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Love me the Portrait Studio, I was first in line to get that when it came out :)
Hiya Dart!
I still haven't been able to purchase (I've escalated to the Infinite Skills folks for help), but just watching the free videos that are available for this training has already helped me immensely improve.
I finally understand what linear workflow is, and why carrara needs it to render realistically.
And I can't believe I've been using the Anything Glows light all this time, assuming that it really had an inverse square falloff and would be physically correct, which Phil disproves very quickly with a very straightforward lighting scene (brilliant!)
This stuff is absolutely brilliant, I can't wait to get my hands on the rest of it, and if you're interested in realism in Carrara (as I have been long obsessed with) you would have to be crazy not to get this. Heck, don't take my word for it, go over there and watch the preview vids for yourself.
Special bonus: no one pronounces 'Carrara' the way Phil does. Trust me, it's a treat :)
Here's a quick render I threw together after watching some of the tips from the preview vids. Scene is inside a primitive cube (which is why there's some splotchy stuff on the walls) with 2 glowing primitives (a cube which is visible to the right and a plane which is above and looking down on the subject from the front) providing all the lighting via the 'Glow' channel (which I'm now convinced is the absolute best way to get correct lighting), with blurry reflections enabled on the skin so there will be some specular effect, some SSS I rigged up, etc. The model actually has some very nicely set reflections on the eyes that give great 'eye glint' effect, but in this pose the eyes aren't reflecting the light source directly at the camera, so not so much (but again, just like in life, I suppose...)
Not bad for a quick try I think, but there's still a bit of weirdness/artifacts in some parts of the hair. Then again I haven't viewed the tutorial sections on hair yet... :)
I really do think that mesh lights (objects with glow channel + indirect lighting) gives some amazing results, Carrara is indeed a very powerful renderer, stacks up quite well even against unbiased scenes and handles the lighting very similarly (very realistically)
hmm... repeated post (whoops)
Hey Jon! Fantastic job on your shaders/render. You definitely sold me on getting Phil's video (like it wasn't already pretty high on the list).
Thanks Dustrider! Lol, I was just posting in the Bryce vs Carrara vs Vue thread how impressive the renders you had put up were, then checked back here and saw your comment :) I consider that high praise as you are definitely one of my favorite Carrarists, extremely skilled and talented.
And Phil's vids are definitely great (at least what I've been able to watch so far, and I'm sure the rest is gold too).
Where is this thread of which you speak? The Commons?
Jon - Thanks for stopping by the thread and adding your great comments and render, it really helps to get some other opinions, examples, and views. Also thanks for your kind words :red: ..... now THAT is high praise (not sure I quite live up to it though).
Yep, here's the link http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/44348/
Thanks for the link! I'll have to check it out.
This looks like a great tutorial and I expect nothing but superb material from PhilW.
Maybe this was answered (sorry if so). Does the training focus on a specific version of Carrara? Notably 8.5, which I still haven't purchased and may never purchase at this rate?
Just to mention it, the link PhilW gave has a couple of preview chapters available free, and they are good stuff:
http://www.infiniteskills.com/training/carrara-realism-rendering.html
I tried to look for some feature that would answer the question about V 8.5 (which I did purchase when the price dropped for one day to a level I thought was reasonable, i.e. very low. I had earlier voiced some complaints ...). I didn't see anything that was obviously not available in V. 8.1, but hopefully PhilW will clarify this.
Thanks. I appreciate the extra info.
Garstor, I agree with SteveK. Like him, I've only watched the free preview videos and not the full series yet (because Infinite Skills won't take my money, grrrr), but while I'm pretty sure Phil is working with 8.5, there's not a setting he's addressed yet that couldn't have been done in carrara 7 just as easily. But then, I haven't seen the whole training yet :)
You are right, I use C8.5 but I don't think there is anything that is covered in this training set that you can't do with Carrara's certainly back as far as C7.
I've so far just watched the free previews. Can't decide between subscribing to them and trying to watch as many videos as fast as I can and then remember it all... or buying this.
But I've gotten to the video on environmental rendering and I'm noticing that... step back a bit... if I use a glowing object (only tried spheres so far), I get horrible pixelated artifacts on darker skin - blotches in areas that should be minor shadow. This is with gamma 2.2, turning light quality up to best, and the object accuracy to 0.5.
Are solutions to blotchy areas covered later on in the series?
I am looking forward to it. Love your tutorials.
app is available now for monthly subscribers. will save some time to start watching this weekend!
Turning the GI lighting quality to best usually eliminates any blotchiness. The other potential cause of blotchiness is if you use a plane as a light and have it turned the wrong way, as in this case the direction of the normal makes a big difference.
I have seen some dark or black artifacts on textures which have very dark or black areas in them as Carrara doesn't seem to handle that too well, it is generally best to have a minimum of maybe 5 (out of 255) as the darkest dark - but if this is a skin texture, I doubt it gets that dark. If you can post an image of what you are getting, I'll see if I can think of anything else.
I am looking forward to it. Love your tutorials.
app is available now for monthly subscribers. will save some time to start watching this weekend!
Good news! I know that it is towards the end of DAZ's QA process so hopefully not too long before it hits the store here.
I don't use spheres for exactly this reason, don't know why but the spheres always give me some weirdness. I use primarily cubes as my glowing objects, because they seem to work well, don't have to worry about turning them the wrong way. Or for more complex objects, like inside of a room, I'll use for example the lampshade of a lamp as my glowing object. But spheres I've learned to avoid :) Also don't like using planes, because if you turn the plane the wrong way, like Phil mentions it will give bad results. I can take a cube and scale it to make it as thin as I like anyway, so it can function pretty much like a plane.
The infinity skills people emailed me and had no suggestions why they couldn't accept payment except maybe my card was out of money. Double checked with the bank, still got thousands in that account (debit visa card is what I was using).
Guess I'll have to wait on DAZ, but it is killing me not to see the rest of the videos... :)
I'm waiting too...
I'm waiting too...
Same here :) hopefull.. no can't say it... soon
Whooo-HOOOO!
It's been killing me waiting on DAZ to get this product available, and Infinite Skills payment acceptance system seemed to be broken as it would never accept payment. But I kept trying the infinite skills site (nearly daily) and tonight at about midnight my time they finally apparently fixed their glitch... and I was able to finally finally purchase this training.
I've just spent several exhilarating hours devouring the videos and training.
PhilW is a genius!! I can't believe how much I learned, even though it's a relatively short course. I can't wait to adopt some of these simple but brilliant practices and play around with them, as I'm certain they will massively improve my results. I'm grinning like a loon, and there were several times during the videos where I was punching the air and whooping at some of the brilliant stuff he explains.
By the way DAZ can suck it. I didn't have to wait on the endless process for this coming into the DAZ store after all :)
This training is AWESOME!
There are some bits where Philw goes into use of Photoshop, which I don't have since I'm a cheap bastard and make due with Gimp (which I barely know how to use anyway), in regards to postwork, but most of the concepts I was able to follow and I think I can replicate on my stripped down freebie Gimp. But the vast vast majority of the course is all about Carrara, and the ways to use it for realism.
It's past 4am for me right now, and though I'm dead on my feet, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to resist the impulse to play :)
Excellent, excellent stuff Philw. Thank you!
Thanks so much for your post, Jon, I'm so glad you got there in the end. I know that Infinite Skills are chasing up DAZ to get a release date here on the store.
Hi Phil,
I'm going through your "Realism" course and it's amazing.Just a quick note: I'm currently doing Chapter 5 Part 4 (The Bookshelf) and the working files are missing the Bookcase_ColourMap.jpg file...
Thanks very much for the feedback. Here is the bookcase color map file, I posted it here in case others will also need it.
Alternatively you can load the final Living Room scene and the textured object should be OK in there as this was saved with embedded textures.
The eagle has landed (@ the Daz store)
Was already watching it via the monthly subscription though. Brilliant training by Phil as usual, thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Great that it has now launched on the DAZ Store. The description mentions modelling, which isn't a focus of this particular title (the Advanced Carrara title covers modelling in some detail). The real aim is using lighting, materials and render settings to maximise the realism in your renders. There are a number of working files included, one of the most useful being the full scene below. I highlight this because interiors are probably the most difficult to light and render. Add one of your own characters putting their feet up at the table!
and there is that bookshelf on the left! There was a thread in which someone asked about using the terrain modeler to make other stuff. Phil shows how to make that bookshelf with the terrain modeler.
Great stuff, Phil.
Now you need to do a tutorial that focuses on non-photorealistic rendering ;-P
Any particular style you had in mind, or just how to use the default light and render settings?! ;-) :lol:
Any particular style you had in mind, or just how to use the default light and render settings?! ;-) :lol:
I would actually like to see some tutorials on Carrara's non-photorealistic render option. It's been a long while since I messed with it, but I was never happy with Poser's "Sketch Render" feature. I could never get what looked like a real "sketch":
http://hauyeow.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/stilllifepencil2005.jpg
(or just Google "simple pencil sketch" to get a zillion more examples)
So I tried the Carrara equivalent and got better results, but still not quite there (like I say it was long ago, so I've forgotten what I did). I'll get back to it ... some day ... maybe ... if the tutorials come out ... :coolhmm: