quicky tip/question thread
mschack
Posts: 337
Is there any way to turn off auto key framing?
Post edited by mschack on
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Yes. I believe there's a button on the top left of the sequencer for global behavior, but each object also has an "Animated" option in the tool tray. I think it's by the spot where we can set whether or not they cast/recieve shadows, etc.,
If we uncheck "Animated" for any specific thing, it ca be manipulated anywhere along the timeline and will hold that manipulation all across time, as if there was no frame zero.
I wish I could look to give better specifics, but knowing you - just knowing that will lead you to find it :)
PhilW's awesome Animating in Carrara goes through all of the little buttons and knobs of the sequencer. There's stuff there that I've been overlooking/ignoring for ten freaking years!!!
LOL! That big button that says 'Animate' but the tooltip says 'Auto Keyframe', that I've always ignored...
Thanks!
Me too!
My pleasure!
Oh I like this idea. When in the modelling room, if you accidentally hold down the control key (vs the caps key) whilst selecting polys/verts etc on your object, the plane and axis view changes, The axis are all 'tilted'. It messes up your view of your space in the modelling room. I usually have to save my scene, then close Carrara and re-open it to make that go away. Is there another way?
Hi SileneUK. Something similar happens to me also. I can usually fix it by going to
View > Reset Working Box
Apologies if you are speaking of a different problem.
That's it!!! Thank you so much... I get so focussed on selecting the polys that my pinky slips from caps to ctrl.
Silene
Happens to me all the time - especially since I started going between various software.
Cool thing is, Hexagon and Carrara share the same key commands - at least in those regards.
Speaking of ignoring stuff right infront of myface... I always wondered how to move a rotated object along it's local plane, and not just the world XYZ to which the translate tool is always oriented.
This is called the universal translate tool (right next to the rotate tool which again, ignored)
I should have known this, I have used such things in other apps many times. Sometimes you look at something so much you can no longer see.
This became a real asset to me the way I work with animations. I take it a few steps further:
I usually create my scenes and then save them. Then I animate characters and save them. Then I load my scenes into the project with the animated character(s) in place doing their thing.
Sometimes I want to move something in a specific direction - one that I can't easily achieve using either the world coordinates of the translate tool or the translation options of the universal manipulator.
In these cases, I drop in a Target Helper Object and use the Universal Manipulator to rotate it so that I can point it exactly the direction I want the other thing to travel, then drop everything I want to move into that Helper, and now I can move it easily and accurately! :)
I do this so often that I sometimes forget the troubles that I used to have with this stuff before realizing the power of the method.
Even further - if I accidentally do this on the timeline other than at 0.00 frames, I can simply delete the translation keys at frame 0 for the Target Helper Object to fix it! Then I just drag the translation keys to zero, where I want them to be.
I've even had situations where I found it easiest to drop that Target Helper (with everything parented inside) into another Target Helper, and sometimes even yet another!
In Just a Bit of Fun, when she's walking in an arc of the Dragon Island scene (beginning around 1:44), I've nested her into a Target Helper to provide the rotation of an otherwise straight-forward walk cycle, and then another to adjust (slightly) the translation along the path. That was a l o n g time ago - hence the effect still being a bit 'off', as we can see some foot slide when I'm showing the actual arc walk, but that particular test (the video was made up of discarded test renders) was the beginning of me nesting characters and Target Helpers.
evilproducer has since taught me many more uses for Target Helpers - as he uses them All the Freaking Time! And not I do too!
I use target helpers primarily for aiming lights, which is sooo helpful, i suppose there are tons of ways to use them
Absolutely!
Any time we wish that we could really benefit from not having to change the hotpoint of something, use a Target Helper as the hotpoint.
Oh nice how do you do that?
Place the Target Helper where you need the hotpoint to be, and drop the object(s) into the Target Helper.
We can continue doing so as many times as we need to.
Let's make some terrain. I like having the control of using many terrain objects and blending them together, so I start by making my base terrain, then make a new, smaller one for detail. I populate the smaller one with detail items - trees, dead wood, fence posts, etc., then duplicate it, rotate, translate, move some things around to make it more unique and then repeat that to make a third. Since they're still pretty darned big compared to the camera or people, and there's so much to see on each one, it never becomes obvious that the three are actually the same. If it does look like they're the same, change them up.
The base terrain I'm using has a lake in the distance with a river running through it. I place the three terrains into that base to shape the environment, keeping them far enough away from the camera to allow for the main attraction in the center.
To complete the scene as something I can use as a 'filming set', I then group those three terrains together, then add a Target Helper. First select the group, then the Helper and Ctrl + K to align the Helper to the group, then drop the group inside the Helper (Let's rename the Helper Object to "Mass Control"). Then add a second Target Helper and leave that one in the default center of the scene and drop the first Target Helper (Mass Control) into this one.
Now I use Cntl + D to duplicate the whole thing and rotate the central Target Helper a little to make a new set of three terrains in another area of the scene, then continue to hit Ctrl + D until the terrain group duplicates fully surroung the scene, even if some end up where I don't want them to.
Finally I can now pull all of those (Mass Control, in the example) first target helpers out of the duplicated center helpers to streamline things dow a bit (or just leave them in - your choice) and do a more artistic job of rotating, translating, even scaling the individual terrain groups, having a centrally located Helper within the center of each group for greater control over moving them further, coloser, roating, etc., and still being able to do those things to each individual terrain within the groups.
Within mere minutes, we have a very interesting landscape.
Of course, we may still wish to add more things to the scene for interest, but we've just created a nice 360 degree landscape with very little fuss.
We can take this Much further, say with animated anything - distribute them around in very creative ways making vast differences to 'where they are in the scene' by tossing them into a Target Helper and using that to place them without messing with their animations.
Oh nice, never thought of making an object the child of a target helper, that is an excellent tip! I can see that being useful in many ways.
I duplicate and stretch and squash terrains for the background too, an easy way to get some nice detail in the distance without the memory usage.
Absolutely!
Oh man... it's amazing how easy it can be - another example:
In my Workflow video, I show a scene made up of Stonemason's Urban Sprawl kit bashed with a whole lot of other things. In addition, that scene has a spot light plus a volumetric spot light (as demonstrated in my Volumetric Lighting video) on every single street light in that massive scene, so I can shoot renders anywhere. But that's not all, I also have colorful lights strategically placed to help sell the idea that this truly is a city - since cities always have lights coming from many directions. It's really quite a nice, full somewhat cyberpunk-like city scene.
When I make an animation on my characters (especially Rosie with her dynamic hair) I do so in an otherwise blank scene (my characters are all saved using the template I offer in my Character Design in Carrara 101 video) so that the animation work is full-on animation work without the scene present.
Character Design Template Scene File Download
When I'm done and the animation work is saved as its own scene, I bring in (in this case) my city scene.
Now I insert a Target Helper (I always use the Insert menu to place it directly at zero coordinates on all axis) and drop the entire city scene into it. In this case, all lights and everything comes along for the ride!
That Target Helper is so easy to move around and rotate, so I can very easily match the scene to my animation!
Likewise, let's say that the city scene uses an atmosphere and/or other scene settings that are too difficult to duplicate in the animation scene file. I can, instead open the city scene and then load in the saved animation scene file.
The very next step would be to drop the entire contents of the animated scene file (hence the wonders of using that Character Template in the Character Design video) into a Target Helper.
Now I can use the Target Helper to move the animated character anywhere I want in the scene and match things up perfectly - including the camera, since that was also dropped into the Target Helper (along with that Template).
It all makes my Carrara animation workflow a real breeze in So Many ways!!!
The biggest example being that I never have much time. So if I only have limited time, I can just start working on scene creation - like working more on that city scene, starting something new, etc., or I can tweak a character file or start a new one using the template system.
It all works together, so when I save what I'm working on I can rest assured that it will work with everything else I do - which is one of the many reasons why Carrara is The Best animation software for someone like me - Period! I... I mean... Exclamation Point!!!
In the above example of setting up a scene using Target Helpers, I left out something very important:
We can also drop in a target Helper to specify exactly (or even just roughly) where we want the character to be in the scene, then align Ctrl +K the character template to that Target Helper.
Let's say that you've built your scene using the Large magnitude scene, and the animated character is Medium. This makes matching things up a real breeze and, again... the camera for the character is already ready to go!!!
I was just thinking that some target objects in my city would be an easy way to quickly navigate the current view to different locations.
I also use them to help with the street lights. I'll start by making the first Spot Light/Volumetric Light combo for one light, then duplicate that for one across the street. Now select both and duplicate those positioning them down the street to the next set of streetlight models and continue to Ctrl D until I have lights for each street lamp.
Now I go through and change the settings on most of them (maybe even make one or two that flicker a bit) so that they're all at least a little bit different from the rest in some way.
After that's all done, just group them and drop them into a Target Helper that I've aligned to one of the lights on either end. This way, when I duplicate the whole thing, I have a hot point on just one light, so I can easily rotate that 90 degrees and drag it into position and the rest will follow.
Anyone ever had an issue where a spot light cone shining on Carrara hair makes the hair transparent in places?
That used to be a very common problem back in the day. It's been a long time since I ran into that though and I'm blanking on what the solution is...
I googled and searched and I can't find any of the old threads on that problem. I think it was back in the olden days before DAZ redid the forums. I'm just going from memory, but I think it was a bug in the earlier versions of Carrara that affected hair in Global Illumination, so that GI just wouldn't work with hair, it would turn it totally transparent. So maybe the spot problem you're running into is a related glitch. I usually don't use spotlights, so that may be why I haven't run into it in a while.
yeah I could'nt find anything either. thanks!
Any tips thread or tutorials on using normal maps? Like is it useful only for bump? Displacement relies on a subdivided mesh and isn't even close so not sure of any 'magical' settings...
I just tried to add some sculpted detail in blender and use the baked normals in Carrara. Works in the bump channel but frankly the model is so simple it kinda doesn't look good.
I can give a quick tutorial on how to use Materialize to create your own Bump, Spec, and Normal maps all from the Diffuse map and nothing else, if it helps. In my opinion the Bump and Spec maps I've been creating so far are better and more detailed than any of the provided Bump or Spec maps with most of the PA offerings (with the exception of the Elite series).
Normal maps render faster than Bump maps (a little bit; on a sizeable render with hefty render settings, you might shave off 4 seconds or so), and Normal maps are superior in being able to map 3 axis instead of Bumps binary up/down mapping. However the Normal maps that I can generate on Materialize have an issue where the edge of the skin on the texture and the flat surrounding color cause a quick steep dropoff at the edges. I'm able to (just barely) see a hint of seams. Dart mentioned there's a technique to fix this though.
I'm pretty curious if there's a way to take a Displacement map and turn it into a Normal map. Materialize might be able to do this, actually, it also can generate Displacement maps, so maybe the reverse order is possible, I don't know.
Whoops, got that wrong, it can't generate Displacement maps, guess I had a false memory. :)
Thanks, a tutorial would be great of course if you have the time...
My question - often I drop a figure or obj into a scene and most times the hotpoint is not centred.
So I have to go and centre the hotpoint.... any clues to fix this so it drops in with the hotpoint where it should be?
taa in advance :)
the only suggestion I can make is when I set the hotpoint I then save the prop/character to my folder in the objects tab
I sometimes use normal maps by using them in a mixer in the colour channel.. weird hey!
Haha will have to try that.
With vertex objects I know that if they aren't centred in the modeling room the HP will be off so you have to zero the xyz in the modeling room. If a vertex object is part of a group sometimes it can't be centred because its offset is necessary to align it in the group... and sometimes I have no clue as to where it comes up with the hot point.