quite a lot.
Another form of Null could be to simply drag in a bone (for rigging) and use that - which has has yet another appearance for a viewport icon. And I've also made a Light that doesn't affect anything in the scene, and used that as a Null with a directional icon in the viewport.
Very flexible = Carrara.
After all the time I've spent in the vertex modeler I didn't know I could draw polylines over existing polygons. I knew I could draw them over vertices and they would snap away from the grid, but I assumed that I couldn't draw directly over faces. Unfortunately it's not what the OP is after in terms of retopo, but it does give new relevance to the cut tool.
Sweet! Thanks for this!
I see.
I've been in touch with Ryan from your support team about this and he said there's nothing blocking my account from posting
I tried posting similar replies about a day apart and it made no difference. It looks like one of my first replies made it through afrer several days.
In the meantime I took a look at Cararra. The UI seems user-friendly, however I'm not too sure abot subdivision segmenting meshes into triangular polys. I'm too used to quads I guess.
I work with quads in Carrara: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/6453476/#Comment_6453476
You don't need to use subdivision - use tesselation and choose the one that preserves quads (there are three in total.)