October Carrara Challenge WIP Thread: Create a pulp magazine cover with Chills, Thrills, & Carrara S

Headwax

evil saideth

Hi Andrew,

I’m rendering a glow pass, a volume primitive pass, a volume effect pass and a depth pass. For the glow, I’m hoping to blur it and adjust the fill or opacity, or blend method or something. I’ll know better when I get in PS. I don’t quite know what to expect from it, as I don’t recall rendering a glow pass before.

I did add a glow to the moss stalks. I copied the color gradient and elevation shader from the color channel and pasted them into the glow channel. I wanted to have the red be the main glow, so I changed the green key in the gradient to black. I’ll post all that info as well. I may do it in bits and pieces as I have my play this weekend.

BTW, should I leave tickets at the door for you? How many in your party? Will you be parking in Wisconsin or Australia? Since you’re from Australia, what kind of special accommodations do you need for your sheep? tongue wink

Yes it's great to render as many passes as possible :) I always render one of the coverages' cause it gives you and ink outline, the shadow pass (so I can add soft shadows if I want by using gaussian blur) I render out an Object pass because that makes life so easy to select things later in PS (except rans mapped hair) sometimes I do a Primitive pass so I can select Carrara hair, if there are reflections I add a reflection pass so I can maginfiy the reflections if necessary with screen parameter , and I also render out a depth pass on occasion, not so I can use it as selection for a layer mask for burring things , but so I can use it withe the screen parameter to soften distant objects . I'll have to look at glow passes!

Ps we don't have sheep in Australia , all the New Zealanders absonded with them cause ours were better looking thantheirs ;)

DustRider

head wax said:

dustrider, that is a superb render. To me it's looks like a real render of a diorama that has been set up in real life , everything s so real!

For the enchanted forest, it's a pitb, Fenric's shader fixer fixes it with two clicks- knocks down the highlight and transfers the diffuse texture to the bump channel if there is nothing in the bump

Thanks Head Wax!! That is exactly the effect I'm trying to achieve!

When I look at the amazing things you and others here, do with Carrara and PS, Gimp, Dog Waffle, etc. I'm simply in awe of the creative talent (your first entry this month is mind blowing). The work being exhibited here this month is amazing - especially to those of us who are post work challenged!

I should have used Fenric's plugin on Stonemasons scene - Duh! Oh well, I really didn't have too many changes to make since I'm using such a small area.

booksbydavid

sukyL said:

booksbydavid Holy @#$%! That's some breathtaking modeling and postwork! Great explanation of your postwork process too! Pssst! The editor says the magazine title is DAZling Stories, but no worries if it's too late to change.

Thanks and oops. I should be able to change it without too much trouble. Personally, I think the editor should do a spin off series called 'Tales'. He/she'd make more money catering to the high brow 'Tales' crowd. :)

booksbydavid

dustrider said:

head wax said:

dustrider, that is a superb render. To me it's looks like a real render of a diorama that has been set up in real life , everything s so real!

For the enchanted forest, it's a pitb, Fenric's shader fixer fixes it with two clicks- knocks down the highlight and transfers the diffuse texture to the bump channel if there is nothing in the bump

Thanks Head Wax!! That is exactly the effect I'm trying to achieve!

When I look at the amazing things you and others here, do with Carrara and PS, Gimp, Dog Waffle, etc. I'm simply in awe of the creative talent (your first entry this month is mind blowing). The work being exhibited here this month is amazing - especially to those of us who are post work challenged!

I should have used Fenric's plugin on Stonemasons scene - Duh! Oh well, I really didn't have too many changes to make since I'm using such a small area.

I considered myself postwork challenged as well. I started off with color correction and then began doing more things bit by bit. Eventually, you're a postwork whiz kid. Small steps and save often. :)

booksbydavid

head wax said:

booksbydavid said:

head wax said:

Classic work Tim-A , what a crack up :)

Here's some quick test renders from me, Cyborg Vicki and her son Ralph
The three without text are straight renders. The Vickii Cyborg is made with two Vickis, one inside the other, the innards exposed by transmaps on the top Vicki

I may not sleep tonight, and it's all your fault. :)

Very creative. Always enjoy your creative pov.

What? You sleep ? :) ! ;)

Not anymore. Thanks to you, Ralph and Vickie.

booksbydavid

Antara said:

I am not even going to pretend that I can keep up. I am just loving and am in awe of the WIPs being posted here, and feel like I am the only one stuck, while everyone is moving ahead at the lightning speed...

booksbydavid, I love the last postworked image. Absolute stylistic perfection.

Now to my own progress: here is my first post-worked cover (Camera 6), before and after post. (The stories titles might change if i come up with anything better.)
The angle is kinda the combination of my two original extremes. I might have killed the best points of each and ended up with something which is just 'meh', so if that's the case, please tell me.
(Here is the original POV dilemma: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/694113/
and here is another alternative I am considering: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/694225/ )

I still need help, though. If you could give me feedback about my
1 - shaders (do fabrics look like fabrics, and metals look like metals, and skin looks like skin?)
2 - postwork (especially whether I managed to make the metal on the robot look less flat and boring?),
3 - titles (looks-, content-, and placement-wise?),
4 - page layout overall, as well as
5 - how does this look compositionally in comparison to my other views?,
I'd really appreciate it.

Side notes: I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my full size render with best quality settings is taking about 4 hours to render (no transparencies or lights through transparency at all, no bump), even on my slow machine. I was expecting much worse...

Thanks.

I like this one the best. I think the shader work is great. Everything looks darn good to me. Postwork, titles and layout are all very well done. I know you posted another image in the post after this one, but I like this one best of all the ones you've shown so far.

You've also got me experimenting with GI Brightness for lighting. Pretty cool stuff. Thanks for that. :)

And you're right, trying to keep up with this thread is nearly impossible. Too much good work going by at lighting speed. Whew!

Headwax

dustrider said:

head wax said:

dustrider, that is a superb render. To me it's looks like a real render of a diorama that has been set up in real life , everything s so real!

For the enchanted forest, it's a pitb, Fenric's shader fixer fixes it with two clicks- knocks down the highlight and transfers the diffuse texture to the bump channel if there is nothing in the bump

Thanks Head Wax!! That is exactly the effect I'm trying to achieve!

When I look at the amazing things you and others here, do with Carrara and PS, Gimp, Dog Waffle, etc. I'm simply in awe of the creative talent (your first entry this month is mind blowing). The work being exhibited here this month is amazing - especially to those of us who are post work challenged!

I should have used Fenric's plugin on Stonemasons scene - Duh! Oh well, I really didn't have too many changes to make since I'm using such a small area.

Well you did a great job on it.! Thank you for your kindness on my first render !

Rule number one in post work Never ever fix up your poke through in Carrara - always in post :)
I reckon I use the clone tool on every render :)

Something I learnt recently .... The human eye will pick up straight lines/edges very easy in your post work, so say you want to cut out part of Santa's coat and stick it over the poke though in his leg - always use a circular selection to cut and paste - makes it so much easier to blend in !!

And the object index pass is my bestest friend

Headwax

booksbydavid said:

head wax said:

booksbydavid said:

head wax said:

Classic work Tim-A , what a crack up :)

Here's some quick test renders from me, Cyborg Vicki and her son Ralph
The three without text are straight renders. The Vickii Cyborg is made with two Vickis, one inside the other, the innards exposed by transmaps on the top Vicki

I may not sleep tonight, and it's all your fault. :)

Very creative. Always enjoy your creative pov.

What? You sleep ? :) ! ;)

Not anymore. Thanks to you, Ralph and Vickie.

Ha ha, I will have a chat with Ralph, I left him in the fridge today (next to the mouldy pikelets from last Easter) that should calm him down...

Antara

dustrider said:

I like Camera 3 too.

For the post work, yes you definitely made the materials look better! The titles look fantastic, and the page layout is great.

Thank you so much! Really helpful to know.

dustrider said:

lol - That's and easy one, I suck at post work :bug: It was also a bit of a personal challenge. After I saw the results of the first bit of text, I wanted to see how much I could do for this challenge directly in Carrara, even though logic would dictate that a fair amount of it should be done in post.

I typically don't do much post work. Other than not being very taented at the artistic aspects of post work, I'm a bit too logic oriented, which means if logically things like poke through "should" be corrected in the render (if possible), not in post, then I have to fix the original geometry. That, combined with a bit to much perfectionist and a dearth of artistic talent, means that I'm naturally inclined to push the render end of things to the best I can get, rather than relying on post work except for simple fixes.

Great render! Excellent detail with the bright highlights on the teeth - very menacing and helps focus the attention on the danger.

I hear you about the tendency for perfectionism. I tend to do it too, but at some point I run out of patience with myself and then I just draw over the wrong things or give up on the image altogether :).

But postwork isn't really all that hard. As is mentioned above, small steps will get you far eventually. I actually force myself to do it, because fixing everything in 3D and re-rendering is a huge time-sink and really affects my productivity. I easily get into the habit of trying to make the render perfect straight out of the renderer, and then I realize that I just spent 5 hours fixing something that I could've easily fixed in post in a matter of 2-3 minutes if not 30 seconds. So 'no post' is a good challenge for oneself - to do once in a while, but beware - that attitude is addictive! :)

If you were going to re-render something like the pillows (not saying you should) , just use a vertex plane with holes cut out as a mask so you only have to render one part - but I guess you already know that !!!! Major part of my work flow that mask trick is

THANK YOU! No, I didn't know about the trick, but it is genius! It's going to become one of those "how did I live without it?!" things, isn't it? :)

Thanks.

I like this one the best. I think the shader work is great. Everything looks darn good to me. Postwork, titles and layout are all very well done. I know you posted another image in the post after this one, but I like this one best of all the ones you've shown so far.

You've also got me experimenting with GI Brightness for lighting. Pretty cool stuff. Thanks for that. :)

And you're right, trying to keep up with this thread is nearly impossible. Too much good work going by at lighting speed. Whew!

Thank you! You are going to send me back on that fence, aren't you? :)

GI Brigtness is really a wonderful thing. It really exceeded my expectations in regards to speed and quality. I hope we get to see the results of you playing with it!

Stezza

making shaders is not my strong point... but I fiddled and poked and prodded, flipped dials and came up with this one..

applied it to the Martian War Machine thingy... I thought it was kinda cool :-)

Headwax

antara wroteth

THANK YOU! No, I didn’t know about the trick, but it is genius! It’s going to become one of those “how did I live without it?!” things, isn’t it? smile

pleasure - ah I read that in c3de a few years ago - it's been a blessing.

when you put in your vertex plane in Carrara turn off shadows etc
in the shader room give it no colour and make sure it shinyness etc are off :0

when you have your masked render in PS, select the black then increase the selection by a few pixels, that way when you erase you wont be left with a little black line

Iif it's only a tiny bit that needs fixing you can just do an area render in the assembly room and ctr/prnt screen it to put it in the clipboard then paste it over your render in PS - depending on the dpi of your render etc - I've only done that once but it was a good basis to work from later

Headwax

Stezza said:

making shaders is not my strong point... but I fiddled and poked and prodded, flipped dials and came up with this one..

applied it to the Martian War Machine thingy... I thought it was kinda cool :-)

Stezza, it really does look like a late 50's magazine cover :) showing my age here (154)

Bunyip02

head wax said:

antara wroteth

THANK YOU! No, I didn’t know about the trick, but it is genius! It’s going to become one of those “how did I live without it?!” things, isn’t it? smile

pleasure - ah I read that in c3de a few years ago - it's been a blessing.

when you put in your vertex plane in Carrara turn off shadows etc
in the shader room give it no colour and make sure it shinyness etc are off :0

when you have your masked render in PS, select the black then increase the selection by a few pixels, that way when you erase you wont be left with a little black line

Iif it's only a tiny bit that needs fixing you can just do an area render in the assembly room and ctr/prnt screen it to put it in the clipboard then paste it over your render in PS - depending on the dpi of your render etc - I've only done that once but it was a good basis to work from later

When doing postwork don't forget you can also resize the "extra render" so that it matches the pixels of what you are working on, another trick I sometimes do is to turn the transparency down to about 10%, then do a few copies of that layer and adjust them bit by bit. Sometimes when you do everything in one layer it's difficult to adjust, small progressive steps can sometimes get a better result.

Head Wax - I have not forgotten about that building, unfortunately it's now down my list of priorities, hoping to get back to it in November.

Everyone, I take a break from here for a few days and I end up with a couple of hours reading time to catch up with what everyone is doing. Heaps of superb work !!!!!

Update from me:-

The way I built my spaceship in Carrara ended up causing me some grief trying to blend it all together. Being very impressed by booksbydavid's Silo modelling I decided to give that a hit. Imported my spaceship as an obj, then replaced all of the primitives in Silo with the same (via copy/paste of each of the components). Learning Silo as I go, liking it greatly so far. Should get the hatches and basic interior done tonight, then UV mapping & textures tomorrow, then back into Carrara. Once I get time I think I will update this one as well. Wish I had more time to learn how to model this completely in both Carrara & Silo, was hoping to do it completely in Carrara !!!!!!

Bunyip02

Stezza said:

making shaders is not my strong point... but I fiddled and poked and prodded, flipped dials and came up with this one..

applied it to the Martian War Machine thingy... I thought it was kinda cool :-)

Excellent (I hope that Hornet is armed with a vintage record player playing some ear wrenching music)

Headwax

Bunyip02 said:

antara wroteth
When doing postwork don't forget you can also resize the "extra render" so that it matches the pixels of what you are working on, another trick I sometimes do is to turn the transparency down to about 10%, then do a few copies of that layer and adjust them bit by bit. Sometimes when you do everything in one layer it's difficult to adjust, small progressive steps can sometimes get a better result. Head Wax - I have not forgotten about that building, unfortunately it's now down my list of priorities, hoping to get back to it in November.

interesting idea the layering thing. Ah the building, thanks so much! We can always do with another cathedral :)

The space ship looks great, really interested to see the texturing job on it.

Headwax

Oh, I made a few renders before work this morning - will post them later. The peeling effect is from one of Ron’s Cyborg Brushes. I did this morning’s renders on a sphere and came to the conclusion you are better off painting the alpha channel with a 3d painter .

Basic method. Have one Vicki posed as you like. Then duplicate her with Fenric’s tool/plugin. Shrink the second one doan a little.
Take the first one’s face texture into photoshop, make a new layer, paint your alpha channel black where you want it to be clear and fill in the rest with white. Save this. Use this on the outer most vicki in the alpha map section.

Take this alpha map. Save it as new image. Select the black parts and delete.
Make a new layer underneath and paste your electronics etc. Make the top layer a multiply parameter and add a drop shadow so the electronics layer has a shadow on it.

Make this the texture map for the inner most Vicki, use the original alpha map on her but invert it.

I then took the electronics layer and used the free Nvidia normal map maker to make a normal map and used that in the bump channel.

You need to play with the edges of the alpha map to decide whether you want it soft or hard. Hard will give more of a peel effect.

Also for the electronics Viiki you can use the electronics texture in the glow channel then add aura/glare in the Scene parameters

i’ll post pics later

here are the pics as promised :)

first is a flat sample, second is the diffuse text, third is just a sphere with displacement turned on, 4th is the alpha map, 5th is the normal map

in a way you may as well do it in post I reckon :)

Bunyip02

head wax said:

antara wroteth interesting idea the layering thing. Ah the building, thanks so much! We can always do with another cathedral :) The space ship looks great, really interested to see the texturing job on it.

The idea behind the small steps in layers was by someone else I picked ages ago, allows you to adjust and blend your colours, shadows, highlights, giving it a more natural look, which as you pointed out with the straight lines the eyes can pick up quite well. More layers means you can fudge things more without it looking overboard.

Actually the plan for the Cathedral is morphing into a Gothic Space Fort !!!!!!
Real life stuff with spending too much time on Critter morphs has got in the way of my productivity for the month.

Thanks for the feedback on the spaceship. Was trying to get a combined look of a Bird with a fish with something that would fit into the 40's-50's era Pulp Sci-Fi scene while also looking like something that would fit in with the Jetsons.

Diomede

More babysteps. I now have matching (sort of) versions of dynamic hair and eyebrows with corresponding prop hair and eyebrows. I did this for the detective and the Femme Fatale. Here is the detective with both types of hair rendered using standard photoreal and Carrara's toon.

It is not meant as a comparison; rather, these are elements that I hope to combine. I have zero experience combining images. We'll see.

Thanks for the encouragement everyone. Especially EP, who somehow found the time to post examples of backgrounds for me despite having to prepare for his play and work on his own scene. And SukyL for posting composition help.

Now to try to improve the skin shaders.

Diomede

And here is an example of what I got doing a straight 50/50 mix of the same setup with a toon version that uses prop hair/eyebrows and a regular version with dynamic hair/eyebrows.

So, now another thing I have never done, will I be able to use render passes to create zones in which one render or the other is getting used, or emphasized?

Babysteps

booksbydavid

Antara said:

GI Brigtness is really a wonderful thing. It really exceeded my expectations in regards to speed and quality. I hope we get to see the results of you playing with it!

I actually played with it some last night (instead of fixing the title of my entry as I should have been doing). I'll be posting it over in evilproducer's procedural shader thread because I used his skin shader.

booksbydavid

Stezza said:

making shaders is not my strong point... but I fiddled and poked and prodded, flipped dials and came up with this one..

applied it to the Martian War Machine thingy... I thought it was kinda cool :-)

Agree. Pretty cool. It's a good look.

booksbydavid

Bunyip02 said:

Update from me:-

The way I built my spaceship in Carrara ended up causing me some grief trying to blend it all together. Being very impressed by booksbydavid's Silo modelling I decided to give that a hit. Imported my spaceship as an obj, then replaced all of the primitives in Silo with the same (via copy/paste of each of the components). Learning Silo as I go, liking it greatly so far. Should get the hatches and basic interior done tonight, then UV mapping & textures tomorrow, then back into Carrara. Once I get time I think I will update this one as well. Wish I had more time to learn how to model this completely in both Carrara & Silo, was hoping to do it completely in Carrara !!!!!!

Looking good in Silo. You might want to check out a tute or two on UV mapping in Silo before you start. I quite like how Silo maps objects, but there is a particular order to things that makes life easier. Silo outputs a nice UV map generally. If you're not mapping in Silo it doesn't matter, does it? :) I've started using 3dCoat for UV mapping. It's incredibly easy and normally turns out acceptable maps on the first go with no need to tweek.

booksbydavid

diomede64 said:

And here is an example of what I got doing a straight 50/50 mix of the same setup with a toon version that uses prop hair/eyebrows and a regular version with dynamic hair/eyebrows.

So, now another thing I have never done, will I be able to use render passes to create zones in which one render or the other is getting used, or emphasized?

Babysteps

Good looking baby steps to me. :)

sukyL

I wish I knew the secret of multiple quotes in a single post... :down:

dustrider and head wax Thanks for discussing how to improve the Enchanted Forest. I've picked up Fenric's ShaderDoctor. I've got another Stonemason set with a million textures that start off looking like it has a full coat of wool, which will definitely benefit from the shader doctor treatment.

head wax, evilproducer, booksbydavid, Antara Do you typically save each render pass as a separate external file or use the photoshop embedded layer option when possible? I've got a pretty good handle on using the passes for masks and playing with opacity but I'm definitely not getting all I can out of them. Any suggestions for good tutorials for getting the most out of the individual passes?

booksbydavid How did you know? I'm in deep negotiations with a Mr Pennybags on the big 'Tales spin-off. Forget pulp! It's going to be one of those slick high-end affairs with 3D popups and pullouts. ;-P

Stezza The martian attack scene and rusty shader looks great! Nicely composed too. Did you get the Martian War Machine in the PC Club anniversary Mega Pack? I was so delighted to find it in there. I had almost bought so many times over the years, but never did.

head wax I'm intrigued by the vertex plane mask trick as well. Never thought to do that. That's going to be a huge time saver. Thanks!

Bunyip02 I got Silo for a steal recently. I can't wait to try it out after seeing the work by booksbydavid and can't wait to see how your ship turns out too. There is a thread by Novica for Silo beginners (http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/41937/). I keep meaning to read through it.

head wax Thanks so much for posting the pictures for your peeling technique. Either way, in Carrara or photoshop, it looks like a lot of work, but your result looks great and definitely worth the effort.

sukyL

diomede64 said:

And here is an example of what I got doing a straight 50/50 mix of the same setup with a toon version that uses prop hair/eyebrows and a regular version with dynamic hair/eyebrows.

So, now another thing I have never done, will I be able to use render passes to create zones in which one render or the other is getting used, or emphasized?

Babysteps

diomede How are you combining your renders and passes? Are you talking about combining them as layers in photoshop or equivalent?

Diomede

sukyL said:

diomede How are you combining your renders and passes? Are you talking about combining them as layers in photoshop or equivalent?

In the image above, which was just a test, I combined two renders within Carrara. I rendered out a toon version (with prop hair) and a photoreal version (with dynamic hair) as separate images. The lighting was slightly dfferent than the pics with 4 detectives but otherwise the same. In a new file, I created a vertex grid the same size as the working box and made sure the uvmap was appropriate. I then used a multichannel mixer to create a shader that combined each image at 50%. Not saying that is what I would do for the final image, but it did give a quick test. To my eye, it resulted in something closer to the look I wanted, which is definitely not photoreal in this case - but neither is it full toon.

I have PS Elements 11, which unfortunately does not have the oil filter. I am even less versed in PS than I am in Carrara, but I do have various PS guides and tutorials.

Edit: And presumably I could use different render passes to assist using more of the dynamic hair portion from the photoreal image yet exclude the shadow at the back of the neck - in PS with masks and layers, or whatever program.

Edit Again: This was my attempt to learn from what EP had posted on the first page of the thread around post #14.

booksbydavid

sukyL said:

head wax, evilproducer, booksbydavid, Antara Do you typically save each render pass as a separate external file or use the photoshop embedded layer option when possible? I've got a pretty good handle on using the passes for masks and playing with opacity but I'm definitely not getting all I can out of them. Any suggestions for good tutorials for getting the most out of the individual passes?

I've always rendered separate passes. It's a control thing. :) I normally do minor corrections in Paintshop such as pokethrough and V4's poor joints. I also do a separate layer in Paintshop set to overlay and enhance the shadows and highlights. I also occasionally need to paint in some hair or fix some bad prop hair. After I'm done in Paintshop, I move over to Onone software's Perfect Effects and run the image through however many filters it takes to get the look I'm after. Everything's always in separate layers, so I can do what ever whenever.

Oh, yes...save often. :)

booksbydavid

sukyL said:

booksbydavid How did you know? I'm in deep negotiations with a Mr Pennybags on the big 'Tales spin-off. Forget pulp! It's going to be one of those slick high-end affairs with 3D popups and pullouts. ;-P

I'm so on board with that. 3D popups and pullouts. You can't go wrong!

Headwax

diomede64, the combines renders look very good - the straight one I see the highlight is still on in the texture maybe??

sukyL no probs, pleasure :) The passes best to render into separate PS files I think. No tuts I have seen, sorry !

if you find any let me know!

Headwax

Here's another wip, pure render and jazzed one :)

My mother was a robot Ballerina!