Newbie Question: Placing Figures and Landscapes in the Same Scene

davedawriter

Hi everyone,

I bought Carrara awhile back, but haven't really played around with it much. I have Phil's tutorial video series, but I seem to be missing something here. 

When I create a small scene and add a figure, how do I add a landscape for to act as background, and for the figure to stand on?  I know it's possible, but when I try to add landscapes through either the Scenes or Objects tabs, they open as a separate scene.  If I start with a landscape scene and try to add a figure, I can't see the figure.  I can see the rotate, scale, or move arrows where the figure should be, but even when I zoom in I can't see the figure.

I'm sure there's something I've missed, and figured this would be the quickest way to find out what it is.  Thanks! 

 

Stezza

Here's a quick one which took all of 5 minutes to put together..

Open Carrara -- New Small Scene

Add your figure.. I used the 3DU Cowboy

I then Add a terrain from the menu --- I went into terrain editor and flattened it.. then I duplicated it.. then the second one I went back into terrain editor and selected creat new master for it and then I selected mountain as the filter.. added Terrain shaders to both terrains

Moved both terrains into a position I was satisfied with added a surface replicator to the hilly terrain and added a few trees and rendered it..

This is just quick for an example.. spend more time on shaders and positions and content to improve the scene..

Happy rendering ;-)

click on images for bigga

MarkIsSleepy

davedawriter said:

... when I try to add landscapes through either the Scenes or Objects tabs, they open as a separate scene...

 

Instead of double clicking on the landscape preset, try dragging it from the object browser and dropping it in the Instances on the lower right side - this will add it to your current scene instead of loading the whole preset scene.  Scale may still be an issue.

evilproducer

I think the issue with the terrains from the Object browser opening in a new window, is because you are double clicking the icon, instead of dragging the icon from the Browser and dropping it in the Instances palette or in the Scene window.

Here are some tips to help out:

If you want a DAZ/Poser human scaled scene, it is best to use a medium scaled scene.

Large scaled scenes will load into a medium scaled scene at their large size, such as 100,000ft x 100,000 ft. This can be confusing or come in handy when you need a terrain that has a world sized scale. What I do is make a smaller, local sized terrain, much as Stezza describes above (except for the small scene scale), and then I build/place my foreground scene elements on that terrain. I then load in a large scaled terrain, such as mountains and such, and arrange it as needed for the background scene elements.

If it looks as if the figure is on the terrain in the Assembly room, but it looks as if the figure is floating above the terrain, or sunken into the terrain when rendered, that is an indication that the terrain preview resolution is different than the render resolution. To manually and accurately place objects on a terrain, the preview and render resolution should be the same. You can set them in the terrain editor by selecting the terrain and clicking the wrench icon on the top, right side of the screen. The editor will open. On the right side of the editor window is the preview and render settings. They look grayed out, but you can adjust them.

If you would like, I made a terrain and environment a couple years ago that I give away for free. Feel free to use it, experiment with it, and tear it apart if you wish. You can get it here:

http://www.sharecg.com/v/69697/view/5/3D-Model/Fantasy-Village-terrain

davedawriter

There are some things about Carrara I struggle with, being more used to Daz, but there is nothing about these forums I don't like.  Thank you all so much.  If the rest of the world was as willing to help as the folks in here, we wouldn't have a care in the world. 

Maybe everyone needs to try some art every once in awhile. :)

Thank you all for your help!

 

 

evilproducer

If you still have problems, let us know! I wasn't able to get screen caps, so if anything I said doesn't make sense or if you can't find something that was mentioned, I can try and put some up.

Mistara

thus the fun and games trying to make 300ft preset  lol. :D

one thing i learned, scale the terrain inside terrain editor.  scaling with the regular scaling tools makes terrain go out to milkyway.

Steve K

Just a related comment ... I use Carrara almost daily for short animations, and very rarely use a "terrain".  I generally load a purchased "scene" which has the appropriate ground plane included, e.g. a street.  I'm working on one now that is set in this scene:

http://www.daz3d.com/window-shopping

You mentioned a small scene so generally the ground might be flat.  You can add a plane and then a shader to make it look like the ground, or street, or ...  And you mentioned the background, which can be just a picture of mountains or anything, accessed in the "Scene" tab (at the lower right) and then the "Background" or "Backdrop" tab.

Dartanbeck

Tip:

Use landscapes and figure together. It rocks! But there are methods to make it much easier!

Carrara has the tools to make wonderful landscapes, from incredibly vast to tiny details and everywhere in between. So part of Carrara's magic is how well it can handle all of this. Scene Magnitudes (large, medium, small) set how quickly you navigate 3d space as you work. As was mentioned earlier, Medium is a great scene magnitude for Figures. So when you drag in a vast landscape, it may have been set up for a large magnitude scene, which is fine. Just remember to include that into ther process of scene creation. So here we go:

Select your camera and (Ctrl D) duplicate it. Rename it to something like "Outer view". You may need to move it's position in the list before you can see the new name in the camera selection menu. Select the vast landscape and look through the new camera, click the number "0" to set the view on the target - in this case, the terrain. Now that we can see it from a good distance, lower that thing down a bit below your figure. You now have a fantastic 360 degree background landscape. Bring in something smaller for your character to stand on/interact with. This works great for using big Carrara landscapes with DAZ environment products like small villages, backyards, castles, huts, rocks, flying vehicles, etc.,

Now, if you want to make Carrara land for your character to interact with, you can do this in several, equally fun and simple ways. 

If the landscape you brought in is what you want but it's too big, instead of just using the scale tool to reduce its size, try double-clicking on it and, instead, rescaling it using the terrain modeler. It has several options in this regard. Quick and simple rescale can be done in the middle area down from center, where you'll see that you can simply scale it down to a specific dimensions. Above that are parameters for setting the actual mesh dimensions. Using those will require going to the cool stuff in the left panel and changing the feature sizes and strengths and such to get the filters and generators to match up how you want them to with your new dimensions. If you're new to the terrain modeler, take some time to try some of the many options available to you. It's amazing and can be mind-blowing but it doesn't have to be. It has some really nice tools to help you get some really cool stuff quickly and easily.

After playing with that stuff, you'll likely end up trying Insert > Terrain, and make some cool lands on your own from scratch. 

Another way to help make large terrains work better with figures is to completely revisit their shaders. They're made to be viewed from hundreds of feet away! To make them look better up close-and-personal try using tiled texture maps in the color, bump, and highlight channels. 

Hermit Crab

Thanks for the great information.  The OP may just be starting out with Carrara but his question and the answers given have filled one of the many gaps in my own knowledge of this program! 

Dartanbeck

It is my goal that everybody has an amazing experience with Carrara and tells their friends! ;)

Any way I can help... I try :)

davedawriter

Thanks once again to everyone who came to my rescue.  With your advice and some experimentation, I was able to get the result I was after.  Thanks!