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Again, and I know I can repeat this until my face turns blue and I drop from exhaustion... :) :)
IT IS IRRELEVANT !!! :) :) :)
It's not because Pixar "only does animation". Do some research. :) :) :)
I recall some years back a guy from Pixar came onto the forum and said exactly what Joe is saying - they hire talent and teach skills.
This is not only Pixar. My daughter just got hired as a designer by an international company in the clothing industry. She has never used the software they use and hasn't used a Mac in years, but she has a great track record as a designer and is a Photoshop, Coral draw, plus some others expert.
Just as an aside - they teach Blender at our local college, because it is "Maya for the masses" and they know that new graduates who want to get into the business will never be able to afford Maya. I was amazed to see at the last Blender conference how many of the attendees teach Blender as a full-time occupation.
Yikes! :ahhh:
I commend the efforts, my friend! Seems a bit backwards to me - the best home for rendering Carrara trees, in my opinion, is Carrara. But if anyone can find a plausible way, you're the man! What I see is that Carrara's plant editor is one incredible feature to have - the way it works within Carrara. Once you pull the mesh out of Carrara, I'm not sure how well it would compete with some of the wonderful existing 3d trees that are being made by 3d modeling artists, which I also very much like.
When I was a kid, I witnessed a professional artist at a resort down the street, where I caught frogs from the ponds, and fished out golf balls for dimes for the golfers. He was painting a beautiful scene of the golf courses serene landscape and, when I got there, he was painting the branches of a tree. I gazed on in wonder. Nature makes for a beautiful thing to simulate in a painting. After he got the delicate branches, he'd work leaves in and around them and the trees would come to life. So I began painting trees. Not by looking at them and painting what I saw, but by remembering what he did. My Mom just recently gave me a landscape that I painted from my imagination at twelve years old. The trees were really pretty cool!
Anyways, if I was to make 3d trees to export to DAZ Studio, I would rather start from scratch with a vertex object, and sculpt it out the same way that I used to paint them, so many years ago... something I'll never forget - I think. One 3d tree model that really caught my eye is "The Wishing Tree", by winnston1984 at Renderosity. It sort of reminds me of the trees I used to paint.
Here is a step-by-step guide for creating Genesis triax compatible content for use in Studio and Carrara (I think you need more steps to create Poser companion files but I doubt that it would be complicated). As Dart says, very simple and very easy. Much easier than grouping bodyparts and matching joint editor zones for V4 and M4, for example.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/45361/#676987Right. And as for making items that conform to V4, M4, etc., is really quite easy - as long as you enjoy modeling. Phil's course that I mentioned above gives all of the details you need to fulfill the task, and the rest is up to ones imagination and modeling ingenuity. Now that I've really taken to modeling again, I'm a bit bewildered at the aggressive negativity that used to surround the subject of Carrara's vertex modeler. I find it to be an excellent set of tools. Perhaps a little gripe here and there, but life outside of Carrara has a lot more of that, for me at least.
Well Phil's course does show it step by step, but in DS3, using the content creator kit, while I have DS4, and have to make use of the transfer utility function which per tut videos should work much the same way, but boy am I not able to get usable results yet. Must be doing something wrong, because the conforming item when I load into Carrara is invisible/has no mesh (although it does have the bones).
Again, and I know I can repeat this until my face turns blue and I drop from exhaustion... :) :)
IT IS IRRELEVANT !!! :) :) :)
It's not because Pixar "only does animation". Do some research. :) :) :)
:sigh:
Knowing Microsoft Excel isn't going to get you the job at a company, but not knowing Microsoft Excel certainly could. New hires are expected to be proficient in Maya (and 3Ds Max) if they want to work in CGI. It's a given because that's what's taught at most universities where you'd get access to the internships to places like Pixar, which is why they don't go out of their way to mention the fact that their proprietary software is based on Maya.
But here, actual current job postings from major studios.
"proficiency in Maya"
http://www.entertainmentcareers.net/Method_Studios/Animator/job/182420/
"Proficiency in Maya or equivalent software preferred but not required"
http://www.entertainmentcareers.net/Walt_Disney_Animation_Studios/Animator/job/182530/
"Comprehensive knowledge of Maya."
http://www.entertainmentcareers.net/Method_Studios/Rigging_Artist/job/182425/
"Experience using commercial graphics packages including Maya and/or Houdini"
http://www.entertainmentcareers.net/Walt_Disney_Animation_Studios/Talent_Development_Artist-Effects_Apprentice/job/184706/
"Strong Maya knowledge with good problem solving skills and a solid understanding of a stereoscopic feature animation pipeline."
http://www.entertainmentcareers.net/Cinesite/Layout_Artist_Feature_Animation/job/183394/
"Solid understanding of Python in Maya. MEL development experience preferred."
http://www.entertainmentcareers.net/Tippett_Studio/CG_Puppet_Artist/job/181375/
"Candidate must have expert level experience working with V-ray and good knowledge of Maya and the use of V-ray within Maya."
http://www.entertainmentcareers.net/Method_Studios/Senior_Look_Dev_Lighter/job/183409/
I agree; most people will have switched to Carrara 11 (come on Daz, don't me look silly).
That's fine if you want to believe that. I challenge you to apply for any of those jobs with your primary skill and talent that you are proficient in Maya. Let us know how it goes. :) :) :)
Specific software skills are generally a "nice to have", but if you look at ALL the other requirements and skills and talents they list, those others are FAR more difficult to possess and/or obtain. Software is, by far, the easy part. Don't fret about software, fret about all the other stuff.
Although people here LOVE to focus on software only, so focus away... :) :)
Have fun making your model. Body parts do not have to connect to each other, and it doesn't need to be human. Just let your imagination do the modeling - and don't forget that SubD in Carrara translates perfectly to DS, and vice versa. The Displacement Painter can be a really fun tool for more of a 'working with clay' feel - give it a try! But, like ZBrush and other things, it does take practice.
Once done, exit Edit mode and export as an OBJ, using your preferred preset
Import into DS that has a default Genesis figure in it
Use the CCTs to covert the model into a conforming item
**If you've used any morphs on Genesis during the modeling process in Carrara, remember to have CCTs calculate the subtraction of those morphs - this will work even if you've made your own custom morph, if you've followed the steps in the box above
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Now you have something that can use the entire weight-mapped rig of Genesis, which is an excellent figure. If you don't need Genesis, you can either make it invisible, or you could use the CCTs to actually make an independent figure that doesn't require Genesis at all. But by using Genesis and conforming to it, you gain access to all of the morphs that you may have installed for it - so you can very easily make very different versions of the same - whatever it is - with just a few spins of a few dials!
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Does it sound like I'm being a Smart Alec? I'm not.
I'm trying to illustrate a sound workflow that I've done myself - in practice - and found it to be an incredibly fast method to end result in very resourceful material for use in ones project, or sold on the market, shared with friends, used in games... whatever the goal.
Yes I was coming in a bit late on your ongoing conversation, which I did not catch in its entirety at all but, rather, was posting a comment with the title of the thread in mind.
I don't spend hours and hours modeling cool stuff in Carrara most of the time. I do model, but usually morphs for existing content that I've purchased and creating little things that I need. I use DAZ 3D as if they are under my employ, and I only pay them when they come through with the things that I want. Over the past five years, I've wanted everything so I became a yearly PC member and used those savings to enormous affect, and also bought a quite a bit of other stuff. I really jumped on the Genesis (1) bandwagon, so my Genesis model has a bazillion morph dials on it, which I really like.
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The point is, "Independence" can actually take on the literal meaning of the word with Carrara. Yeah, a lot of other software too. Being all by myself, I was considering other options. I simply cannot cough up enough cash out-of-pocket to snag something like Cinema 4D. Heck, I can't even justify buying Poser Pro. I could justify Poser, but only if I didn't already own Carrara. Now I have to wait until the price and the number of dollars in my wallet match up in a favorable fashion. Until then, I'm content to just not have it. Not even sure I'll ever buy it.
I've seen kids that can make anything from nothing. I was one of those kids... and I've never really grown up. Ask my wife... she's testify to that!
Here's this:
If you cannot make a good render in Carrara, you likely will not succeed in Maya or anything else. I know... that's not your point, BC, and I know that you can make great renders in Carrara... I'm just saying....
Personally, if I was in a hiring position for modelers, animators, texture artists, scene creators and light riggers for 3d environments, and someone came in with superb talent, I wouldn't be turning him or her away if he or she used Carrara to do it. Rigging is rigging. Modeling is modeling, etc., etc.,
Whichever aspect of the process that person was applying for, if my shop ran either LW, Maya, 3DS, whatever... those all have a little to a lot more to offer in that specific field than Carrara does, and the process of making it work is very similar. If the applicant is good, that's enough. Would I love to own a copy of LW, Maya, 3DS? Heck yeah! But I now know that I'll never wish that I owned them - so I'll not be saving up for any of them. I'd rather spend that money on more content or recording studio time, if it was money to be spent on my production. The money that it would cost to get Carrara-esque Maya - their top-notch offering with all of the figure tools, environmental helpers and whatnot... Man could I ever improve upon my rendering situation for Carrara, which I already know can turn out my project how I want it!
Future of Carrara?
I have been spending the past few years trying to help people use Carrara as well as trying to help people whom don't own Carrara to see what Carrara is all about, and how simple it is to use, yet can really be used as a toy (it's a really fun and simple toy!), a very realistic 3d imagery software choice, a very smooth working animation suite (Poser and DS give me headaches), and whatever else a person might want in something like this.
It's really cool how, even though I'm always going off about how Carrara can use DAZ 3D content, ifyou own Carrara, you don't need to purchase any content ever, if you don't need it. It is quite capable of letting the user build everything from scratch, with the help of all of the amazing modelers and scene effects that are simply built right in. I don't get paid to sell Carrara. But I try to sell it to raise funds for its future. I don't feel an immediate need for a new version, though I'd love to see them finish the whole DUF thing to more of a perfected state, like they've done with Poser content. As for the rest, I'm fine with everybody else's wishes and needs... and look forward to following its growth. But the biggest reason that I like to sell Carrara is because I feel that I'm turning people on to something really wonderful to do on their computers. This is vastly more entertaining to me than any game!
I agree; most people will have switched to Carrara 11 (come on Daz, don't me look silly).
Exactly! And it's really not so far fetched if despite all the odds Carrara 9 comes out and leaves everyone with jaws hanging and the trend continues till 11 and it seriously outpaces Maya........sorry....sugar rush.....I'm going off to learn some more principles of animation to see if that will calm my nerves down a little.
Also, while there is an awful lot to Maya, if that's what you need to know to get the job, it's not a super-huge task to learn, if you can already really crank in Carrara, Hex, LW, Blender... The hardest part that I've seen many people wrap their heads around is actually where to begin with modeling - I'm talking about casual folks, not those that went to 3d art college.
UV Mapping is another tangled mess for the mind. But if you know how to model in this, then if you need to learn that in order to get the job, it generally won't be that bad - except for getting your hands on the software.
Around here, there have been job openings that require knowledge of 3DS, and a popular game company just opened a set of doors near Madison that doesn't really require knowing a certain software, but more like what joe was saying... their looking for artists and programmers with no mention of which software you were taught on.
Exactly! And it's really not so far fetched if despite all the odds Carrara 9 comes out and leaves everyone with jaws hanging and the trend continues till 11 and it seriously outpaces Maya........sorry....sugar rush.....I'm going off to learn some more principles of animation to see if that will calm my nerves down a little.Yes! I'm feeling that rush myself! :ahhh:
As Dartanbeck said, independent folks are free to use whatever software they want. Obviously. Like I've said before, you can produce any render with any CG software on the planet. It just depends how well, and quickly, and efficiently you want to produce it... :)
But again, even with independent folks, software is irrelevant. Because if you are producing it to sell your artwork or renders or whatever product to others, they couldn't care less what software you use. They want to see only one thing... TALENT. They want to see an animation or visual effect or 3D model that is produced by someone who can capture and produce certain things that hold the viewers' attention and interest and make them want to watch and make them say "WOW !!".
Ultimately, if you produce your work for others, nobody ever cares if you used Maya or Carrara or some painted cardboard. They want to see stuff that they love. A lot of people even love the cheesy animation in South Park, because it's done by some very funny and talented people.
So you can repeat over and over that studios want Maya, but what they really want is talent. Because the really talented companies do well, and the companies with no talent don't. And a group of Maya masters with no talent for producing what people want to see probably won't succeed.
When I bought Carrara I was diving into 3D for the first time. I had absolutely no experience with any 3D software but my explicit goal was to produce a full length movie. I spent months researching software. At the time I could have purchased Maya if that had looked like the best option for my needs, and I spent a lot of time deciding if that was the way to go. Learning software that was used by most of the Major studios was certainly appealing but in the end I picked Carrara. I picked Carrara because out of all of the software that I had researched it was the most rounded. By this I mean it allowed me to do, at the very least, everything I needed but in a manner that I could realistically achieve at the production quality level that I wanted. A very important factor that contributed towards this conclusion was the quality and price of the content in the Daz store and other Poser/Daz content outlets. I don't believe anything parallels the variety/quality/cost combination of what we have at our disposal. Being a noob I knew that content affordability would be a huge limiting factor for my project (most likely a killer) since I didn't want to make everything myself.
I was completely aware of all the areas where Maya was more advanced than Carrara but here's the thing. A good pianist can sit down at ANY piano and make it sound amazing as long as it has strings and keys. The biggest difference, in my mind, between Maya and Carrara is that most of the Maya users have been trained to use that software. They have spent a lot of time and money learning to use it and even more importantly they have spent a lot of time and money professionally honing their skills to become animators, lighting artists, riggers, modelers, texture artists etc. With that said it's not reasonable to expect someone who has not had the benefit of that level of training and experience to produce the same kind of results. But, and this is a very big but, I thoroughly believe that if a person without that training makes the commitment to broaden their knowledge, puts in the effort and is determined to achieve the same results with Carrara, that they will succeed. I believe that that is what is of value to the studio's far more than particular software knowledge.
Well said, I relate with this 100%.
Sorry, but I need to disagree with that.
The piano would need to be correctly tuned and in good condition. No point trying to play a piano that is out of key, with keys missing, or loose keys that fall off after pressing them.
Sorry, but I need to disagree with that.
The piano would need to be correctly tuned and in good condition. No point trying to play a piano that is out of key, with keys missing, or loose keys that fall off after pressing them.
Absolutly but I hardly think that describes Carrara if that's what you're getting at.
Being very naughty here, but can't resist :)
Is a knowledge of Carrara a job requirement at Daz? Was Genesis modeled in Carrara, with all its fantastic modelling abilities?
I think I remember hearing anecdotally that they were modelled with Modo, though I may be misremembering.
And all the evidence to date seems to reflect a distinct *lack* of knowledge of Carrara seems to be considered a prerequisite for working at Daz these days... :)
Genesis: not custom clothed in Daz Studio, not posed in Bryce, not rendered in Hexagon - all three can be done in Carrara yet I am told not supported by Carrara. :smirk:
Edit - to change the Daz Studio part
I'm sorry, but this just isn't true. A great pianist playing on a $20 Casio keyboard is not going to be able to put forth the same performance as will one who's playing on a Steinway. Any violin teacher worth their salt will tell you that if you purchase cheap violin off of the internet it will make it nearly impossible to learn how to effectively play the instrument as you'll never produce the sound you're meant to produce when playing.
You will never be able to produce something out of Carrara that can be put head to head with something produced out of Blender or Maya, et al. It just doesn't have the same capabilities. It's a really super awesome for independent creators looking to make independent content, a program that I love and that I would choose over any of the other softwares listed (which is why I use it), but I can't pretend that it isn't a casio keyboard. I'm okay with making music with a casio keyboard. And I'm also okay with the reality that the Chicago Symphony would ever hire me to play my casio keyboard on stage with them.
Carrara is amazing for indie creators. It gives us the opportunity to fudge the edges enough to be able to put out a serviceable product. It doesn't *need* to compete with something from a big studio because an indie is not a big studio. They're an indie. I embrace the fact that I can produce pretty nifty animations out of a program I paid $70 for, and that it doesn't require the user to model or to even have even a rudimentary understanding of 3D effects in order to create completely watchable content.
My *only* mention in any of this is that if you want to work for a major studio, learn Maya. That's industry-wide, as-basic-as-it-gets knowledge. Maya is the language that all of the large studios speak.
Wow...the misconceptions and misinformation here are staggering. :wow:
Anyway, I'll back out of this discussion and let you guys convince yourselves that you know what it takes to work at a major studio. :) :) :)
I think I remember hearing anecdotally that they were modelled with Modo, though I may be misremembering.
And all the evidence to date seems to reflect a distinct *lack* of knowledge of Carrara seems to be considered a prerequisite for working at Daz these days... :)
The model that appears on the Carrara 5 box cover was modeled in Hexagon by Thomas Roussel
http://totyo.cgsociety.org/art/hexagon-carrara-eovia-muse-other-photoshop-3d-343640
I'm sorry, but this just isn't true. A great pianist playing on a $20 Casio keyboard is not going to be able to put forth the same performance as will one who's playing on a Steinway. Any violin teacher worth their salt will tell you that if you purchase cheap violin off of the internet it will make it nearly impossible to learn how to effectively play the instrument as you'll never produce the sound you're meant to produce when playing.
You will never be able to produce something out of Carrara that can be put head to head with something produced out of Blender or Maya, et al. It just doesn't have the same capabilities. It's a really super awesome for independent creators looking to make independent content, a program that I love and that I would choose over any of the other softwares listed (which is why I use it), but I can't pretend that it isn't a casio keyboard. I'm okay with making music with a casio keyboard. And I'm also okay with the reality that the Chicago Symphony would ever hire me to play my casio keyboard on stage with them.
Carrara is amazing for indie creators. It gives us the opportunity to fudge the edges enough to be able to put out a serviceable product. It doesn't *need* to compete with something from a big studio because an indie is not a big studio. They're an indie. I embrace the fact that I can produce pretty nifty animations out of a program I paid $70 for, and that it doesn't require the user to model or to even have even a rudimentary understanding of 3D effects in order to create completely watchable content.
My *only* mention in any of this is that if you want to work for a major studio, learn Maya. That's industry-wide, as-basic-as-it-gets knowledge. Maya is the language that all of the large studios speak.
BC Rice, I'm not completely disagreeing with you. But as an analogy, a software programer is either a good programmer or not. Good programming is based on the fundamental understanding of programming techniques and a solid grasp of the logic that goes into making a program work. A good programmer is not tied to any one programming language that he works in. Once the fundamentals are in place, switching from one language to another is simply, for the most part, a matter of working within that languages syntax. I might be wrong but I would imagine a master Carrara user would have very little trouble learning where the equivalent values and settings are in Maya along with learning a few new things that are not available in Carrara. My point is that serious experience with Carrara would establish a lot of the fundamentals and that adapting those skills to Maya would be largely (but not completely) a matter of "syntax".
Wondered, just for the heck of it, what if we had a line up featuring folks like PhilW, Joeping, HollyWetcircuit, JoeMamma2000, Evilproducer, Dartanbeck, Dustrider, SulyK, Mec4D, Restif, etcetera, at the height of their powers, back them up with Fenric's + Fractal Dimensia's + Sheric Labs + Sighman's + SparrowHawke's programming skills, fix them up in a decent studio with more than decent workstations, a fearsome render farm all loaded with Carrara, all the content they want, dedicated Daz support line for the period, a functioning coffee machine, an inspiring script, an inspired and demanding director, access to whatever post production support they require (vfx, sound), and more than decent funding for 3 - 5 years. What if they put in their darned best to make a movie in that period.......with Carrara.......how do you think their output would be received?
A: Awesome stuff! I find it very very hard to believe they didn't make this with Maya or some other 'industry standard software'
or
B: Awful crap, who made this? They made it on Carra-what? No wonder it looks so crappy!
Personally, I think they would surprise us, heck, I think they would surprise themselves. But it would have been interesting if it was possible to set this up as a poll to see what other people think. Or better still, to win a lottery and throw the money into this sort of challenge, just to see how an industry standard sized and funded studio running on Carrara would fare in output against it's Maya counterpart, to see if a 'broken piano' can put out great music nonetheless.
Thank you for the nice words! :)
However, you're forgetting option C: Not everyone is sane or even alive when the door is opened! The resulting movie could be great, but at what cost...? What cost....?
;-)
DAZ 3D artists get into some pretty interesting discussions regarding this vs that and, as always, Dartanbeck is standing there shouting out: "Carrara all the way! Ra Ra Ra!!!" Carrara is still a minority modeler when it comes to DAZ 3D Artists. Modo is very popular.And from what I've seen a while back in a modeling demo by one of them, there's good reason for that - as a modeling-only artist. Again, a lot of software has super-high strengths in certain areas and are used by folks that are members of teams. One person makes models and passes them to the initial texture artist who is a master at unfolding UVs and creates some basic textures along the way - possibly even sorting out material zones. Another texture artist gets hold of it after that point and makes further textures using detailed maps, alpha, specular, and bump maps, etc., Another is the master of poses, which is a lot more than what I had originally thought. Before all of this are meeting with conceptual ideas and possibly even 3d scans. Sketch artists create conceptual sketches while the team comments honestly on how they feel. At the end, lighting, render, and composition masters get together and create some preliminary shots, and so on.
I really enjoy doing the entire thing, all by myself and at my own pace. I really enjoy Carrara!
Genesis: not custom clothed in Daz Studio, not posed in Bryce, not rendered in Hexagon - all three can be done in Carrara yet I am told not supported by Carrara. :smirk:
Edit - to change the Daz Studio partDAZ Studio is the major pipeline. It is an amazing tool at taking any mesh and converting it to the new DS Triax system or the older Poser system... this is why DAZ 3D doesn't care what modeler software is used. The wanted to allow total and absolute freedom in that department, and they've done it... very well!
This is, in part, what I feel will help to secure a grand "Future for Carrara"! ;)
I'm thinking that people wouldn't be wondering about how it was modeled, etc., because they might not realize that it wasn't real. With that kind of rendering power, I'd be supporting Phil's realism rendering on the premise that we want to wow people at the end by saying: "Surprise, this has been created digitally in Carrara Pro!"
But if we took a photograph of all of us by the time we've fially stopped arguing with each other, there would likely be a lot of black and blue! :ahhh:
Yo evilproducer, have you seen my left eye? I need it for this next scene, and you were the one who hit it last! LOL