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

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  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    diomede64 said:

    If the moving parts are mechanical, remember that you can use movement constraints rather than rigging with bones.

    Exactly what I was going to suggest. Though I think he meant UVing. 3D is pretty complicated, add to that all the esoteric terms and acronyms and it's a wonder anybody but a rocket scientist does this.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    The suit is retextured. I know the body of it is a bit repetitive, but hopefully as I build my scene you will see that it fits my idea.

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  • sukyLsukyL Posts: 251
    edited October 2014

    A person goes to sleep and work and look what happens!!!!

    diomede, kashyyyk, SileneUK I'm hanging on every word about the toon shaders and NPR. Looking awesome so far! I have DCG Toon! Pro and I'm getting tempted to try it out. I really like bunyip02's idea of a hybrid photorealistic and NPR/toon shader sammich.

    booksbydavid!!!! So glad you couldn't resist the lure of the pulps. Love the idea of the 40s style pulp with a _____ queen. I absolutely can't wait to see which queen you choose and how this develops. PS I totally had a picture of head wax knocking on your window Lost Boys style.

    evilproducer Your shader and 3D paint overhaul of that old DAZ skeleton is top flight! The skeletal astronaut is so creepy. I'm kind of in love with it. I so hope you're going where I think you are with that idea.

    pimpy [sorry I type-o'd your name, I bet you don't have acne at all] Yay!!!! So glad you're joining the challenge. The lab modeling is incredible. I'm really loving the framing in your test render.

    NetWorthy I'm so happy you were drawn in by the theme. Welcome! Seriously I'm not typically a squee kind of gal, but I freakin' SQUEEEEEEE'd when I saw your retro rocketship!

    diomede64 The retro 50s sci-fi meets film noir is brilliant! Private eye…I just got it! Too clever!

    I can't tell you all how happy I am you're enjoying this challenge theme and how it's inspiring some truly awesome work.

    I promise I'm going to get something posted. I think evilproducer and dustrider had about 10 WIPs and were on their 2nd submissions by now. :down:

    Post edited by sukyL on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    sukyL said:

    I promise I'm going to get something posted. I think evilproducer and dustrider had about 10 WIPs and were on their 2nd submissions by now. :down:

    Thanks for the kind words Suky.

    You'll find the time to get some in! Just a little hint if you haven't done so already, add a rule that says the host can't win. ;-)

    Poor Headwax decided to do that when he won twice in a row.

  • sukyLsukyL Posts: 251
    edited December 1969

    sukyL said:

    I promise I'm going to get something posted. I think evilproducer and dustrider had about 10 WIPs and were on their 2nd submissions by now. :down:

    Thanks for the kind words Suky.

    You'll find the time to get some in! Just a little hint if you haven't done so already, add a rule that says the host can't win. ;-)

    Poor Headwax decided to do that when he won twice in a row.

    I'm glad to know there is an escape clause. That's a tempting idea. I'm on vacation all next week, so I'll use that time to get caught up if I need to.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    My last for the night. I'll try and get to the shader tree and explanation tomorrow. I had to rebuild one of my textures after a crash, a rarity for me, thank goodness!

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  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    Wow! So much is happening here, it's hard to keep up.

    In the mean while, I am just playing around and trying new things.
    So, for starters, I am attaching my current take on the rust shader. It's using Anything Goos plug0in from DCG because I want the rust to be gathered around bends and seams of my figure.

    Due to my chosen lighting model, I will have to avoid things like transparency and bump (to save render time), so I am faking bump using Noise in the highlight channel and the reflection channel on the rust shader. Surprisingly enough, it kinda works... Clearly, not all materials can be treated like this, but I'll see what I can some up with.

    Another plug-in I recently learned about (but had for ages! and was frustrated about not having this feature...where's the face-palm smiley when you need it?) is Shader Plus GI Brightness, also from DCG. It's a shader type, which takes the shader glow channel and magnifies it's brightness for the purposes of Indirect Lighting GI. Unlike using the Value 0-100000% option in the glow, which even when used to amplify a color, still brings the glow up to pure white, this feature achieves the same result without altering the appearance or colors of the glowing object within the frame, plus this way, there is an option to have really really bright and far-reaching glow of a specific color, not just pure white. I haven't used this feature yet, as I hadn't had a context to apply it after I found out about it, so this will be my testing ground for using this to light my scene (hence the restriction on transparencies and bump).

    Setting it up is really easy (see example attached), but it does work wonders for lighting. So far I am very pleased with it. Let's see how pleased I'll be when I add in more objects and the rendering starts crawling... :)

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  • d-j-od-j-o Posts: 345
    edited December 1969

    My last for the night. I'll try and get to the shader tree and explanation tomorrow. I had to rebuild one of my textures after a crash, a rarity for me, thank goodness!

    That is looking sweet!

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,964
    edited December 1969

    Gah, gah, what a feast of work, gah, just proves how talented carrarists are,

    Ps booksbydavid, bet you don't see this but evil is More evil than me, ... Just lok at his name .... Hahahahaha haha .

    Ps what a great thread, too scared to look at most of the work till sunrise .....

  • pimpypimpy Posts: 274
    edited October 2014

    In my second wip I created some elements for generate lightning inside the room in the lab.
    For the elements I used a cilinder in model room adding a sphere on top.
    For the lightninig (to add to a plane) I used an old shader I made using an image (psd that I modificate) found here http://www.officialpsds.com/LIGHTNING-PSD74716.html
    (If you use Gimp this is a good tutorial to create your own lighting):
    How to make Lightning in GIMP (easy)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSVzfcEix6A

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    Post edited by pimpy on
  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    pimpy said:
    In my second wip I created some elements for generate lightning inside the room in the lab.
    For the elements I used a cilinder in model room adding a sphere on top.
    For the lightninig (to add to a plane) I used an old shader I made using Gimp (this is a good tutorial to create your own lighting) :
    How to make Lightning in GIMP (easy)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSVzfcEix6A

    That looks amazing already! I love the setup. And it already had the look and feel of some of those old covers. Brilliant!

  • pimpypimpy Posts: 274
    edited December 1969

    Antara said:
    pimpy said:
    In my second wip I created some elements for generate lightning inside the room in the lab.
    For the elements I used a cilinder in model room adding a sphere on top.
    For the lightninig (to add to a plane) I used an old shader I made using Gimp (this is a good tutorial to create your own lighting) :
    How to make Lightning in GIMP (easy)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSVzfcEix6A

    That looks amazing already! I love the setup. And it already had the look and feel of some of those old covers. Brilliant!

    Thank you very much Antara

  • d-j-od-j-o Posts: 345
    edited December 1969

    NetWorthy said:
    I'm thinking I want to create one or more tex maps with a few details including insignia etc. Getting the stuff to wrap precisely is a bear, the UV tools in Carrara are not so easy to use. Once I get the thing wrapped the way I want it, my intent is to use a layered Carrara shader to add the rust ON TOP of the maps. That's the theory anyway LOL!

    One way i get around this is do like EP is in the paint room, paint on the model where you want your insignias, then save it, open that texture in photoshop, create the image how you want it based on your painting, then in Carrara add your texture to the models shader and you should be good to go,
  • booksbydavidbooksbydavid Posts: 429
    edited December 1969

    And just as aside...headwax is evil. ;-)

    What?!? More than me? Now I am depressed!

    He's got that whole Australian evil thing going. It's insidious. Gives me bad dreams.

  • booksbydavidbooksbydavid Posts: 429
    edited December 1969

    Antara said:
    Wow! So much is happening here, it's hard to keep up.


    Another plug-in I recently learned about (but had for ages! and was frustrated about not having this feature...where's the face-palm smiley when you need it?) is Shader Plus GI Brightness, also from DCG. It's a shader type, which takes the shader glow channel and magnifies it's brightness for the purposes of Indirect Lighting GI. Unlike using the Value 0-100000% option in the glow, which even when used to amplify a color, still brings the glow up to pure white, this feature achieves the same result without altering the appearance or colors of the glowing object within the frame, plus this way, there is an option to have really really bright and far-reaching glow of a specific color, not just pure white. I haven't used this feature yet, as I hadn't had a context to apply it after I found out about it, so this will be my testing ground for using this to light my scene (hence the restriction on transparencies and bump).

    Setting it up is really easy (see example attached), but it does work wonders for lighting. So far I am very pleased with it. Let's see how pleased I'll be when I add in more objects and the rendering starts crawling... :)

    Face-palm here, too. I've had this plugin for a while and never noticed that. Been jiggering with the glow channel on several projects and all the while GI Brightness would have solved the problem. Oh, well. Live and learn. :)

  • SileneUKSileneUK Posts: 1,970
    edited December 1969

    These are all so inspiring... Pimpy thanks for showing the lightening as I wanted to do something like that and maybe can try it.

    My only problem is time, but will participate as long as I can before going away.

    This is just a comp of what I am thinking of. Leaving lower left area to put in rusty-mechanical-weirdy-thingy being zapped with lightening that may come from Tyra or from Thunderfoot, her pet mammoth LOL.

    Thanks for all these great ideas.... good for other projects, too. I am so glad WIPs for various challenges are organised and saved for us. *like*

    :) SIlene

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  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,125
    edited October 2014

    diomede64 said:

    If the moving parts are mechanical, remember that you can use movement constraints rather than rigging with bones.

    Exactly what I was going to suggest. Though I think he meant UVing. 3D is pretty complicated, add to that all the esoteric terms and acronyms and it's a wonder anybody but a rocket scientist does this.

    Even though everyone who has posted so far has displayed serious modeling skills, it still might be a good idea to explain what we mean by using movement constraints for mechanical models instead of rigging with bones. Here is a quick guide to setting constraints for the blade of the pocketknife that I made. The same idea can be used for many other mechanical objects. This isn't a modeling tutorial so I will assume that you have the mechanical parts gathered in the assembly room.

    - started with the parts of the pocketknife gathered in the assembly room. I want the blade and the corkscrew to move in one axis.
    - select the blade. click CAPS-LOCK to enable the adjustment of the blade's hotpoint. Move the hotpoint to the corner of the blade.
    - click CAPS-LOCK again. This will disable the movement of the hotpoint.
    - parent the blade to one of the parts of the pocketknife. In this case, I parented it to a red casing.
    - in the blade's properties tray, open the tab labeled "constraint"
    - now it depends on what kind of constraint that you want. I will use a ball joint and disable 2 axes, and limit the remaining axis.
    - the ball joint tab opens with three circles around x, y, z. Lock X and Z at 0. Choose limit for Y. Use the triangles to restrict blade rotation
    - repeat for corkscrew
    - make sure all parts are grouped in same object.
    - save grouped pocketknife to object browser

    Have fun with your own mechanical doohickeys!

    Edit: If you find that the whole group is stuck, check to make sure that you parented the constrained part to another piece before setting constraints.

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    Post edited by Diomede on
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,125
    edited December 1969

    SileneUK said:
    These are all so inspiring... Pimpy thanks for showing the lightening as I wanted to do something like that and maybe can try it.

    My only problem is time, but will participate as long as I can before going away.

    This is just a comp of what I am thinking of. Leaving lower left area to put in rusty-mechanical-weirdy-thingy being zapped with lightening that may come from Tyra or from Thunderfoot, her pet mammoth LOL.

    Thanks for all these great ideas.... good for other projects, too. I am so glad WIPs for various challenges are organised and saved for us. *like*

    :) SIlene

    Fantastic! Amazing! Tremendous! Great start, Silene. Well done. Much farther along than I am. You already have the makings of a good entry. Can't wait to see a lightning-zapped rusty mechanical weirdy thingy. Feel free to use my mechanical thingy. A pocketknife would have been pretty handy during the paleolithic era.

  • pimpypimpy Posts: 274
    edited December 1969

    SileneUK said:
    These are all so inspiring... Pimpy thanks for showing the lightening as I wanted to do something like that and maybe can try it.

    My only problem is time, but will participate as long as I can before going away.

    This is just a comp of what I am thinking of. Leaving lower left area to put in rusty-mechanical-weirdy-thingy being zapped with lightening that may come from Tyra or from Thunderfoot, her pet mammoth LOL.

    Thanks for all these great ideas.... good for other projects, too. I am so glad WIPs for various challenges are organised and saved for us. *like*

    :) SIlene

    Hi Silene
    in my previous post I added the link to create lightening but you can found here (http://www.officialpsds.com/LIGHTNING-PSD74716.html) the psd I used

  • MarkIsSleepyMarkIsSleepy Posts: 1,496
    edited December 1969

    Hi all,

    I am completely new to modeling and have never tried to model anything in Cararra at all before - so of course I thought I'd try to make a raygun and some other stuff to use in an entry for this contest. I can't help it - I LOVE this theme.

    Here's my raygun, in progress.

    I've got a couple questions though, and am hoping someone can help me out:
    #1: I indented this area by selecting a couple faces and using the Dynamic Extrusion tool. It looks really weird in the preview window - is this going to cause me issues later, or is it ok? Is there a better way to do this?

    #2: I want to gently bend the handle backward and am having trouble doing it. I thought that I could select the bottom part and use soft selection to move/rotate it but that doesn't seem to be getting me the result I'm looking for. Is there something like the bend modifier (which I am vaguely aware is a thing) in the vertext modeler?

    Also, is there a way to manually set the rotation inside the modeler instead of using the mouse and eyeballing it? I am having trouble getting some of my parts to line up straight. :(

    Thanks,
    Mark

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  • d-j-od-j-o Posts: 345
    edited December 1969

    MDO2010 said:
    Hi all,

    I am completely new to modeling and have never tried to model anything in Cararra at all before - so of course I thought I'd try to make a raygun and some other stuff to use in an entry for this contest. I can't help it - I LOVE this theme.

    Here's my raygun, in progress.

    I've got a couple questions though, and am hoping someone can help me out:
    #1: I indented this area by selecting a couple faces and using the Dynamic Extrusion tool. It looks really weird in the preview window - is this going to cause me issues later, or is it ok? Is there a better way to do this?

    #2: I want to gently bend the handle backward and am having trouble doing it. I thought that I could select the bottom part and use soft selection to move/rotate it but that doesn't seem to be getting me the result I'm looking for. Is there something like the bend modifier (which I am vaguely aware is a thing) in the vertext modeler?

    Also, is there a way to manually set the rotation inside the modeler instead of using the mouse and eyeballing it? I am having trouble getting some of my parts to line up straight. :(

    Thanks,
    Mark


    Try the polygon selector first #1, To bend the handle I would turn on the soft selection circled on the right side #2, you'll have to play with the selection slider to get the right look. Then in side view where you see the gun side on, choose some of the polygons #3, then move them back and see if you get a bend. If it doesn't look good ctrl Z and try again.
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  • d-j-od-j-o Posts: 345
    edited December 1969

    Here is my horse and wheels. The wheels where created in the vertice editor. I made a couple groups so I can have a couple different shaders. The flat part I created a checker board bump and made the horizontal and vertical counts different to give it this look.

    Now for the horse I wanted a little different mechanical look, different then just a metal texture I used the multichannel mixer.
    Source 1 is straight black with a square panel metal texture I had to use as a bump. The source 2 I used a neat circuit board like bump map that I had as the color texture, then with ADD, I made it blue. For the mixing source I used landscape, what I got was a dirty, bumpy looking undercarriage.

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  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,125
    edited October 2014

    I really like the texture for the horse, Kashyyyk. Well done.

    And look at the raygun! That is not a newbie raygun. Well done.

    I have attached the models to the bone skeletons and posed them in their general positions. This is a test toon render. I think I can stay with this concept, but I don't like the effects I am getting with the toon renderer. It is the native Carrara toon renderer. I will probably swtch back to photorealistic rendering.

    Edit - I have added the same scene using the non-photorealistic renderer.

    I'm just not feeling the noir. I am missing something important.

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  • d-j-od-j-o Posts: 345
    edited December 1969

    diomede64 said:
    I really like the texture for the horse, Kashyyyk. Well done.

    And look at the raygun! That is not a newbie raygun. Well done.

    I have attached the models to the bone skeletons and posed them in their general positions. This is a test toon render. I think I can stay with this concept, but I don't like the effects I am getting with the toon renderer. It is the native Carrara toon renderer. I will probably swtch back to photorealistic rendering.

    Thanks.

    Your cover needs a ground and background. Do an image search for Amazing Stories. They had the best covers. They had multiple ways to bring out the objects of the covers, some have a simple gradient color with fog or smoke, or the edges faded out, even geometric shapes that overlap, all of that made your eye drawn to the subject matter, it's a simple concept, but hard to master. Can I draw on your image with an idea?

    Try the yatoons plug in, I've been working on mine a lot and used the tutorial here-https://bitbucket.org/zgock/yatoon/wiki/Tutorial for the lined shadows look. It's turned out pretty good.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,125
    edited December 1969

    kashyyyk said:
    Can I draw on your image with an idea?

    Try the yatoons plug in, I've been working on mine a lot and used the tutorial here-https://bitbucket.org/zgock/yatoon/wiki/Tutorial for the lined shadows look. It's turned out pretty good.

    Absolutely! All suggestions welcome.

  • d-j-od-j-o Posts: 345
    edited October 2014

    diomede64 said:
    kashyyyk said:
    Can I draw on your image with an idea?

    Try the yatoons plug in, I've been working on mine a lot and used the tutorial here-https://bitbucket.org/zgock/yatoon/wiki/Tutorial for the lined shadows look. It's turned out pretty good.

    Absolutely! All suggestions welcome.

    The gray behind the figure, I was thinking of a tech style wall that fades out as it goes up towards the logo, like the old 50's metal backround walls they used to like, the far background a dark black/blue gradiant that is opposite contrast of your figures, then a light fog or smoke along the floor, my white blobs don't portray it good, should be more see thru and wispy. But just a quick idea of what I mean.

    Here is an example too of how they used the dark in the back and moved forward and got brighter in color to draw your eye to the main subjects, even all bright colored covers did the opposite and had a dark section to draw your eye.

    .

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  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,125
    edited December 1969

    kashyyyk said:
    diomede64 said:
    kashyyyk said:
    Can I draw on your image with an idea?

    Try the yatoons plug in, I've been working on mine a lot and used the tutorial here-https://bitbucket.org/zgock/yatoon/wiki/Tutorial for the lined shadows look. It's turned out pretty good.

    Absolutely! All suggestions welcome.

    The gray behind the figure, I was thinking of a tech style wall that fades out as it goes up towards the logo, like the old 50's metal backround walls they used to like, the far background a dark black/blue gradiant that is opposite contrast of your figures, then a light fog or smoke along the floor, my white blobs don't portray it good, should be more see thru and wispy. But just a quick idea of what I mean.

    Here is an example too of how they used the dark in the back and moved forward and got brighter in color to draw your eye to the main subjects, even all bright colored covers did the opposite and had a dark section to draw your eye.

    .

    Thanks a lot!!! this is very helpful. I will do some more experimenting

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    You all are moving right along!

    MDO2010, your raygun is looking really good! You're doing really well! The indented bit along the side, do you want the inside a rounded, concave surface and the outer edge more sharply defined? If so, you could select the polylines that form the oval that is flush with the side of the gun and crease the edges.

    The handle that you want to have bend backwards has a really dense mesh and may be a little more difficult to bend because of that, but I do think Kashyyyk is right, that the soft select is probably the way to go.

    Kashyyyk, love the horse texture! The wheels are a nicely done as well.

    Diomede, what do you use for image editing, if anything? I'm wondering if you could use a render pass as a mask in an image editor and a filter to create a hybrid between photo real and comic book? Here's an example I posted earlier in this thread:
    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/47148/#688580

    The WIP for my process can be found here:
    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/33911/P75/#507588

  • d-j-od-j-o Posts: 345
    edited December 1969

    You all are moving right along!


    Diomede, what do you use for image editing, if anything? I'm wondering if you could use a render pass as a mask in an image editor and a filter to create a hybrid between photo real and comic book? Here's an example I posted earlier in this thread:
    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/47148/#688580

    And EP's image is a great example of dark and light colors that draw your eye to the main topic of the image.

  • booksbydavidbooksbydavid Posts: 429
    edited October 2014

    OK, I'm not actually in Carrara, yet. I've started modelling a few things in Silo. Yes, I know Carrara has a very competent modeller, but it and I have never gotten along, so Silo is my go to modeller of choice. I will be moving into Carrara soon, because Carrara is the best place ever to set up a scene, create shaders and effects and just about everything else for me.

    Anyway, like I said before, I'm going for a scifi look where the hero rescues (or kidnaps, I can't decide) the ice, jungle, space queen. In the mix there also has to be some sort of creature for our hero to attack in some way. Right now, I'm leaning towards a jungle theme, but we'll see how things go.

    I won't show a step by step in Silo, but here is what I came up with for my 'hero' character. I'll be working on the 'queen' outfit next and possibly a creature. We'll see.

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