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At the moment I have no terrain. I hope to add some mountains later. I'm sorta learning as I go along. For now I am using the basic Caribbean sky with clouds with a touch of fog. The plane flies through the fog once in a while. Neat effect. I tried the realistic sky and it was beautiful but incredibly slow to render. Maybe I will use that in the final render. Not sure about what you mean by adverse to compositing. In the first few minutes I have the camera on a tripod and constantly pointing at the plane. Later in the same animation I plan to replicate the path of the plane but have the camera mounted from the pilot's seat and looking out. I've never had any luck with motion paths. It seems it would be perfect if I knew how to make it work. I can never get the object to always point forward in line with the path. Like with this plane, after a turn or so the plane is pointing way out of line. So for now I do it all in key frames. I'm just a 56 year old amateur trying to play with professional 3D software made for those that have brains.
At the moment I have no terrain. I hope to add some mountains later. I'm sorta learning as I go along. For now I am using the basic Caribbean sky with clouds with a touch of fog. The plane flies through the fog once in a while. Neat effect. I tried the realistic sky and it was beautiful but incredibly slow to render. Maybe I will use that in the final render. Not sure about what you mean by adverse to compositing. In the first few minutes I have the camera on a tripod and constantly pointing at the plane. Later in the same animation I plan to replicate the path of the plane but have the camera mounted from the pilot's seat and looking out. I've never had any luck with motion paths. It seems it would be perfect if I knew how to make it work. I can never get the object to always point forward in line with the path. Like with this plane, after a turn or so the plane is pointing way out of line. So for now I do it all in key frames. I'm just a 56 year old amateur trying to play with professional 3D software made for those that have brains.
Sounds like you have a brain to me. :) Plus patience if you keyframed the flight.
The reason why I asked if you were adverse to compositing is that Carrara can render with an alpha channel, so you could "layer" your renders in a video editor that supports it, rather than render the whole thing in one go. It is certainly possible to do it in one render if you wanted to, but depending on the complexity of the terrain and village, it could take awhile.
How far away are the mountains? Are they like the Rocky Mountains or the Alps, in that they are tall and dramatic, or are they more like the Ozarks or Smoky Mountains where the are lower and more rounded? My thoughts are that you could do a flat central area with the village and (I assume) air strip) surround by the more hilly or mountainous terrain. and for the extreme distance a simple Infinite Plane.
The terrains could be replicated using the replicator, or you could use one very large terrain with a flattened area in the middle. If you need any help or specifics on how to do it, we're more than willing to give a hand.
The other thing that may help is high resolution, spherical render applied as a shader to scene encompassing sphere, with the plane's flight animation within that sphere.
As an example, the little youtube test video utilizes this spherical render I made. The video only has two objects in it, the ship and the building it is flying towards.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN6E8ji3oHA
I appreciate all the suggestions. Now to do the homework and see if I can figure it all out.
I am working on trying to figure out how to work with the HDR maps. I have downloaded a couple free ones to learn with. There is one that seems to provide a decent background. It's way too dark sometimes and other times it is too bright. I have found that dropping the intensity level way down to the 5 to 20 percent ranges provides for some nice rich blue skies with good textured clouds. I can test render each key frame to adjust the intensity to keep an even keel. I'm glad you suggested doing that to my little animation. I'm still having lighting problems because the plane travels all over the place. I like the effects of the global illumination. It seems to add a nicer depth to the renderings but jeez it would take a long time to render a two minute sample animation. I am also finding I can not play my saved (veedub64) sequenced files if I use the HDR background.
I've not attempted the replicator yet. Would the replicated items slow down the rendering process? I am currently rendering this airplane at about two frames a second.
I am working on a long sample to display my progress. Once you see it, you will see all kinds of things I could do better. The propeller is one I know I will have to find a better idea on. It's ok for a scene at the airport but you barely can see a real propeller when it's pulling a plane around.
I like the tall mountains in the background. The town might be off in the distance a little so the details won't have to be so fine. Of course the airport area needs to be flat and away from the tall mountains. But flying near or even around one would be a nice addition.
Oh, I have always done my animations in a single one file rendering. Putting segments together is something I have not done before.
Well, here is what I have so far. It needs smoothing and other things done to it. And it needs a start and end to it as well. The file size is huge. It took several hours to upload this thing. The one I did at first was a 1024 by but this one I uploaded was a 640 by size. It did reduce the file size a lot but at a sacrifice of quality when viewed full screen. Full screen is better to be able to see the plane way off.
Check it out. Suggestions will be considered.
http://youtu.be/ZOuZJV1ATY8
I was away from the computer yesterday and saw your reply today. Nice work so far. As someone that does video editing, my suggestion would be to break apart the animation with cutaways, which you will have when you have your cockpit flight perspective.
If you're rendering at two seconds per frame, that is very reasonable. If you have a background you want to use, then I would try that first. You want something that will match the background you have.
To tie the plane in with the background a bit better, make sure the light you're using as the sun light is coming from the same direction as the light from the HDRI. When you use an HDRI and have Skylight enabled in the Render room, the HDRI acts as a light source or Image Based Light (IBL), the general recommendations when using this method is to turn off the scene's ambient light, as the HDRI provides it, and then to also turn down the intensity of the light you're using to provide sunlight. Instead of 100%, try 60% as a starting point.
You could also use a lens flare on the sun light. There are a couple sun lens flare presets. Select the light, then the Effects tab, then scroll down to Lens flare and click the button to enter the editor, there's a pulldown menu with a long list of them. Just make sure you are on the first frame of the animation, as the Lens flare can be animated and turning it on from an off state (and vice versa) will generate a keyframe.
The lens flare - I forgot about that. I've done that before with a small outer space thing I did a long time ago. I like your suggestions. I will see if I can figure those things out and utilize them.
Are you saying I can make my own land and structure settings and still use the HDRI background that I are currently using? I would like to be able to do that because when I do the from the cockpit video rendering, I would want it all to match up even when switching views in a mid-maneuver. Also, the replicated items. I've not tried to figure it out yet but does the added or replicated items increase the file size as much as if I had made each building normally?
After I rendered the animation I sent to YouTube, I saw a hesitation about midway and a flaw when the plane made the sharp left banked turn before the dive. For some reason it went up higher. That was not a planned move. Once in a while my Carrara starts doing weird things and changes settings at random. Then it won't shut down normally. When things get crazy, I save, shut down, and restart Carrara. However, the altered settings in the scene are still messed up.
When I was rendering the 640 by animation, I was getting 3 to 4 frames per second. I had 3035 frames to render. I will have double or more than that number if I go with a whole flight. It may take a day to upload something like that. It took about 4 hours for me to upload that video today. I am beginning to wonder if I could even save the completed video on DVD.
Replicated objects, depending on what they are, can take longer to render, but they shouldn't be big drag on resources. You could use a combination of terrains, replicated buildings and an HDRI, no problem.
As to the flight motion and changed parameters, have you looked for errant keyframes? Is it possible you accidentally adjusted something at some point in the timeline?
For the video, my suggestion would be to render your ground perspective separately from the arial perspective, then edit them together in a video editor, cutting between the two shots to break up action and make it more interesting to watch. Even old movies and TV shows before they had computerizes editing systems used that method to keep the viewer's interest. Here's an example I did a long time ago with a ship flying above a city using the motion path and keyframed banking on the turns. It's the same flight path, but multiple cameras. I edited between them to make it more visually interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBX28ZsaVUg
If you have a Pro version of Carrara, you can use the Batch Queue to render the video. You would add a camera to the cockpit and keep the one on the ground. In the Batch Queue, you would load the scene, then select the ground camera as the source, and then under Save As Named File you would name your file. Then, you add the same scene to the Batch Queue again (it will appear twice in the list), and in the second instance, you would select the arial camera and then under Save As Named File, you would choose a different name. You could use this method for as many cameras as you choose to add to your scene.
Are you saving the file uncompressed? That could allow for a very large file and a very long upload time.
I've done this as you have said. I think I have it right. Now it's taking 25 seconds a frame. The light sampling prior to each frame's render is what is taking so long. It has changed the way the rendered scene looks. I could not find the actual sun so I just guessed. The HDRI that I used was a freebie. I guess it does not have the real info I need to make it work.
Speaking of lights, I forgot to enable the strobe light on the plane's tail when I rendered it.
I've done this as you have said. I think I have it right. Now it's taking 25 seconds a frame. The light sampling prior to each frame's render is what is taking so long. It has changed the way the rendered scene looks. I could not find the actual sun so I just guessed. The HDRI that I used was a freebie. I guess it does not have the real info I need to make it work.
Speaking of lights, I forgot to enable the strobe light on the plane's tail when I rendered it.
I thought you said before that you were using Skylight with the HDRI and getting two seconds. I thought that seemed fast, but with these 64 bit, multi-core machines these days.... I must have read what you wrote wrong or mis-understood it. 25 seconds per frame sounds pretty good to me using Skylight, but that's a lot of frames to render, and it adds up! If you like the lighting the way you had it, then by all means, use it if you want the speed.
Oh I'm good to write the wrong thing a lot or confuse people. I did like the lighting the way you had me to try. It does work out well and the shadows are a lot better on the plane. I most likely will do the lighting like you suggested in the final rendering. I want as close to real as I am able to make it. I'm not a pro but I do enjoy 3D graphics and animations. I remember seeing those rotating chrome spheres on a VGA screen when they first showed up at the computer stores. I was fascinated and have been ever since. I started my 3D experience with Povray in Dos. I learned it well back then. But now I barely know what all Carrara is capable of and being your student means a lot to me. :coolsmile:
I need to see if I can figure out how to use the replicators.
Personally I wish my mind worked better. I am a long term diabetic and it is affecting my thinking and memory. I don't mean to strain your patience.
No worries. No patience is strained. ;-)
It's hard sometimes to convey ideas when you don't know what level of experience the listener has. Plus, when I write, my mind goes faster than my pudgy little digits can type. Add to that, all the jargon and acronyms...
If this is something that you really want to do, there's a book called [Digital] Lighting and Rendering by Jeremy Birn. He has worked for PIXAR and other big name CG production houses. His book is very approachable with lots of example illustrations and files that can be downloaded. I highly recommend it. It is fairly software agnostic, although his examples are usually illustrated with higher end software, but the principles and terms still apply, even if the workspace looks different or the controls are in different spots. Maybe Amazon has a deal?
aaah, I forgot to send this one.
Jeez I liked that video you did. I'm inspired. It was good. I see your point in break-away scenes to make the video more interesting. I do have the 8.5 version in 64 bit. I think that is the Pro version. Anyway I do have that batch feature in the render window. I had wondered if switching cameras in a single render was possible. I see now that it's not. I'm glad you explained the way it is done. I can see having more than two cameras now. This is getting interesting. I guess I'll start it up and let it run overnight or for a couple days with a computer like mine.
Those errant keyframes were injected when Carrara was going crazy.
In your video of the ship, how did you keep the nose pointing forward the whole time? Maybe I am messing up here but after I do my keyframes, I might change the motion over to motion path. There is a light blue line following the keyframe path completely. I was thinking I could smooth the flight path since it was visible in motion path. The corners are square though. If I change the motion back over to keyframe even if I have not done a single thing, keys get altered.
Should I save compressed instead?
I just did a test rendering from a camera in the cockpit of the plane. i did not see any signs of altitude. All I saw was banking in the turns. The long dive did show more of the ground. The long slow bank climb at the end only shows a bank with the ground simply slipping by to the right. Why would I not get altitude views? The horizon pretty much stayed in the center of the screen the whole time.
That would be because an HDRI and spherical render in the Background wrap around the virtual universe. To get and arial view, you would need a picture taken from an arial perspective.
There are a few steps you''ll need to do.
1) Create new scene.
2) Select Camera, and in the Camera's General tab, change it to a Spherical Camera. Position the camera so that it is level and looking in one of the primary directions straight on, such as front, back, left or right.
3) Under Scene, Load your HDRI
4) Delete your light, you won't need it.
5) In the Render Room, se the render output to be twice as wide as it is high, and very large. Maybe around 8000X4000.
6) Render a single frame. .jpg should be fine. When it's done save it.
7) Open your plane scene and insert a sphere. Make it big enough to encompass the entire flight path of the plane, plus a couple hundred feet. It should be centered in the scene. In the General Tab set it so that it does not catch or receive shadows.
9) In the Texture room, under Edit, create a new shader, and in the color channel, use the pulldown to select image map or whatever it's called. Navigate to the spherical render you created and select it.
10) Now, go to the glow channel and select image map, and load the spherical map, or right click on the color channel and choose Copy, and right click on the glow channel and Paste.
11) I think you could still leave the HDRI in place for lighting if you want, as the sphere isn't casting or receiving shadows, although I'm nt entirely sure.
This method may allow you to get the sensation f movement as the plane moves within the sphere. Wort a shot. I know it sound complicated, but the steps are pretty quick.
I did what you indicated I should do. Your instructions were well written because I understood the first time I read them. I got to see what it is like to fly inside the plane now.
However, the ground is still not far below the plane. I may have to make the land and buildings and use a sky-only HDRI for the spherical background.
When I finish the whole flight animation I will be sure to include shots from the inside. The animation as it is can affect my senses when it does the half loop upward and then rolls over. I believe when I get all the HD settings right for each view's render, that this animation will look great and maybe even cause a little giddiness in the stomach and mind.
A 3D environment would be best, but it was worth a try with the other method.
Carrara has a terrain object preset called Farmland. It's in the Objects Browser under Mountains. Drag that into your scene. It will be very large and may be higher than the plane flying, so select one of the isometric views such as Front, Back, Left or Right, zoom out and move the terrain down (or up) to suit your needs. If the terrain is larger than you want, you can scale it down in the motion panel.
The reason I suggest Farmland is that it includes low mountains and flat valleys. The flat areas have spots that look like fields. They don't look that good for close-ups, but for an animation with lots of movement, it may suit the need.
If you want it to look like it goes on nearly forever, you can add a replicator (not a surface, and select the terrain to be replicated. The grid size should be the same dimensions as the terrain. The cool part about the replicator and the terrains, is that if you enable the seamless checkbox, the terrains will all match up with each other on the edges.
I was able to do what you are saying about the terrain and replicating it. However, something is not working out. It seems I'm still buried in the land no matter what I do. I did get it to work once. The computer didn't like something and Carrara started popping up error messages. I'm thinking about distant hills. I'd like a flat area to make a small airport. I'd like some trees to give the illusion that the moutains are far away. Trees are new to me also. They seem to load a CPU down though. I like a natural sky with some clouds so the plane's movement can be realized. I loved the way the HDRI sphere worked with the sky. Is there a way to do a sky-only HDRI along with a 3D generated landscape? I have pretty good experience with objects or structures in 3D still shots. It's landscaping that I can't seem to get to work like I want it to do.
Yes you can certainly do that perfectly fine. No reason not to. I forgot to mention that an object put in a replicator can have the Visibility option turned off and the replications of the object will still be visible.. That may have been why you were still under the terrain.
Trees can take awhile to render.
I have been busy applying the things you've tried to explain to me. It is getting interesting with all the added camera views. I am currently playing around with the take-off animation. I have grass with a somewhat checkerboard appearance to it. Are you aware of a grass texture that will do a seamless and tile without any differences in the color such that lines form where they are tiled?
I made a tiling grass texture for this scene that is free to download. Look in the Textures folder. I also use surface replicators that use distribution maps so that you can see how they work. This terrain probably would be too small to use for your video, but if it does, feel free to use it and alter it as you see fit,
http://www.sharecg.com/v/69697/view/5/3D-Model/Fantasy-Village-terrain
There's also probably textures that you can buy from DAZ, so it may be worth it to look. I would also try looking for free ones on-line. ShareCG may have some, and I'm sure if you did a google search you could come up with some.
I am having a little trouble with the replicator feature. I managed to get the grass to work just fine. I did find a good grass texture on the CG site you told me about. I've got a nice grassy airport grounds. I wanted to try to replicate a simple flat box with a asphalt texture applied to it. I was wanting to create a runway service road alongside the main runway. I can't seem to get the cubes to display the texture. Also do I have to use a separate replicator for each item that requires a different number of replications?
You may need to post screen shots of the cubes to get an idea of your shader issue.
For the runway, you may have more control duplicating instead of replicating. Duplicating is also easy on resources. Command-D will duplicate. If you move the duplicated object a certain distance, let's say 10 feet, then duplicate the duplicate, the next duplicate will be another 10 feet away from the first duplicate, and on and on for as many duplicates as you create. If you deselect the duplicate and then re-select and duplicate it, it breaks the chain. It also works with rotations as well. If you rotate your duplicate 10º and duplicate it, the new duplicate with be rotated another 10º and so on, unless you deselect the duplicate and reselect it.
What I have done to create roadways on a flat surface is to take my road section, duplicate it, and move the duplicate so that the beginning of the duplicate lines up with the end of the original and duplicate as many times as needed. They all lined up perfectly this way.
Here's a section I made. The underlying mesh is kind of a mess, but the road surface and shoulders are clean enough. The stripes are individual shading domains and not image maps. Feel free to use it if you wish. I made a double lane highway stretching off to the horizon with it by using the duplicate method I described above.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7370483/Highway-section.car
Edited to add that the cars in the render were added using a replicator.
Thanks for the help and the file. I may be able to use that somewhere later on. Just noticing that the .car file you send did not show or indicate how the scene was created. No big deal. It made me wonder if there were better ways than I had ever considered when making files.
Is there a way to cause a texture to stretch or bend? For instance, I made an road intersection piece for my airport runway where the service runway connects to the main runway. It is like a rectangle but with a stretched edge where there are turning radii on each side. I made it in the spline modeler. Then I used bend and twist to add the curve to it. The texture is a section of street that has white lines on each side. When I applied the texture to the fabricated intersection, the white lines only showed up at the widest point of the item I made.
The road stated a Spline object that I converted to a Vertex object. I used, Edit--> Convert To Other Modeler. I then fixed quite a few of the polygon issues that occur when converting. If I were to do it again, I would just start in the vertex modeler to begin with.
Regarding the shader issue, you may need to try a couple things. The easiest might be to rotate the image map.
If you look at the thumbnail of the image map, there are several widgets/buttons with arrows. The bottom one is a curved arrow. This rotates the image map 90º per click. Immediately below it is a little arrow in a circle. This indicates the direction of the map. See the examples. To rotate the map, click the curved arrow and see how it looks. You may have to tile the image if it is distorted.
Also maybe bend and distort the road with the texture applied to see if it distorts with the object.
oops misread is EP's road he mapped it already disregard
A step ahead of you on that. I did try rotating and the same thing happens. I was wondering if there was a way to force a texture to follow the shape of the curve and also stretch out at the end. I never have been able to accomplish that effect with my ancient version of Carrara. I was wondering if it had been made a feature with the newest version.
And I also applied the texture prior to the bend and it never followed the bend. I cleared it and applied it fresh and it is as you see it now.
that is doable in texture room but I always forget how
Spline models use a basic shading domain and some kind of internal UV system. I'm not sure if it is planar, although you can set projection mapping in the shader to box, planar, spherical, etc. Depending on the face that the shader is applied to, an image map can look just fine, but if the face is oddly shaped or the image map isn't close enough in size, severe distortions can occur.
I used projection mapping to get it to where it could be seen.
Any suggestions on how to accomplish what I am trying to do. Maybe an alternative way to do it?