Carrara work flow question

rfrydryckstudio

Do you set up your figure in Daz Studio and them move it to Carrara?  For example hamption hair need to be lengthed, style set and colored.  My Victoria charicter need to have morphs apply to make her look differnt. Or do you do everything in Carrara?

DUDU

What is this "DAZ Studio" ?

stringtheory9

DUDU said:

What is this "DAZ Studio" ?

@DUDU lol, everyone knows it's some kind of software that some people use for something or another.

Stezza

Lol

 

its a free plugin for Carrara users

very rarely used at all unless you need a model that doesn't work in Carrara... Which thinking is getting more and more and more

 

Dartanbeck

For me it depends entirely upon which generation of figure I'm using.

Fourth Generation - V4, M4, Freak 4, Hiro 4, Aiko 4, Girl 4, Stephanie Petite 4, etc., as well as Predatron's LoRez figures and some other original figures

I bring these directly into Carrara and optimize their shaders and then save them to my Carrara browser. Then I save the most often used clothing, hair and props along with them, so that I have optimized versions ready to go. For my main characters, who are made of V4 and M4, I have them saved in their "Base" versions, which is how we usually see them, and then I have subfolders for different versions of them wearing different costumes, hair, props, etc., so that I can drag and drop them into any scene. I also have folders (in my Carrara browser) for background people made from 4th Generation figures as well as Predatron's LoRez figures, which I count as 4th Gen, since they use the same technology.

Genesis 1 and 2 - V5 and 6, M5 and 6, etc.,

Because of the above, I'll often try starting in Carrara when assembling these figures to be saved to the browser but if I run into issues I'll open D|S and create DUF saves in my "My DAZ 3D Library" in the appropriate folders and then open them into Carrara from there. For important characters that I will be 'relying on' in my Carrara work, I'll definitely create DAZ Studio versions of them because sometimes we get errors upon opening a saved Genesis figure in Carrara, when it was saved as a Carrara file. 

***Note about DUF materials (Genesis)

When we use the library material files to apply textures within Carrara they look altogether wrong in Carrara. But it's not as bad as it seems. We just need to go through the shaders and turn them into Carrara shaders - and you'll get used to that fairly quickly, since all content needs this to some degree. However, if you find that you have difficulties tweaking shaders by hand, try this method:

Use the preset character shaders that come with Carrara to get optimized Carrara shaders onto your figure. You can find them in the Shaders browser under Skin and then Genesis. It doesn't matter if you load the right character or not, we're just using the shader settings for now. (Select "Actor" then go to the Texture Room. Drag the preset from the browser onto the big multi-colored ball on the top right of the Texture Room)

Now go back to the Assemble Room and Edit > Remove Unused Masters > Consolidate Duplicate Shaders

Now select "Actor" and go back to the Texture room and notice which domains (the list on the right) use the same shaders. This is the result of Consolidate Duplicate Shaders, making a lot less work for us. Open each shader and change all of the channels using a "Texture Map" to the character you want to use. The texture files will be located (if you use a default installation) under Local Drive > Users > Public > Public Documents > My DAZ 3D Library > Runtime > Textures ~ and from there you need the appropriate folder depending upon which character you wish to use. Often the folder will be named after the author of the files, like SWAM, for example. There are more than a few (for me) in the DAZ > Characters folder. If you can't find the character you're looking for, go to the DIM in the "Installed" tab, find the product, right-click and select "Show Installed Files" and pay attention to the folder to find for textures. In most cases, an Carrara-optimized charcater shader will use Texture Maps for the following three shader channels: Color, Highlight, and Bump.

Environments, Vehicles and other Props

If I have a choice I ALWAYS go for the Poser version of a product. If the two formats are sold separately, I don't buy the D|S version because Carrara was working with Poser-compatible content much longer than it has DUF content. I've read a lot of issues that people were having with products in Carrara and was wondering why. It turned out that they were loading DUF (DAZ Studio) versions and they were having difficulties with things like the morph dials not working and stuff like that. Poser formats to look for are "CR2", "PP2", stuff like that. "PZ2" are pose files for Poser.

Dartanbeck

LOL... as much as I must agree with the above folks (once I got used to using Carrara, everything else just pales in comparison!), I have to admit that DAZ Studio has evolved into one crazy-awesome tool, especially just recently > since D|S 4.0 > and now add Iray to it and we have a really cool new tool to use! I don't have an nVidia graphics card (for the first time in... forever!) but my eight-core Carrara machine still works pretty well with Iray... but much faster with Carrara, that's for sure!

Dartanbeck

Example of Saving Carrara-optimized Characters

In this example, I'm using a screen shot of my new laptop. Instead of copying over everything from my Carrara-Beast Workstation, I'm just making a few things on this one. My main Carrara-Beast has a LOT of this sort of thing for my main production.

In this image, take a look to the left of the image. We're looking at a hierarchy of folders within the very top "My Objects" listing in the Objects browser. This "My Objects" folder is located (not sure how MacOS handles this) in My Documents > DAZ 3D > Carrara 8.5 > My Presets and in there is "My Objects"

So I open that folder and make my own folders inside of it. "Heroes" holds Dartanbeck and my Wife, Rosie along with various tests, saved animations, clothing, hair and some highlighting light rigs. "NPC's" is a term I picked up from role playing games which means "Non-Player Characters", and I just use it as a place to save various other people that I need for my renders and animations. For making large crews, I'll start with a single, optimized and saved template character. Then I tweak that one into a character or background person that I need and name it. So all of the generic names within the scene itself will get changed to the name of this character, so that "only" and "Point-at" will work after loading it in with a bunch of others. These recurring crew members have real names, like "Erik", for example. People who don't get voice tracks get different names like "ZMH_HWM_2", for example. It doesn't really matter what the initials stand for any more. It tells me that it's a unique looking crew member that I can add to the scene.

When ever I find the need to optimize a new item I try to save the thing into my browser. Sometimes I don't, if it's just an example, one-off fun render or something, but most of the time I find it worthwhile to save at least somewhere, even if it's in my dreaded "Misc" folder!

This becomes incredibly important for making animated movies or series of continual renders. My Workstation (built as a dedicated Carrara machine) is loaded with years of optimized "Stages". These stages are scenes that I've optimized using various carnations of my "EnviroKits" along with content that I've bought. Unlike the products of my EnvironKits, I used far fewer lights for much faster renders, but the concept is the same.

Often, I'm not loading one for anything other than the lighting and to have the volumetric clouds and sky settings already done. I have my own custom saves of these because I make them a certain way to match the lighting that I add to each of my saved characters and vehicles and such, so when I add them all together, it all works with very little, if any, changes to the lighting. 

So after one of these stages has been involved in a test render with any of my main characters and/or vehicles, they get a permanent spot within my "My Objects" > "Scenes" folder hierarchy in an organized fashion - easy for finding when I'm ready to animate or otherwise render the scene.

PhilW

I do everything direct in Carrara. You may need to do something in DS once in a while, but it is rare, and if so I will aftjust find another way to do it in Carrara rather than open DS.

3DAGE

HI rfrydryckstudio

load your figures directly into Carrara from the content browser,. then go to the right hand panels to adjust "parameters" for Morphs,. such as figure shape,. or hair styling.

Carrara has all the tools needed to build your own character, texture or paint it,. add bones to it, animate it, and render it.

Carrara is a "stand alone" 3D suite,. meaning that it doesn't rely on any other software, to do what it does.

you can Model, Texture, Rig,. Animate,. and Render. all within Carrara.

If you're trying to learn Carrara,. there's no point in using DS as starting point, although it's probably a program you're now familliar with, and want to keep using.

All the same controls and options for DAZ3D figures are also available in Carrara, on the right hand panels and tabs.

Hopefully,.. you'll quickly discover that Carrara has more to offer.