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Starting to think 8.5 is beyond me. I can't even get a bloody tree out of it!
In 8 I click on a tree, go to the model room, edit my tree, go back to the Assemble room and there's my tree in glorious technicolour. In 8.5 I have my tree's movement handle but no tree!
{edit} - It seems it only can't cope with trees if I use a preset landscape or something. I've selected the Autumn landscape and shaders and it won't give me a tree. But if I use my own terain and such I seem to be able to use trees. How odd.
That's definitely not right . :(
I'd Uninstall the C8.5 beta, and then install it again.
I know you had some trouble with downloading the files, ....but if it runs and installs, then it should be right.
Everything installed and ran, and obviously the files worked or I'd have no trees at all, no matter what I did.
As it happens though, I'm grateful because I've been forced to do this for myself instead of just double click a scene. Though I am using a pre-made sky I think. I'm enjoying this.
Learned how to use the surface replicator for trees, and learned more about setting up terrains. Still not actually done the render I had planned, but that's ok, it will involve some creative use of shaders, amongst other things, so I'm saving that for later!
Baby steps and all that.
Still not sure whether I prefer this, Bryce or Vue. All amazing software, but I'm leaning towards this and Vue for some reason. Still playing with Bryce, and getting to grips with it, but Carrara is rocking and Vue is rolling!
{edit} - Actually, since I've put a fair bit of cash towards Carrara, I'm thinking I'm probably already falling for it! I've put money into Vue as well, but not this much.
Now, come on Rara, hurry up and render me a forest!
It's possibly some limiting factor with the wizard created scenes, since most of the wizard stuff is only in the Carrara native content, which only comes with the full program. ..and i wouldn't bother installing it again for the beta.
the presets give you instant gratification, but depending on what scene scale you choose they can be equally instant at causing confusion when you add a figure into a Large scale scene, then try to find it, or move the camera into it, your in trouble. :0
you don't always need a large scale scene,. to have a big landscape.
Another neat trick for landscapes is to make a plane, and then scale it really big,. then add a couple of Volumetric clouds,. and a surface replicator. ..then choose the plane as the surface, and the clouds and the objects to be replicated on it.
finally select the plane and make it invisible, and move it up in the sky.
Instant cloud plane.
you could also make a copy of the terrain to replicate the clouds on, ...instead of adding a plane and scaling it up.
Once you've figured out how to use surface replicators, the next step is distribution mapping, to control where things are placed.
it's just a black and white map, or shader mix,. and you can use terrain distribution shaders for altitude , slope etc..
or you can paint, create your own in carrara or an image editor.
the default distribution map is All white, so replicated objects are placed everywhere.
Black gets nothing placed on it.
Ooh, my name in blobs, never seen that before :D
I'm trying to get my head round planes not being infinite. I mean as far as my eyes are concerned, the sea goes on forever, but for Carrara it doesn't seem to do so. Think I had that issue with my head last time I tried a scene with sea in it. This time it's just land, and I'm kind of working on it!
I did reinstall the initial content for the beta. Since I'm playing in Beta at the moment I wanted the full fat version!
I couldn't get some of the clothing to fit to Genesis though, there was TONS of pokethrough and I don't think I had all the morphs in the clothes to compensate. The whole of V5's boobies were coming through the Florabelle dress for instance.
Gone back to usinv V4 for the sake of this render but I'm still thinking I'd like Genesis to work, and be clothed properly!
Hmmmm, render looks ok but I need realistic looking grass.
{edit} - Render doesn't look ok now it's finished... In the workspace my V4 is sat on the ground, but in the render the ground is cutting her in half. I don't understand that one!
there is an option to create either an Infinite plane, or just a plane which could be used as a piece of ground, or a wall...
The infinite plane, is actually a visual effect, like seamless tiling,. so, replicating objects on an infinite plane doesn't work as you would expect, it only replicates on the "Actual" plane.
the Ocean primitive,. can be Seamlessly tiled in a replicator, so, you can choose whether to make a pond / lake using a single ocean, or replicate add it to a replicator to make a massive ocean.
An older option, but still useful,.. is to insert an Infinite plane,. then texture it with a bluey bumpy shader to look like water.
quick example:
Oooooh a lumpy Blum choccy bar floating in a sea of Maltesers!
No wonder I'm fat, thinking that way!
I've destroyed my render and saved/closed Carrara now so can't do screenies, but have you any idea why my V4 would appear to be on top of the ground while I'm working but halfway through it when I render?
The key to that one is usually displacement in the terrain at render-time isn't the same as the preview setting.
Go into the terrain editor, and increase the preview resolution , make it the same as the render setting,
Pic
Andy, sometimes I wish I was gay just so I could fancy you!
Worked like a charm. Thanks.
On a side note, I did an out-of-the-box render of Beechdale last night so that I could analyse it. Amazing work, really shows what the software is capable of. Good use of the replicator for the trees and rocks.
I noticed that on the descriptions for those it says it comes with at least one clump of grass. Is that done the same as the plants, so that each clump is different, or is it just a normal .obj mesh where they're all the same?
Hey Barry, you could makde your own grass very easily. Create a plane and drag and drop the hair icon on it. That'll take you to the model room, whedre you can grow hair/grass on it.
I'll have another go at that, I failed last night!
Want to get myself going in this software, it's pretty awesome.
HI Barry :)
Erm .. thanks for that LOL
as long a you're into baldy old men LOL
I can't recall how many grass clumps are in Beachdale, but yes, ..nicely made scene, and a great example of what can be done in carrara,
it's usually modelled grass, which can be rotated and scaled in the surface replicator settings, to make it look like different grass, plus the distribution maps make it seem more random, with heavy and sparse growth areas.
Hair as grass is always an easy and quick option , as Jacob pointed out, but you can model grass in the vertex modeller, with a little bit of practice,
start with a little V shaped line, just three points, then extrude that up a few times to create some segments, then you can UV map it and curve it's shape to make it look like a blade of grass. then duplicate, scale, rotate and move to create a clump.
Some of Howies scenes have many different grass clumps, as well as custom tree's leaf's and flowers, with both tall and short grass clumps, and they're all really nicely modelled. ... plus, you have all the scene assets like the tree's and grass which you can use (as is) in the scene, or, add them into your own home-made scene. or use as examples of "How to" make your own.
howies scene's are more like an investment in education,.. rather than a product purchase.
Q: Are you still not getting any tree's in the beta,.. because you should be able to create trees, ?
:)
Howie's work is tremendous and yeah I'm learning quite a lot from it.
Haven't quite got into modelling yet, but might well give it a go. Maya was a pain, but maybe a change of scenery will help!
Going to upload a render hopefully very soon, by all means give me some constructive criticism. I started this one this morning and used trees from Howie's, as well as the grass clumps and forest litter. The fox is from 9mbi and the sky is somewhat modified, again from one of Howie's scenes.
In fact it just finished so I can upload now... Here it is...
NIce :)
In the terrain shader, (Top level), where you can see a Bump control value thing,...
try setting that to 0.01 , that should give you a more detailed ground effect.
other than that ,... well done :)
take a look at one of the grass clumps in the modeller,. then you can see how it's done,
the actual modelling part is pretty easy, but there's a lot of skill involved in the arrangement of the grass blades so that it looks realistic.
:)
Thank you, I'm going to set that now, and set for full raytracing and skylight, then re-render. Might take a lot longer this time!
{edit} - Just looked, can't find a bump control value, bump is set to Texture Map.
Trying to add a mist to the view like there is in Beechdale, but it's just not happening!
I cannot get Carrara past the splash screen at the moment, not just the beta either!!
going to restart my computer and try some other things but this is just plain weird!!!
ok, as I posted this after about 10 mins of hanging, it opened WTF???
Hi Barry :)
If I remember correctly, ....it's a volumetric cloud that is used to create that mist in that scene.
You could also try a "Fog primitive" or a couple of them, then scale them and adjust their setting to get something interesting..
Yeah, tried to use a volumetric cloud, but it's just not happening. Will try a fog primitive.
(and not a frog primitive, which I originally typed)
{edit} - Just set a quick primitive up and stretched it to fill the area, I'm so excited to see the result. If any. I'm such a sad sack, this should not be exciting, sex should be exciting, but not this.
What about caustics?
Well I put some cream on those and they went away...
What's caustics?
Anyway, here's the render as it currently stands. Added a few bits, like the flowers. The fog looks ok, but perhaps a little strong. The idea was to make it a little hazy.
In optics, a caustic or caustic network [1] is the envelope of light rays reflected or refracted by a curved surface or object, or the projection of that envelope of rays on another surface.
The caustic is a curve or surface to which each of the light rays is tangent, defining a boundary of an envelope of rays as a curve of concentrated light. Therefore in the image to the right, the caustics can be the patches of light or their bright edges. These shapes often have cusp singularities.
THere, aren't I being helpful
In optics, a caustic or caustic network [1] is the envelope of light rays reflected or refracted by a curved surface or object, or the projection of that envelope of rays on another surface.
The caustic is a curve or surface to which each of the light rays is tangent, defining a boundary of an envelope of rays as a curve of concentrated light. Therefore in the image to the right, the caustics can be the patches of light or their bright edges. These shapes often have cusp singularities.
THere, aren't I being helpful
Not really! There was no image to the right!
Oh, whoops, knew I would forget something
Much better. I think!
I just set up some caustics for my render. It's taking time. Might blow up. Don't know. I'm all intrigued though!
I like using caustics. Another thing that can improve landscape type renders in "god rays" which can be faked within a render in Bryce, but it would need our Andy or someone to tell you if you can do them in Carrara
I prefer using the term "gods rays" than the proper term, "Crepuscular rays"
this is the sort of thing I mean pretty picture
I use caustics to unblock my drains %-P
is that like Drano :-P
I know of God Rays, but if I can remember Crepuscular I'll use it because it's a big word and it'll help me get my own back on a few people!
I think we can use God Rays in Carrara, but I haven't delved into that yet. I'm still fogging! Caustics seem to ramp up the render time a lot so I've skipped that for now. Might be worth setting them up for a render overnight though.
I don't like caustics because I do the washing up in our house. And every time someone cooks eggs I have a hell of a time, 'caus sticks ter teh pan!
Yep, you can do God Rays in Carrara.