Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Would be happy to get some advice for uvmapping and 3d painting. I used seams to separate most of the shading domains. I find it annoying that the default unfold comes in extremely small, and unbalanced. Here is the start of placing the seams and isolating the head shading domain (lips, nostrils, and ears are separate). In addition to a seam separatig the head from the neck, I have a seam that goes from the rear base of the head vertically up over the top and to about the start of the forehead. When I use unfold, the left "wing" of the head is out of proportion with the right wing. Any advice on the placement of a pin or seam to get better results? As it is, I can paint on the model with relative success but a procedural shader would look unbalanced. Note -the other body parts and shading domains are not on this uvmap.
Your seams look good - I'd suggest putting pins where maked in this copy of your pic. What you want is two pins on the centre line, one vert in from the cut.
Thanks, Roy. That was a great starting point as far as getting a more proportional uvmap. It did have some odd overlap inside the mouth so I put a pin on the center cut just above and below the mouth. So far, this is the best starting place. This screenshot is from the base unfold. It improves a little when using the relax tool. This appears like a decent start, and I will try to clean it up more by hand - unless anyone has some more suggestions. So, to sum up, the head is separate from the neck with a seam. Likewise, the ears, nostrils, and mouth are removed with seams. The head has seams along the back-center going vertical over the top to about the start of the forehead, and up the front of the neck to about the start of the chin. There are 4 pins along the front center seam. They are one vertex in from the center cuts for the forehead and chin, and at the top and bottom of the mouth.
More suggestions definitely welcome.
Some more parts for my picture.
Here is the UFO for the first contact.. again modeled in the vertex modeler.
And I used a fire primitive at the back, to indicate propulsion and speed.
Hi diomede
Now that you have a more symmetrical unwrap and I can see what is happening there, a couple more suggestions.
Remove the seam along the front of the neck across the chin - that is causing a distorted unwrap and overlaps. All you need is the back of the neck, over the top of the head and across the brow. The software can do the rest. See my unwrap - simple and clean.
Remove the extra pins - they really don't add anything - you only need one in the middle of the brow and one at the bottom of the front of the neck - pins "pin down" the centreline of the UV's so that they can unfold symmetrically - using more than two is pointless.
Unless you are going to make really detailed textures for the ears, mouth and nostrils, rather not cut them out.
Probably too late for this model, but in future consider doing your unwrap before smoothing or subdividing - makes it a lot easier to manipulate fewer points and subdividing after the unwrap will not affect the UV's - except make them denser.
Best advice of all - get a dedicated UV mapper - well worth the investment:)
Thanks again, Roy. It is not too late. I have the incremental version of the model just before adding the density that you see in my screengrabs. No problem going back one step. This is the comic proportion version. I also started a toon proportion version, so I may not even use this model. But either way, I am using the challenge as an excuse to practice/learn to use seams and pins to uvmap a head instead of starting with the sphere preset. All of your suggestions will help me no matter which head I choose, and are greatly appreciated.
OK, just scrapped the previous figure and started over. I am staying with the comic rather than pure toon proportions (for example, figure will have all 10 fingers and toes instead of toon 3 fingers per hand). I modeled a lo res new figure but with no face. I modeled and saved the face separately. Ears will be separate as well. My idea is that I may be able to swap faces and bodies when starting new projects. Anyway, this face has better edge flow. Here is a uvmap using seams and pins and a couple of "relax uv" attempts. Still have to make some adjustments by hand, but this is much better than what I was getting before. I do get better results splitting the neck in front as well as back, for whatever reason. There was a lot of overlap the other way.
.
must be gettin tired... why does her fire hair make me think of Marge Simpson's blue hair after she got too close to a flame.
Seriously nice job
Back took a nap and cranked this out after waking up... it has a lot of work to do... doubt that it or a variation will see the contest... hey at least I'm playing with fire and water.:)
Wasn't at all pleased with the first pic... the infinite water plain seems to be in the sky... don't know how the black bar at bottom came from... took the reflectivity off the oddball spheres and cranked up a bit of glow. Now that I'm happy with them I can concentrate on other element for the scene. Time for a needed break first... take a few steps back, cry over the lost reflection in water, and think what to work on next..... .... ... .. .
Wgdjohn, great idea. Can't wait to see where you take it.
Those who have followed the previous challenges know that I have made custom figures before, but this is the first time that I am really focusing on the pins, seams, uvmaps, and more traditional setup. Here is the start of a second figure. It will be the base figure for the dwarves. I have created three texture maps, one for the head elements, one for the torso, and one for the limbs.
Is there a way to show more than one, but not all, shading domains in the uvmap editor?
Assuming your infinite plane is flat on the ground and not angled, you need to adjust your camera angle so that you see the horizon, at the moment it looks like you are looking down on the scene. The black bar may be due to the camera cut-off, which blanks objects that are too close to the camera, you can change the setting in the camera parameters.
In the middle of moving house.. won't be able to enter but I had time to quickly put this one together for the theme
diomene, been watching your progress... interested in seeing the final version
PhilW, I raised the camera up before my correction... today I wandered off into the landscape editor... my first attempt that I decided to keep for a scene... and added a lake for water. Next working on getting back the horizon and keeping the lake in view for the effect I want.
Stezza, looks like you took a break from packing... nice
EDIT [3/22/16] Got the horizon/sky back. Will upload another pic, less the black nothingness at the bottom... I created a crater too close to an edge of the landscape... will know better next time, when I get closer to being done.
For now I've only linked to the larger pic of the thumbnail after following Stezza's instructions.
"6". Does creating a Landscape from scratch count or do I also need to create something in the model room such from a vertex or spline object?
"7." I am using a simple sphere and fire from the assembly room. Also a simple disk with an ocean shader applied and modified to it for water. Are these ok? I'm not a new user and can wip something up but need to know.
Two more questions:
a) How do I include a larger pic in my comment before the smaller one? I am a relatively new forums. I regret not taking advantage of the wealth of knowlege and help from members here.
b) Is posting to the "wip" thread here eventually count as an entry? Will I need to state "final" If I finish in time before the deadline? ...My first attempt at an entry in the forums.
Got a day off from packing and cleaning up so did more work on an entry..
Made the matchbox and made the hole using boolean
made the match stick
made the fire truck ( from an earlier challenge )
made the fire hose and nozzle
used the fire primitive and cloud but didn't manage the water primitive.
made the fireman from M4 and a primitive.
retextured everything using Carrara shaders or made in PSE14
Final render
Two more questions:
a) How do I include a larger pic in my comment before the smaller one? I am a relatively new forums. I regret not taking advantage of the wealth of knowlege and help from members here.
attach your image as normal, then when posted click on your image to get the bigga one... copy the link for that image then
edit your post insert an image ( icon ) and use the link in the pop up window
hope that makes sense..
b) Is posting to the "wip" thread here eventually count as an entry? Will I need to state "final" If I finish in time before the deadline? ...My first attempt at an entry in the forums.
Your final image with postwork if done is posted in the entry thread.. your image(s) without post are posted in this thread
check out my final image render above and compare it to my entry image ( in the entry thread ) which has some minor postwork to fix up the firemans shoulder and add a wisp of smoke.
Thanks Stezza ... checked "Match IT" out... looks very good.
Followed your instructions for the big pic... see my last wip pic.
Sorry I didn't get a chance to respond earlier as I have been sick.
As to question 6.
If you created the landscape using the terrain editor then it counts same as if you used the ocean primitive to create an ocean.
As to question 7. You are good with what you have done. You already have the Carrara created item in the Landscape.
The intent is to get people out and try something new this will improve the skillset of all involved and will bring light to possibly never used features which are not hard to do.
Always learning.
I rigged the custom female and posed it in the makeshift bathtub. Here is a non-photorealistic render test with simple prop hair. I found it interesting that the fire primitive works as a light source, and that it shows up in the NPR render engine. A lot of things like like transparency don't. Neither water shaders nor the metal handle seem to do well in NPR. So, for the water, I just used a light blue color shader.
It sure seems like I am very far away from a final entry.
Edit: Fire does not show up in NPR if only outline mode and shadow mode are checked. Disappointing. I was leaning toward a more sketch-like entry, but I have to give thought on how to incorporate fire and water.
chickenman, Thanks... Was hoping time spent was not wasted... just wanted to be sure I was headed in the correct direction
Please tell me what is NPR, non photo realistic, render engine in/for Carrara? I see mentions of it for Blender mostly... no time to go reading all about it now... got to get back to work on my project. I've been wanting to get Luxus render engine since I don't want to fork out the money just yet for Octane. Now just rendering with Carrara only.
"sure seems like I am very far away from a final entry"... know what you mean... fought with the camera I'd added for 2 days finally throwing it out this morning and going with the Default Camera. Too bad I can't just create a camera which matches the default camera... I always like to have a back up cam should one gets totally messed up.
Comments:
Like the reflection of fire in water. Looks like it's also reflected on body. I would add a fill light to bring out a bit of the dark side, stage front, of figure especially in legs and the hair/barrel at stage left. Like the reflection on legs... would be better if it were a tiny bit like on head/torso... perhaps a color light might do the trick?
before the challenge i started a project called:
the army of atlantis.
i did't had a background when the chalenge strated,
and have not posted any thing yet, so i'm adding water & fire to it.
this is just two out of four charecters in the scene.
All is good.
Here are a couple of general points about non-photoreal rendering (NPR). NPR is chosen in the render room instead of photoreal, and then a new menu appears for render settings. The NPR render is based on simulated brush strokes. Brushes (square greyscale images) are chosen to determine the density, darkness, and transparency of the brush stroke (I probably said that badly). The length, thickness, and randomness of brush strokes are also chosen. Separate brushes can be used for the basic color(diffuse), shadows, outline, background, etc.- or any of these elements can be excluded entirely. The strokes can be contained within object boundaries by choosing "object clipping." The NPR has some limitations. For example, it does not handle dynamic hair or transparency.
To illustrate, I loaded V4 and V3 models and applied some conforming clothing and a generic pose. I applied dynamic hair to V4 and a prop hair to V3. In the default standard photo-real render, you can see the dynamic hair on V4 (which I have not tried to optimize - sorry vendors). The prop hair on V3 does not look very realistic. The eyelashes of both V4 and V3 look standard.
The non-photo real choice is found in the render room under the rendering tab. There is a drop down menu for draft, non photorealistic an photorealistic. There are a lot of settings to explore, but I want to emphasize the sliders for minimm and maximum brush size and the check box for object clipping.
The default settings for the NPR render engine looks smudged. The noses look flattened, the fingers look bloated, and the dynamic hair doen't work. In addition, the eyelashes completely obscure the eyes. This is in part because the NPR has trouble with the dynamic hair and transparency (for the lashes and corneas).
I am no expert (yet) on the NPR, but there are some simple settings to improve some of the results. In the following, I selected the eyelashes and corneas and moved them back in the head. I reduced the minimum and maximum brush sizes. I checked object clipping. I reduced the amount of randomness in the brush strokes.
When intending to use the NPR render engine, I try to anticipate problems with tansparencies, dynamics, etc. In the past, I have tried combining the NPR render engine with results from a modified toon render. Mixed results. More experienced Carrara-ists have created their own brushes and used multi-pass rendering (rendering with identified sub elements like object index pass, or ...pass), and then combined the results in an image editor like Photoshop or Gimp for great results. I think if you look through some old challenge threads, Antara showed how to create custom brushes and isolate render passes.
Much has been resolved...Still have to do some work on the wake and to blur shadows..The wake now streams from the ship and trails behind.. I am not sure why it did not work before, but it does now. Still more detail to complete.... When complete it will be a clip of 12 seconds. More figures are needed to complete the crew... It is hard to get a good crew these days...They want more grog..less water. The image is all done totally in Carrara with no post work in PS or AE. The next item to solve is the particle generator for the bow spray..back to the books.
Nearly done... still a lot that I'd like to do but may not have enough time... background space stars/planet I believe is from RuntimeDNA... was added in Paint Shop Pro... wanted to use Starbright plug-in, from Digital Carvers Guild, but it didn't seem to be working at all. Also wanted to create a planet in Carrara... had I not spent so much time fiddling with the camera I would have. Still could use a bit of post work to be final.
FireStorm on Nevendore [ Pic deleted by wgdjohn ] :(
Some great WIPs coming in late. Atlantis seems like a great fit, shlomi laszlo. Msteaka, your wake looks excellent. I hope you explain how you use particles for the spray (metaball?) I hope there aren't any dinosaurs on that scifi planet, Wgdjohn.
Here are a couple of more observations about the NPR render engine. First, the two renders illustrate just how different the look can be if you use a scratchy brush compared to a dense brush. You really can get a wide variety of styles by varying the brushes. Second, you can see some glowing white areas. These are places where the camera is seeing the back side of the mesh. In the case of the clock, you can see in the third render that I fixed it by selecting the polygons and reversing the normals. Now the fire primitive isn't showing up the way I want. I think I can adjust for that, but in the meantime I inserted an ocean and reduced its size and merged it with the water in the tub. I plan to adjust the shaders to make it look like soap suds and bubbles.
EDIT - the third render is not loading at the present time. Suffice it to say that it is like the second pic except the clock looks better.