Modeling Objects in Carrara - Q&A - Come One and All

Diomede

Diomede said:

Here is a similar mug.  The scale of the handle is not very practical but the basic mesh is similar and uses the same principles.  

I will post a series of steps on how I got there.  This isn't ideal in terms of total mesh density, or the quickest in number of steps, but it works.

 

Diomede

Too strange.

@BrotherGrim - I made a bunch of screenshots.  Some are not posting.  Some post then disappear.  Others appear attached a different post.

Argh.

I have scooped them all up and placed them in a single zip file.  I will try to attach the zip file because the zip with the mesh posted.

See attached.  The names of the screenshot files should help put them in order and explain what they do, sort of.

Zach Wilson

Thank you very much for all your help and time. I'm working on the final version and render now.

Diomede

UVMapping.  I forgot to UVMap my tutorial mug before including in the Zip file.

There are many different ways to UV Map the mug.  After doing some minor edits to my handle to make it less thick, I uvmapped the resulting mug using seams and pins.  The base of the mug is a cylinder so you could use a projection preset instead.  But here is a screenshot of my mug uvmap.  I selected the outer bottom horizontal edge and hit loop to get the first seam.  I repeated for the outer top loop.  I repeated for inner top and bottom loops.  I put a vertical seam on the inside and outside of the mug by the handle, assuming that the handle would help hide any effects of the seam.  For the handle, I selected the loops where the handle intersects the mug and created seams.  I created four more seams for the handle, to separate the left and right sides, and for the outer and inner faces.  I also placed a few pins.  For the main mug, I selected two horizontal vertexes on the outside and two on the inside and created pins.  I then unfolded the uvmap and all the islands were made very small along the bottom of the uvmap.  I selected each individual UV island and scaled and arranged them on the map.  You can see that I placed the main outer mug map at the top with the upper part nearest the upper edge of the map.  

Diomede

Quick Layer Mask

Can easily texture the mug.  I changed the base color to a light blue.  I did a quick search on the interent for a meme for coffee png.  I chose one to use purely for the educational purposes of this tutorial.  The texture room has a preview of the model.  Expand that preview box to get a good look at the mug model.  In the upper left, there are tools to create layer masks.  Choose the rectangle tool and draw the area on the mug that you want to place the meme.  The shader tree will add a new layer near the bottom.  It has a channel for the shader and another for the opacity mask.  I set the layer shader to a standard multichannel mixer.  In the color channel, I selected texture map and loaded the coffee meme image.  I also loaded the same image in the opacity mask channel.  In the opacity mask channel I checked the box to invert the volor, which makes the white background black and eliminates it.  

Diomede

A quick way to get coffee for the mug.

Select the mug and enter the vertex modeler.  Select the bottom polygons and use the plus key to increase the selection up the interior of the mug until you are at the height you want.  

- COPY

- PASTE (note, I pasted into new vertex object, but you can paste in the same).

- Select the top edge loop of the new pasted mesh.  FILL POLYGON.  You should now have an NGon at the top of your coffee that perfectly fits your mug (match smoothing, if any).  

- Use the standard tools to address the N-Gon.  I suggest extruding with shift very slightly to get a flat edge loop near the edge of the mug.  Repeat again and lower the result very lightly.  This will result in the liquid clinging slightly up the inside of the mug.  Repeat a flat extrude again to get another edge loop. 

- Then tesselate vertex to center. 

- UVMap the coffee cylender, but what matters most is the top face.

- Pick a color for the liquid and do a test render.

- If in separate objects, parent the coffee to the mug and group them.

Diomede

Still getting my attachments scattered across my posts.  Hmmm.

Zach Wilson

Wow. Thanks for all of this you've have gone above and beyond Diomede.

Stezza

very helpful @diomede awesome 

Mistara

there was thread showed how to pivot a piece of tube into like a candy cane?

Mistara

i been trying to make a zyl. nice neat squares

started with a cyl primitive, converted to vertex

untriangled.  tried several decimates.

cant figure out the procedure to make this nice neat squars?
basically just a curved grid

what do i do?  thanks

 

Mistara

Decimating a cube is giving triangles.  i dont understand.  i thought decimate was supposed to lower the poly count

i've tried fidelity and vertex count.

inserted a vertex cube.

is there a way to reduce the number of squares on all sides?

Mistara

how do i scale something in absolute measurement inches?

i making a u hook, 1/4 thick,  3d printer at work,  they gonna drill and tap it to a thingee.

the offset surface has an exact measure, but it doesnt ask for axis.  what do you use offset surface to do?

thanks.

 

edit.  okay.  see i needed to select the scale tool to activate more dialog in the model tab

mcorr

TangoAlpha said:

Apart from a dalliance with XFrog in one set, all the trees in my DS environments were exported from Carrara.

Tick Full Detail Mesh and Show Leaves in the plant editor. (Untick Show Leaves for a Winter version) You may need to tweak the Mesh Smoothness setting as this will vastly affect the poly count.

Then do an Edit->Convert to Other Modeller and select Vertex Modeller from the list. Go make some coffee, cos this can take some time, depending on the size & complexity of your tree.

Be prepared for a massive polycount (I think my first tree was 2.5 million polys!). You are allowed to swear! Undo the convert action to return to the plant editor and adjust settings. Untriangulating the tree will reduce polys by about 30%. When you're happy, export the vertex model. I try and keep my trees to 300K polys or fewer.

BTW, the "leaves" can be any object, not just leaves (even other trees!), and you can mix them, have multiple sets and so on. It really is very versatile. But like many things in Carrara, it can be a bit crashy, so save often.

If I understood your post correctly, trees made in Carrara can be formed and then exported to an environment that is part of a for-sale product. Is that right?

WendyLuvsCatz

I would think you need to at least set all your own parameters and use your own modelled vertex leaves

even then I would ask DAZ first as after a comment a few years ago on Bryce trees and redistribution I started wondering if the  carrara tree generator or even the terrain editor counted as a modelling room

mcorr

@WendyLuvsCats

Thanks for commenting. Hopefully TangoAlpha can clarify what if anything needs to be done to be in compliance.

gregoryhilldesign

Hello all- I'm having a few issues with Carrara recently. I should preface by saying I am working on an iMac (27"-late 2012). I had been waiting to update my OS mostly fearing that Carrara would not be compatible. I finally had to update to Catalina however (which is I think the last update I'm able to use). Anyway Carrara seems to be working. There have been some odd little glitches which I'm OK with. However I've discovered one problem that I can't get around. The thing I love about Carrara is how easy it is to build models quickly. I'm a film illustrator and often use carrara to build models of sets I'm illustrating to get perspective, etc. right. And I plant textures I do in Photoshop onto a lot of the model elements. But for some reason I can't do it now. When I add a Vertex Object I'll pick the hero face and assign a texture. Then when I'm back in Assembly, when I select the object and click on the shading domain to edit it...I do the usual... select projection map/flat mapping. Then grab the jpeg or png file I created to apply it... nothing happens. I've tried all of the other parameters to see if something works... but nothing happens. Any suggestions? Or is anyone else experiencing this? Thanks

Greg

BrianP21361

Hi Greg,

I'm using Carrara on a similar iMac running Mojave. That's the last operating system I was able to upgrade to and don't have any serious issues. I tried what you suggested, but didn't quite follow your work flow. I created a new vertex object. Edited it and added a cube. Selected one face and created a new shading domain. Went back to the assembly room, edited the shading domain by slecting texture map for the color channel and it worked as expected. 

WendyLuvsCatz

I was wondering if there was a way to easily extrude polylines to faces

specifically on the rigged dforce hairs and furs that import into Carrara if edit rigging convert to blended weight is done in the Carrara plugin called DAZ studio and saved as a scene subset

a few actually import as mesh if line tesselation is set to 2 and a brief drape applied but most stay polylines

it's dependent on how they were created AFAIK and of course only PAs know that, the same applies to FBX exports, some work most don't

they DO import as rigged polylines as duf, but of course those don't render

BTW I only want the things like whiskers, not full body furs as those far too big

at the moment I export obj files of them with line tesselation 2 but they are not rigged