Carrara Monthly Challenge #30: WAR TIMES - WIP Thread

namtar3d

The challenge this month is to create an image of war, integrating Low Poly Modeling and/or Surface Replicator 

-  It can be a war scene from any time: spaceships battle, medieval siege, aliens invasion, WWII "D" day, angels vs demons, a war of insects, a bunch of cats fighting in the street, etc.

-  Feel free to interpret the theme broadly.

 

Basic rules will be:

1. Participants must use the Carrara surface replicator to replicate bullets, soldiers, buildings, etc. 

2.-The scene must have at least 10 characters in the scene. (For example, 9 knights atacking a dragon, 5 soldiers fighting 5 enemies or 2 planes atacking 8 tanks, etc) You can make a massive battle of hundreds of soldiers if you wan't.   

3.-The scene must be in the climax of the battle, i mean, no after or before, but the mere critical point of the conflict.

4.-Participants must model at least one object in modeling room: A gun, a bullet, an arrow, a tank, a soldier, a building, a trash can, etc.  

5.-Postwork is allowed, but not to replicate objects.

6. Images must be new (previously unpublished).

7. Images must be primarily set up in Carrara.

8. Images must be rendered in Carrara or in an external renderer for which there is a Carrara plug-in (e.g. LuxRenderer, Octane).

9. At least one WIP (work in progress) image must be posted to the WIP thread that includes how the Surface Replicator was used.

10. Screen shot of the scene in Carrara to be included in WIP -

11. Each participant may submit up to 3 images into the Challenge.
 

Please note, there is no requirement for the winner to host the next challenge, unless they want to.

 

We love our wonderful sponsors   

Once again Daz will generously sponsor the monthly challenge with the following prizes:

1st Place: $100.00 towards DAZ 3D owned item(s)
2nd Place: $ 50.00 towards DAZ 3D owned item(s)
3rd Place: $ 25.00 towards DAZ 3D owned item(s)
Honorable Mention (4th place): $10.00 towards DAZ 3D owned item(s) ( may be used for best new comers).

Dates to Remember:

WIP Thread Opens: Friday 23 Dec 2016

Entry Thread Opens: Saturday 10 Jan 2017

Entry Thread Closes/Voting Begins: 12.00 Midnight Monday 17 Jan 2017

Voting Ends: Saturday 23 Jan 2017

 

As with the last challenge because we are having up to three images an entrant we WILL judge the winner by their scores combined. ie if their image 1 gets 24 votes, their image 2 gets 12 votes, and their image 3 gets 12 votes then they score 48.

2nd and third and HM would be as per usual - ie based on votes for one image.

HAPPY HOLLYDAYS!!

Diomede

This challenge will be epic, literally! 

Here are a few resources for replicators.  And because replicators are often used to put things on terrains, here are also a few resources for terrains.

Cripeman tutorial on replicators

Cripeman tutorials on terrains
and

Thread on replicators methods, tips, and tricks
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/38177/

Thread on using Carrara terrains and replicators to create oceans.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/28506/

Dartanbeck has a forum thread on terrain modeling.

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/37867/

PhilW

Great theme - just for a bit of possible inspiration, here is an image that I did many years ago with replicated characters. Not an entry to this contest as it is not a new image.

Dartanbeck

Fantastic!

UnifiedBrain

4.-Participants must model at least one object in modeling room: A gun, a bullet, an arrow, a tank, a soldier, a building, a trash can, etc.

Can someone explain?  Are terrains considered modeling?

Namtar3D - glad you are hosting this!

SileneUK

PhilW said:

Great theme - just for a bit of possible inspiration, here is an image that I did many years ago with replicated characters. Not an entry to this contest as it is not a new image.

 

Funny looking Welshmen in those white tunics!    Silene

Men of Harlech stop your dreaming
Can't you see their spear points gleaming
See their warrior's pennants streaming
To this battle field

(Yes, Chohole...it's the movie version!)

PhilW

It is the Egyptians fighting with the people from the ancient land of Punt, on their famous expedition under the reign of Hatshepsut - as you well know!

Stezza

diomede said:

This challenge will be epic, literally! 

 

Awesome.... I mean EPIC , it's been a while since we've had an epic challenge  

TangoAlpha

Ah, long pointy throwing sticks. let's see how well your bikini armour does against those . . . . 

Oh, deaded again? Shame!

Diomede

Stezza, good memory.  I wonder who came up with that prior wonderful epic challenge?  (get it? wonder-ful?) 

Stezza said

Awesome.... I mean EPIC , it's been a while since we've had an epic challenge  

-------------------------------

I hope Varsel is able to join in this time.  His card soldiers definitely dominated mine in the Card challenge.  These are his.

 

But my card soldiers are now supplemented with siege equipment.  Rematch!

.

 

namtar3d

UnifiedBrain said:

4.-Participants must model at least one object in modeling room: A gun, a bullet, an arrow, a tank, a soldier, a building, a trash can, etc.

Can someone explain?  Are terrains considered modeling?

Namtar3D - glad you are hosting this!

Hi!! Thank you!

Only if terrain have a custom element, i mean, something that is not just a preset. 

 

PhilW said:

Great theme - just for a bit of possible inspiration, here is an image that I did many years ago with replicated characters. Not an entry to this contest as it is not a new image.

Really impressive work! Thanks for share it!

 

UnifiedBrain said:

4.-Participants must model at least one object in modeling room: A gun, a bullet, an arrow, a tank, a soldier, a building, a trash can, etc.

Can someone explain?  Are terrains considered modeling?

Namtar3D - glad you are hosting this!

 

diomede said:

This challenge will be epic, literally! 

Here are a few resources for replicators.  And because replicators are often used to put things on terrains, here are also a few resources for terrains.

Cripeman tutorial on replicators

Cripeman tutorials on terrains
and

Thread on replicators methods, tips, and tricks
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/38177/

Thread on using Carrara terrains and replicators to create oceans.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/28506/

Dartanbeck has a forum thread on terrain modeling.

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/37867/

Thanks for this, very useful!!

namtar3d

For example, this kind of custom terrain to make a river is acceptable.

evilproducer

I would add that the spline modeler is also has a model room.

I'll have to sit this one out again due to some extremely trying real life problems including total computer failure, and the play I am directing has rehearsals starting very soon.

Mistara

naval battles   or
fight for the right to parrrt-eee 

 

MarkIsSleepy

My usual contribution to Christmas dinner is to sit and watch movies while my mom and sister cook, so I had some time this morning to try out an idea for this one. 

The idea is a warrior, cornered and with no more room to retreat, making a last stand against a group of monsters.  For the monsters I made a beholder (a classic Dungeons and Dragons monster, which is basically a big floating eye that can shoot death rays from the eyestalks on top) and rigged it so I can move the eyestalks around.  I modeled a dungeon section in the vertex modeler and a basic spear, which I used in a surface replicator to fill the pit behind the warrior.  The warrior and his last dying companion still need to be added (which will bring me up to the min of 10 characters, counting the eight beholders), but I want to get the lighting right first.  The beholder and dungeon were textured in Substance Painter.

Attached are: a shot of the rig for the beholder, a textured view of the beholder, the modeling room view of the dungeon section, a test render of the layout with no textures and a test render with textures and my first pass at the lighting.

Diomede

Excellent idea and models, Mark.  By coincidence, I just modeled a one-eyed being.  But mine is a one-eyed cyclopstrich.  Everyone can have for free and I will provide a link.

EDIT: The cyclopstrich is attached as a zip file.  Let me know of it doesn't work or there are any other issues.

EDIT 2:  cyclostritch update fixed - see new zip file

 

The Cyclopstriches are the mounts for my cavalry, which will be arriving in the nick of time to save the day.  My battle scale will have lots of replicated soldiers in the background, but the cavalry charge will dominate the foreground.

I started with a sphere to model the cyclopstrich and then rigged in Carrara.

namtar3d

Very nice! 

IceDragonArt

Okay I may try this one.  I'm off to watch tutorials since I don't even know what some of this stuff is lol. 

IceDragonArt

MDO2010 said:

My usual contribution to Christmas dinner is to sit and watch movies while my mom and sister cook, so I had some time this morning to try out an idea for this one. 

The idea is a warrior, cornered and with no more room to retreat, making a last stand against a group of monsters.  For the monsters I made a beholder (a classic Dungeons and Dragons monster, which is basically a big floating eye that can shoot death rays from the eyestalks on top) and rigged it so I can move the eyestalks around.  I modeled a dungeon section in the vertex modeler and a basic spear, which I used in a surface replicator to fill the pit behind the warrior.  The warrior and his last dying companion still need to be added (which will bring me up to the min of 10 characters, counting the eight beholders), but I want to get the lighting right first.  The beholder and dungeon were textured in Substance Painter.

Attached are: a shot of the rig for the beholder, a textured view of the beholder, the modeling room view of the dungeon section, a test render of the layout with no textures and a test render with textures and my first pass at the lighting.

Looks like he is in some deep ****.  I love beholders, they are one of the harder monsters in Might and Magic 7.  (my all time favorite RPG)

IceDragonArt

diomede said:

Excellent idea and models, Mark.  By coincidence, I just modeled a one-eyed being.  But mine is a one-eyed cyclopstrich.  Everyone can have for free and I will provide a link.

EDIT: The cyclopstrich is attached as a zip file.  Let me know of it doesn't work or there are any other issues.

 

The Cyclopstriches are the mounts for my cavalry, which will be arriving in the nick of time to save the day.  My battle scale will have lots of replicated soldiers in the background, but the cavalry charge will dominate the foreground.

I started with a sphere to model the cyclopstrich and then rigged in Carrara.

Love this!

evilproducer

A challenge perfectly timed for the whole Peace on Earth thing... 

 

Dartanbeck

Cool Beholder, MDO!!!

Mistara

talking heads song running in my brain from thread title lol

Varsel

 

diomede said:

.....

But my card soldiers are now supplemented with siege equipment.  Rematch!

 

 

Well,well..... someone is picking a fight.... a challenge ... an arms-race ....

A proper response is at the moment being installed into one of my surplus ICBM's, and will shortly be heading in the right direction.... 

I am taking the first two weeks in January as vacation, so I should be able to do something with this challenge and contest .

 

In the meantime.... 

If anyone need some uniforms for an army, I have some ... (link at the bottom) for use with http://www.daz3d.com/lorenzo-lorez by Predatron.

Stezza

Hey Varsel, that's pretty good.. I downloaded some your stuff to tryout..

FYI on my system when loading Lorenzo head & hands only there is an error loading the Grenadier pants and when loading Lorenzopants01 it hangs Carrara.. I have replicated the issue several times..

It doesn't happen with the full body of Lorenzo loaded..  look forward to getting some battle scenes loaded up using your stuff 

 

Diomede

Oh, my forces are gathering.  We will be ready!  LOL.

.

 

Thanks so much for the Lorenzo uniforms.  Very generous.

.

Varsel said:

 

diomede said:

.....

But my card soldiers are now supplemented with siege equipment.  Rematch!

 

 

Well,well..... someone is picking a fight.... a challenge ... an arms-race ....

A proper response is at the moment being installed into one of my surplus ICBM's, and will shortly be heading in the right direction.... 

I am taking the first two weeks in January as vacation, so I should be able to do something with this challenge and contest .

 

In the meantime.... 

If anyone need some uniforms for an army, I have some ... (link at the bottom) for use with http://www.daz3d.com/lorenzo-lorez by Predatron.

 

Varsel

Stezza said:

Hey Varsel, that's pretty good.. I downloaded some your stuff to tryout..

FYI on my system when loading Lorenzo head & hands only there is an error loading the Grenadier pants and when loading Lorenzopants01 it hangs Carrara.. I have replicated the issue several times..

It doesn't happen with the full body of Lorenzo loaded..  look forward to getting some battle scenes loaded up using your stuff 

 

I am getting the same error.. And I don't understand why. I checked the .cr2 and they look all as they should. And when I created these uniforms, they did work as they should.

The only thing I can think off, is that Carrara has been updated since these were created, and that because there are bodymorphs in them, and there are no bodypolygons on the figure, something in Carrara doesn't add up.

I will investigate further .. but in the meantime, use the full body version of Lorenzo, and use an invisible shader to hide any bodyparts that should not show.

MarkIsSleepy

Varsel said:

In the meantime.... 

If anyone need some uniforms for an army, I have some ... (link at the bottom) for use with http://www.daz3d.com/lorenzo-lorez by Predatron.

I would love to know how you created these outfits for Lorenzo!  I thought this would be a great way to get some extra characters in the scene, so I modeled a medieval guard outfit for Lorenzo but now I have no idea how to get it to follow his movements!  Anyone know how to do this?

Here's what I've tried so far:

1. Detaching the skeleton from one copy of Lorenzo and then attaching it to my armor.  The amor moves beautifully with the bones this way, but I can't get it to parent to or follow the original Lorenzo.
2. Copying the model of my armor and pasting it onto the model of Lorenzo in the vertex room.  This causes both Lorenzo and the armor to distort wildly when the bones are moved (and they don't distrort in the same ways!).
3. I thought I read something about importing the armor into DS and transferring the weight mapping/bones there, but I cannot even get my armor to import neatly - the scale is way off, the hotpoint moves and the imported model is so smoothed that parts of it disappear entirely.

I am sure that at some point someone posted a step-by-step for creating new clothes for Lorenzo, but I cannot find it anywhere.

Varsel

The process isn't special for Lorenzo (except that it's low-poly) , but it is modeling and rigging for Poser figures. What's now called legacy content. The same as modeling and rigging for V4-M4-Aiko ....

It has taken me some years to learn this.. And all my links for tutorials did disappear when I replaced my PC a couple a years ago.

Tutorials for creating .cr2 clothing seems difficult to find now. That probably because Genesis and the newer Poser figures are using a different system than they did before. And thats the latest fashion 

I use Hexagon for my modeling, one of the reasons is because of the scaling issue, that you have discovered.

I think it is Dartanbeck that knows how to scale for import/export Studio/Carrara, but you have to chop up and name the parts of the clothing so that it matches the bones on the donor figure. It can be done in Carrara. I haven't done it there, because it's much easier in Hexagon.

At the moment I don't have the time to create any tutorials on this, but what I can do is; create this armor for you (exclusive for the duration of the challenge, after that it will be free for all)

You just have to supply me with a "blueprint",  sketch, anything to work from. The props you have made, can be used as they are. Thats just parenting to the figure. Thats one place where Carrara excels compare to the other programs.

MarkIsSleepy

Thanks Varsel, that's really kind of you to offer, but this is something I've wanted to make for a long time as part of a much larger project and I'd really like to learn to do it myself.  I will just have to find some other way of doing it for this challenge.

EDIT TO ADD: I figured out how to import my modeled armor into DS thanks to a post by sickleyield in an old thread about tranferring from Blender to DS.  I also figured out how to make the armor a wearable preset that can be "fit-to" Lorenzo in DS and moves pretty well with the character and when I load them both in Carrara it lets me fit the armor to Lorenzo, but moving Lorenzo does not move the armor in Carrara - just in DS.

MarkIsSleepy

Whoo hoo! I figured it out! 

Beware my soon-to-be-built army of Lorez town guards!

There may be some redundant or unnecessary steps in here, but this is what I did:

In DS:

1. Load Lorenzo Lorez
2. Import my armor model
3. Convert armor to sub-D
4. Convert Lorenzo to sub-D
5. Convert Lorenzo to general weightmapping (without that step Lorenzo does not show up as a possible source in the transfer utility)
6. Select the Armor
7. Use Transfer Utility (Source: Lorenzo, Target: Armor, Options: Weight Maps, Selection Maps, Face Groups, Region Groups (nothing else!)) to transfer weight and bones to the armor
8. Select the armor and fit to Lorenzo
9. Convert both Lorenzo and the armor to Triax weight maps
10. Save the armor as a support asset - figure/prop asset
11. Save the modified Lorenzo as a support asset - figure/prop asset

In Carrara

1. Load the saved triax weighted versions of both Lorenzo and the armor
2. Fit the armor to the modified Lorenzo
3. Grab one of Lorenzo's arms and wiggle it around - watch the armor move too!
4. Ta da!

I still need to play with the shaders (that chainmail is not as shiny as I'd like) but otherwise I am going to call this a successful weekend.  I separated out the quiver, sheathed sword, unsheathed sword and spear so those should just be a matter of parenting them to the appropriate body part and maybe adjusting a little depending on the final poses.