Learning Carrara and Need some Help?

PhilW · August 2016

Good to see those Dimension Theory vids again, they still look amazing!

SileneUK · August 2016

Oh I need to get back to Carrara and soon! Thank you for re-organising and re-doing all of these great tuts and how-to's!

Silene

Dartanbeck · August 2016

PhilW said:

Good to see those Dimension Theory videos again, they still look amazing!

SileneUK said:

Oh I need to get back to Carrara and soon! Thank you for re-organising and re-doing all of these great tuts and how-to's!

Silene

My Pleasure, you two! Thanks for coming ;)

Dartanbeck · August 2016

Perusing for some info for another thread, and I ran across this... this is a good discussion on tutorial books and videos

Carrara 5 Pro Handbook arrived this morning

Dartanbeck · August 2016

Anyone here working with film, green screens, or the like?

Daniel Ritchie, the author and brain-child of Project Dogwaffle is a Visual Effects artist, and has worked on many cool TV shows and Films. This video kind of explains some of the older pre-CG ways of compositing (Yikes!!!) while he teaches us how to composite green screens using Howler...

VFX is an excellent field to study if you're looking into making your own movies - even CG ones. Since I've delved into the vast world of VFX skills, I find myself far less frustrated trying to get everything to happen all in one render. Compositing various layers or nodes together and working with them in ways that I've never imagined before, has led me to realize that post work in CG video clips really isn't that hard to do and, with practice, can make a world of difference!

So just for fun and inspiration, I've compiled a playlist on YouTube called VFX Inspiration, which has some 'behind the scenes' looks at cinematography of old and new to help get a better understanding, and to just relax with something to watch that's geared toward what my brain needs... or whatever... LOL

VFX Inspiration Playlist

Howler users? I have some playlists for us too! Man... I love using Howler for VFX! It does what a lot of other compositors do plus having all of the cool painting tools and puppy stuff! Here are some playlists that I use for Howler inspiration

Green Screen Keying and Roto-Scoping using Howler

Intro Steps to VFX using Howler (Various)

Anyone using Fusion, or wanting to?

Fusion Lessons by Eric Westphal at Eyeon

(Fusion is now owned by BlackMagic Design - previously owned by Eyeon Software)

Dartanbeck · August 2016

Nothing inspires me better than Star Wars

And there's no better Star Wars than this!

Inspired?

Check out my playlist of Behind the Scenes featurettes of the Clone Wars !

Clone Wars Inspiration <<< video Playlist

The playlist is in chronological order with, perhaps, a few placed throughout that might not necessarily be in that order, but fit nicely. Anyways, if you scroll down in the list you'll see that there is a LOT covered. Although Season 2 has only four videos, they are longer and feature the new member of the Lucas Film Animation team: Joel Aaron, who shows us some cool tips and tricks that we can even translate nicely to a Carrara workflow - especially if we're using Howler and/or HitFilm or Fusion, etc., in that work flow as well. I have Howler and HitFilm and Fusion, but am sarting to lean more towards HitFilm than Fusion right now... we'll see.

Dartanbeck · August 2016

Frederick Ribble has toiled away and brought to us the wonderful PyCarrara and PyCloid. With his permission, I've compiled a playlist of his brief and wonderful demo videos. Enjoy!

PyCloid Demos

Here's the first video in the list, just as a teaser

With all respect, f1oat3d, I love you man!

mindsong · August 2016

Brilliant (re)collection of this treasure-trove of information. I've seen snippits of almost all of what's in here, but I've clearly missed a good number of these gems.

A HUGE thanks for keeping the information and community alive, Dartanbeck! This is appreciated as being a huge investment by anyone who manages such infoirmation, for certain.

(We would all do well to (re)visit Dartanbeck's DAZ/Cararra product pages and (re)consider supporting his efforts and adding some good resources to our runtimes - win win)

Unless I missed it, may I suggest adding the Carrara-Centric animation site http://bond3d.wix.com/carrarators to the mix? (is this sort of external link allowed, as it's not a business site...?). For more examples of additional Carrara brilliance @sad's you-tube pages and @joeping's various youtube tests keep me going (along with Dart's and the other already mentioned pages...)

And @philw, I saw mention of your animation tutorial series in progress many moons ago, and have been eagerly waiting the announced release. With your new machine at the ready, and half of the chapters done (if I read your elsewhere mention correctly) I hope you find the motivation and time to finish that series up before I learn all of your lessons again the hard way!

cheers to all,

ms

(edited: to fix the carrarators link)

Dartanbeck · August 2016

Welcome home, mindsong!!! Missed ya!

I suppose I could say the same for myself... been absent for a while :(

Yes! We can (and will) mention Carrarators! I just did, not too long ago! I'm putting them in here too... it just takes me so long to get all of this stuff together ;)

Here's the thread, chicken man asked that I mentioned them in there, otherwise I was going to give them their own new Hype thread - which I might still do:

Carrara Cafe and C3DE E-zine

Yeah... Joeping and Wendy will get pages in here too! :) It's like you're reading my mind! LOL

By the way, their linked names above lead to their YouTube channels! ;)

I will always know her as WendyLovesCats! :)

It's Jade's Turn!

- by Mad Cat Lady

mindsong said:

Brilliant (re)collection of this treasure-trove of information. I've seen snippits of almost all of what's in here, but I've clearly missed a good number of these gems.

A HUGE thanks for keeping the information and community alive, Dartanbeck! This is appreciated as being a huge investment by anyone who manages such infoirmation, for certain.

(We would all do well to (re)visit Dartanbeck's DAZ/Cararra product pages and (re)consider supporting his efforts and adding some good resources to our runtimes - win win)

Thanks! I really appreciate that! ;)

Fire & Ice - A Robert Frost Peom

- by Joe Pingleton

Dartanbeck · August 2016

Plenty more to come... there's a LOT of excellent Carrara stuff out there... and in here (these forums - hidden within lost pages)!

- a poem by Dartanbeck

Dartanbeck · August 2016

A really fun thread to peruse is MistyMist's virtual penny 4 yor carrara thoughts ? thread.

She really just pours out her thoughts, often several of completely different topic, all at once. Then we just take what she gives us and run with it! It's reaally amazing what all comes of it! So many discussions of different ways of performing the same thing, because everybody has their own, preferred method of doing stuff in Carrara!

Wanna have some fun? Give it a read sometime!

Vandalay · August 2016

I was recently trying to implement the advice on hiding bones you provide in your tutorial (also explained in the Infinte Skills training series).

I'm a newcomer and late to the Carrara party, and it looks like Fenric's Change Bone Visibility is no longer viable? He has shut up shop and is not selling or supporting his products any more; the trial version doesn't load properly for me either.

Is that the end of that, and our only recourse is to manually change visibility of each bone?

Dartanbeck · August 2016

Hmmm... bummer. We'll have to find out for sure. We need that thing!

PhilW · August 2016

While we are on the subject, I bought a bunch of Fenric's plugins some years ago. With re-setting up my new machine, I found the original downloads but they are reporting that the licence keys cannot be found, and I don't know how to register/authosise them so that it stops reporting this for each plugin every time I load Carrara. Anyone have any ideas? I tried emailing Fenric but he has not responded.

Vandalay · August 2016

Aha, I'm opening cans of worms!

On an unrelated tack, I've started working with NLA - expressions to start with.

Animations between static poses work fine but when I introduce a clip, the figure does a funky wee thing in between. I've tried a bunch of ways but can't get past this - what is happening is the figure's scale going jiggy; it is interpolating a dip between two values which are the same - the value in the screenshot dips from what should be a constant 1.67 down to 1.65 and I don't know why.

Vandalay · August 2016

Still can't figure that out why that's happening - only on mixture of clips and static poses.

Workaround is to make actual clips of static poses, even if there is no change of state in said clips. :-|

Dartanbeck · August 2016

colin_b8d208270a said:

Still can't figure that out why that's happening - only on mixture of clips and static poses.

Workaround is to make actual clips of static poses, even if there is no change of state in said clips. :-|

Start a thread on it... we'll get you straightened out. We'll have to pick your mind for more info, though! LOL

You could also look through here to see if there's a similar issue:

► Forum Help Links

3DAGE · August 2016

Hi Colin

When you add NLA clips or NLA poses,. there's a couple of things to be aware of.

NLA clips will normally change the default pose of the figure on frame 0 ,. even when the clip is removed,. the figure needs to be zero'd or re-posed,. before adding a different clip.

when you're Mixing poses and clips,. try to work on different NLA tracks,. this helps to organise things a wee bit,. clips on one track, poses on another.

Using diffrent NLA tracks,. also allows you to specify which parts of the figure are effected by the animations in each NLA track,. since each track has a "parameters" panel,. where you can select or deselect parts of the figure to limit what parts of the figure the animation effects.

also the NLA track options ,. whether it's set to Additive or Override. will produce different effects,.

Hope it helps :)

Vandalay · August 2016

Brilliant guys, I'm gathering momentum. I hope to eke my way onto this forum like I'm eking my way into the software, and get used to where to post and all that. Maybe even figure out how to give myself a cool username. ;-)

Dartanbeck · August 2016

Fenric's Tools

I am putting some of these tools to Constant use, while others I still need to explore more - as with many things in Carrara, both things that are included in Carrara Pro as well as after-market supplements. All in all, however, when I was going from laptop to desktop to my home-built workstation I ended up reinstalling Carrara a few times and, each time, if I tried messing around in Carrara before installing my Fenric tools, Carrara just didn't feel right. Fenric has certainly played a huge role in helping me to achieve my goals.

Shader Power Tools - is a combination of many of the tools he sold via his site at prices too low to be sold here at Daz 3d. Bundling them together makes for a beautiful pile of very useful Carrara utilities! It includes the following tools previously sold in his (now closed) store:

Shader Doctor

Skin Doctor

Advanced Shader Tweaker

Multi-Shader Editor

Layer Blending Shader

Enhanced Color Balance Shader

Enhanced Color Merge Shader

I use the Advanced Shader Tweaker quite often, but really have to spend some time to get to know and use the others in this pack. They're all very helpful, useful utilities - it just takes me breaking away from old habits and looking at new/different ways of looking at shaders.

BVH/PZ2 Exporter for Carrara - If this didn't exist, neither would my Swordworks for M4 or AnimationKit for Mil Dragon 2, since I made the animations in Carrara and used this tool to get them into PZ2 files, and then bringing those into DS to create the aniBlocks - which is a fine workflow. Very useful tool, it doesn't work for Triax rigging. But for recording any animations for any Poser-format models, this thing is incredibly powerful!

Exports Static Poser format Pose File (PZ2)

Exports Animated Poser format Pose File (PZ2)

Exports Poser compatible BioVision Animation File (BVH)

Configurable Operation

Choose whether to include or exclude:

Overall Motion (global translation)

Joint Rotation

Morph Dial Settings

Joint Scaling (independent X, Y, and Z parameters)

Configure start and end frame range for animated poses

Pose Helper for Carrara - Again, unfortunately this doesn't work on Genesis or other Triax figures - but I LOVE this tool! So nice to be able to swap pose directions > send left to right, right to left, along with everything else that it does. Being that I still enjoy using Generation 4 and other Poser Format figures (also works with native figures, primitives, etc.,) I find myself using this handy device quite a lot.

Left / Right Pose Symmetry based on scene element names

Morph Zeroing

Pose Zeroing

Rotation Setting

Scale Zeroing

Scale Setting

General Scene Option Setting

Full undo/redo support

Works on content, native figures, and groups of primitives

Works across multiple figures and groups

Carrara Enhanced Remote Control - Here we go! This bad boy is truly amazing! Faba (fabaone at ShareCG) has some very helpful tutorials and helper (controler) objects at ShareCG, and PhilW teaches us how to use this to let one aileron of an Biplane model control all the other ailerons and the wires that connect them! Really cool! That's in his Advanced Carrara Techniques course via Infinite Skills.

This tool is best explained by the creator himself:

Details

Control a Value
..... With a Value
.........From any object in your scene!

The Enhanced Remote Control suite is a set of behavior modifiers and scene commands that work together to add much needed functionality and control to your animation workflow. It provides the basic functionality of Poser's ERC for creating joint-controlled movement within Carrara. But it also provides so much more, giving you the building blocks to rapidly create advanced, realistic animation.

Control them all: Shaders, light values, position, rotation, morph settings - even other modifiers!

Contains

Commands

Add ERC Modifier

Create ERC Chain

Add Pin Modifier

Delete Keyframes

Remove Duplicate Keyframes

Jitter Keyframes

Change Morph Limits

Property Explorer

Modifiers

Pin

ERC

Features

Add ERC Modifier and Add Pin Modifier allow you to add the modifiers to the joints of imported Poser figures, which are otherwise locked out of having 3rd party modifiers added.

Create ERC Chain allows you to create a chain of basic ERC modifiers. The objects in the chain do not have to be children in the tree!

Delete Keyframes gives you the ability to do a “deep delete” of all of the current keyframes for an object. Set the scene time to the keyframe to be deleted, and select one or more objects to clear. You will be presented with a choice of “Selected Figure” (the default), where every item in each selected animation group will have the current keyframe cleared. “Selected and Children” where only the selected subtrees will be cleared, and “Selected Only”, where only the topmost selected items will be cleared.

Remove Duplicate Keyframes analyzes the timelines of the selected items. Any keyframe that is identical to both the preceeding and following frames will be deleted. You will be presented with a choice of “Selected Figure” (the default), where every item in each selected animation group will have the current keyframe cleared. “Selected and Children” where only the selected subtrees will be cleared, and “Selected Only”, where only the topmost selected items will be cleared.

Jitter Keyframes operates on the currently selected keyframes. They will be randomly moved forward or back in time within the limits specified, adding realism to your animation.

Change Morph Limits allows you to select a morph target and change the minimum and maximum allowed levels. Use this to stop the irritating “snap-back” behavior of morphs on imported Poser content when you attempt to enter a number that is out of range.

The Property Explorer is there because sometimes it can be difficult to guess what you are trying to do with the ERC modifier. The Property Explorer can help guide you by showing you a list that contains the same set of properties as are available in the ERC setup. Clicking on a property will display its current value, and you have the ability to set a new value by entering it in the “New Value” box and clicking “Update”.

The Pin Modifier attempts to fix the location of an item in XYZ space. It cannot override the motion of parent items, so it is a best-effort lock rather than an absolute one.

The Enhanced Remote Control Modifier is the main feature of the product. It allows you to drive any animateable parameter using another parameter as the controller. It is philosophically similar to the ERC facility in Poser, but it is far more powerful. The Carrara ERC modifier can accept any object in your scene as the source of the controller: other figures, lights, cameras, helpers – allowing for limitless combinations. You can even set up your own animation UI with helper objects! and Create dynamic special effects!
In addition to the normal value operations, it also provides:

Late Start: you do not have to start the control at keyframe zero! Specify your starting time.

Cut Off: you do not have to try to work around the control for your entire scene – make it stop when you want it to!

Delay: Similar to late start, Delay prevents the control from happening for a given number of keyframes. Unlike late start, Delay remembers what should have happened and plays it back!This is quite simply indispensable for realistic animation of tails, ropes, and chains!

Decay: you can cause the control to decay over time, becoming less and less.

Grow: you can cause the control to be amplified over time, getting larger and larger.

Oscillate: you can set the amount of the control to oscillate over time

Absolute Mode: In absolute mode, the value of the control is used at the point in time it is needed, and the value being controlled is directly modified. The figure being controlled should start at zero pose for best results.

Relative Mode: In relative mode, the difference in the value of the control from the value it had when the ERC modifier first started working to the value at the current time is used, rather than the exact value. This allows you to do some manual posing of the figure being controlled

Name That Modifier: You can specify a title for the ERC Modifier, overriding the default of “ERC” so that you can easily keep track of which is which after you have added multiple copies of the ERC modifier to the same object.

This is one of those that I really need to practice using more! This thing is awesome!

Pose and Shading Tools 2 - Again... I need to sit down and play with these. I bought this because I know that I will love using these systems, I just have to take the time to dig in and try them!

Pose Transfer Command The main feature, this command will copy rotation, scaling, and transform between different characters. The copy is by joint name, so you can cross between Gen3, Gen4, Smith Micro, and even custom figures if they're named the same way. Copies morph settings between instances of the same character, too! Copies ANIMATION in both standard keyframe mode (faster) and "bake" mode which will capture Physics, ERC, motion path, and IK related movements. Additionally, it includes the ability to invert the value - great for mirroring movements. THERE IS NO UNDO!

Stack Tweener Ever wish you could oscillate along the bezier spline? This will let you! Stack up to six different sub-tweeners with configurable percentage weight for blending. Need more than six? Just stack in another stack!

Clear Timeline Command I gave you a "deep" delete with ERC, now here's its brother: Select a keyframe or tweener, and this command will clear out the entire timeline that it is sitting on. THERE IS NO UNDO!

TowardAway Shader Ever wanted to shade the two sides of a polygon different colors? With this simple shader, you can. White when the normal is pointing toward the camera, black when it is pointing away - this is great for simulating linings in clothing (which is nearly always one-sided).

Color Balance Shader Is that texture map just a tad on the green side? Colors too vibrant? Have a great prodecural stack that's just a bit too dim? This simple shader lets you adjust R, G, B, H, S, V values of the color result of a sub-shader.

Color Separation Shader So suppose you want just one channel out of the available color? This separation has two modes: pure, which will extract the red, green, or blue channels. And greyscale, which will give a greyscale representation of Red, Green, Blue, Alpha, Hue, Luminosity, and Saturation. Optionally adjust the brightness of the extracted layer, and even invert the value.

Color Merge Shader The opposite of Color Separation, this shader allows you to build a new color based on the input of four sub shaders - one for each channel (RGBA or HLSA)

MDD File Format for Carrara - This is the one Fenric Tool that I do not (yet) own.

Details

Lightwave Motion Designer Data (MDD) File Format Filter for Carrara

Bring Carrara fully into your animation work-flow!

This plugin provides both import and export support for the Lightwave Motion Designer/Point Oven (MDD) file format. MDD is rapidly emerging as an industry standard for animation data exchange between 3D applications by pairing a standard wavefront Object (OBJ) file with a frame-based description of the animation for that object.

This plugin opens the doors to animation by enabling Carrara to both import and export the OBJ/MDD file pairing.

What's Included and Features

Supported Platforms

Carrara 7: Windows, Macintosh
Carrara 8: Windows (32, 64), Macintosh (PPC, Intel32, Intel64)

Features

Export

Any object can be exported. On export, a pair of files will be created with the same name and different file extensions: an OBJ and an MDD. It will have material definitions, but no shading, grouping, or normals. Textures are not exported.

You may need to scale and/or rotate the resulting file in your destination application.

Import

Two files are required with the same name but different extensions: an OBJ and an MDD. The importer will import the OBJ, and will preserve materials but will remove any groups and normals. Textures are not imported. The MDD will be imported as a sequence of morphs, one per frame, and the importer will place keyframes to turn the morphs on and off. IMPORTANT: You need your default tweener set to "linear", or you must convert the tweeners to "linear" before using the animation. Otherwise, the animation will be badly distorted.

You may need to scale and/or rotate the figure to match your scene.

Also includes
- Presets to assist with import from/export to various popular 3D package
- Facility to save and load custom presets

Posing Pack 3 - Here it is! There was a discussion going on just the other day about changing the visibility of an entire hierarchy chain being a pain in the butt! This plugin (I totally forgot about that function) has that capability and a whole lot more! I use this thing CONSTANTLY!

This thing adds Tree Duplicate to the list of "Edit > Fenric" commands, which allows us to essentially duplicate things which cannot be duplicated! Instead of actual duplication, these Tree Duplicates are their own instances or separate figures, not the memory-saving instances we get from duplicated props and simple objects. But it makes it so we can get exact copies of - yes - Figures!!! So useful for vehicles, rigged building figures, even character figures. It basically (and quickly) pretends to add whatever is selected into the browser (without adding it to the browser) and drags it back into the scene - really fast! But wait... there's a lot more!

This also adds the aforementioned Unlock Figure and Restore Figure! Wanna add a custom morph zone into a locked figure? Unlock it - change it - Restore it! Yup!

We also get the Set Figure Visibility command which, as I've started this tool's description with, allows us to hide entire chains of hierarchy within a figure with a single click! I gotta tell John and Misty!!!

It also adds Change Rotation, which is a command which will go through the whole figure and change ALL of the joint rotations from Carrara's default Quaternion to Angles! So if you've ever loaded in a figure that ends up looking like it's tied in a knot as soon as you start working with it, you now know how to fix it! :)

Details

The Posing Toolkit 3 gives you the power you need to get your work done, unlocking and enabling a number of critical features that allow you to tap into the awesome potential of Carrara!

Have you ever set up the perfect background figure: clothes, hair, accessories, got everything all set and then remembered that Carrara just won't let you duplicate it? Oh, the menu option is there, teasing you - but it's disabled! The Replicator just won't cut it: you need individual poses! Enter the Tree Duplicator: duplicate anything and everything that can be selected in the scene tree!

You've got a nifty new bit of conforming clothing, but there aren't any morph areas! Morphing a posed figure is great, but you need to be able to set the stuff up, right? The new Unlock Figure command opens up the power locked away behind those greyed out menu options. (And you can put things back to the way Carrara expects with the Restore Figure command)

Sometimes, you've just got to hide things! But clicking the awkwardly-located "Visible" checkbox on imported content can be a chore. Just imagine hiding a hand with the fingers... oy! The new Set Figure Visibility command will do the hard work for you, activating or deactivating an entire chain of body parts with the click of a button.

Do rotation options have your custom figures spinning around? Or are Carrara's defaults turning your people into pretzels? Carrara's default "Quarternion" controller is powerful, but also incompatible with just about everything. The Change Rotation command comes to the rescue, changing everything from a single joint to an entire skeleton to the much more compatible "Angles" controller.

What's Included and Features

Five new scene commands

Tree Duplicator

Unlock Figure

Restore Figure

Change Rotation

Set Figure Visibility

If you're wondering about any of these, please ask! I may know what you need to know - if not, I might be able to find out ;)

Dartanbeck · August 2016

► Carrara Plugins

FAQ & Information

- By Jay_NOLA
Jay compilled and organized a great measure of info regarding Plugins specific to our
beloved Carrara. FAQ, Information and Links to help you determine which are right for you.

Thank You Jay_NOLA!

Dartanbeck · August 2016

At the end of Page 1 of this thread I've linked to Dimension Theory's YouTube Playlists. His channel has a LOT of great stuff to watch!

I didn't realize that I had forgotten to mention the value of Carrara learning and assistance found within his Daz 3d Store!

Yes, many of his recent offerings are for Daz Studio. Many. many of his products are for Carrara, and they all help us become better!

Cloud Nine Atmospheric Clouds for Carrara is packed with cloud presets to explore or simply use so that the clouds part of your project are taken care of - letting you focus on other things. Many ways to approach these things.

HDRI packs galore! They are very professionally made and work beautifully for instantly lighting your scenes via the Scene Background HRDI path and Global Illumination with or without Indirect Lighting - again, either full IL or Ambient Occlusion Only!

If you own RM's Delphinia character pack for V4, Dimention Theory's Carraracters - Delphinia is an amazing exploration in shaders for characters. The kit comes with several complete shader presets for V4 using Delphinia maps from lower to higher to ultimate, insane realism and includes some HDR images to use to help in the accompanying tutorial videos that come with it! He even teaches us a cool new way to set up camera control for large scenes!

Once we're done exploring Delphinia using his kit, we can easily apply what we've learned to any character using any good character maps!

Ecomantics is a really cool product - high quality, low resource hit scene enhancement/building system using somewhat of a billboard style taken to the next level or more.

...and plenty more to explore in his awesome store!!!

Enjoy!

Dartanbeck · August 2016

...speaking of 'learning by buying' from our great Daz 3d Artists, here are a few more, but this is certainly not a conclusive list, but more of an 'off-the-top-of-my-head highlight showcase.

For something more like a comprehensive list of Carrara resources, Please see ►►► CARRARA Resources ◄◄◄

There are some immaculate examples of how to create hard-core Sci Fi interiors directly in Carrara by our very own 3DLUST, via his products <<< RADIUS and SIRUS LABS >>>!

They use top notch shaders, great use of Anything Glows lighting, reflective surfaces, mechanical modeling... and they're just gorgeous sets for your characters to have fun get examined in! ;)

His Dragonfly AMU is also Carrara compatible ;)

Ever want to have more presets for cool landscape pieces, instead of having to make your own? Or do you just want to see some more really cool examples of how we can make cool terrain pieces?

Orestes Graphix' Tectonics Evolved Vol's 2 & 3 are just the thing!

Tectonics Evolved Volume 2 - Sci Fi has 25 Highly Detailed Terrains for Carrara (.CAR) - 5 Alien Mounds, 5 Craters, 5 Cybertron, 5 Melted Hills, and 5 Strange Eggs. Each terrain is 2049 x 2049 in size for the best quality. Each terrain also has its own texture map tailored to its unique geology, so no fooling around with difficult shaders to get awesome results.

Tectonics Evolved Volume 3 - Fantasy has 25 Highly Detailed Terrains for Carrara (.CAR) - 5 Arathi Mountans, 5 Emerald Loch, 5 Desolace, 5 Mordor, and 5 Searing Mesa. Each terrain is 2049 x 2049 in size for the best quality. Each terrain also has its own texture map tailored to its unique geology, so no fooling around with difficult shaders to get awesome results.

Both kits include presets for Carrara, Bryce and Vue, so no matter what your favorite software is, you'll be able to use Tectonics with zero effort!

Dartanbeck · August 2016

While on the subject of purchasing high-end content to help learn how to expand in our own understanding of how to do it ourselves, I have to spotlight some more stuff!

Mike Moir (mmoir) is an amazing modeler, shader creator, scene builder, lighting master, camera angle finder, and overall Carrara user Master!

The very first product I ever bought specifically for Carrara was Carrara's Mystic Gorge - and what a beautiful scene this is! Okay, it comes with several presets for different times of day and so on - each absolutely beautiful, but I gotta tell ya... no lengthy description of this set can ever do it the same justice as the thrill of exploring this thing within Carrara, as well as by opening the included folders and checking out what all it comes with!

I buy a lot of Poser and DS content for use in Carrara, which means that I've had to become (gladly) adept at making new shaders to make the content look right. So I got good and used to observing what all files and folders get installed by the products I buy (I need to know what texture maps come with it, and where to find them)

Well I do the same thing even if the product is Carrara-specific. I need to know how to get ALL of the stuff that comes with the product into my browser and into my workspace.

Carrara's Mystic Gorge came with a folder full of beautiful maps, a tutorial, shaders, and the scene presets. The tutorials that come with his product show how much this artist cares about the user learning how to get the best possible experience from his products - and just Carrara in general. Any of you whom know him from these forums or from Carrarators (or elsewhere) know what I mean in that Mike is ALWAYS willing and eager to help us become better at whatever it is we're wanting to accomplish.

Hop into any of the scene presets and... Oh My!!! Not only is there a LOT for ME to explore in this Mystic Realm, but there are all manner of adventures awaiting my characters in just this one product! It's SO COOL!!!

It's highly impressive how well he's planned everything out - the lit procedural fires on all of the torches - and there's a lot of them. But they're so ingeniously all operated from a single master! Impressive! Duplicates and replications smartly used to get this scene absolutely packed with details that render really well, and really fast!

Many saved camera views, paths, a waterfall, caves, the immediate surroundings are incredible, but there are all manner of distant lands, complete with plants as well!

I could keep going, but I'm not going to. Let it be known that this is by and large my favorite Carrara-specific content purchase ever. I might just be that it perfectly caters to the series of animations that I'm working on... so there's that.

So I bought his Carrara's BMF Landscape Pack too, and it's quite a bit different in how it's set up, and altogether just as awesome! Learn how to use hair as grass, with a tutorial discussing how to optimize how much and how thick, etc., how to align this to that... I learned a lot about Carrara by buying stuff from mmoir!

Carrara's BMF Landscape Pack is very flexible and offers a really cool method of creating many different types of scene, with a foreground scene, highly detailed as the main focus point, mid-grounds which can be rotated around the foreground for different scene styles, and the distant grounds which also rotate for different looks, and have several options from which to choose. Very, very cool! Sitting in my wish list are the expansion packs for this cool environment-creation system!

This kit comes with a LOT of stuff that's fun to have in the browser, whether we're using it with this kit or with something else entirely!

I also own Carrara's Island Butte Cafe, which I bought nearly as soon as it came out - not too long ago - and since before that time I've been just swamped with way too much stuff to do. Although I've had a lot of fun with it already, I haven't picked it apart as I have the others. It's Crazy-Awesome! It's not a cafe for me, though. It's going to be (I think) where Dartan and Rosie live - their headquarters!

Immaculate - just like all of his stuff - though I don't own all of it yet, I'm always very confident in making an mmoir purchase!

Thanks for everything, Mike!!! I so totally love you, man!

I'll be back with my continuation - Howie Farkes

Cheers!

Dartanbeck · August 2016

...in the meantime, let's talk for a moment about modeling.

When I first started thinking about buying Carrara, the 'word' was that Carrara's Vertex Modeler wasn't quite up-to-snuff - so I didn't take it all that seriously. The fact that Carrara did have modeling and model editing capabilities along with its uncanny ability to load in Poser-format figures, is what drew me toward it in the first place. The other great stuff that Carrara can do was just a bunch of cool bonus features to me.

I always used the vertex modeler to reshape conforming clothing and hair, etc., to work with the custom shaped characters I've been making. And it does that very, Very well! I even made special morphs for adding wind and other movements to my clothes and hair - and then even special shaping morphs to add dynamic realism to my characters themselves!

Once I actually started putting my modeling skills to work in Carrara, I was completely amazed that the 'word' was that Carrara's Vertex Modeler wasn't quite up-to-snuff!!! Everything just works as expected - at least for the most part. For something as vast and versatile as what Carrara is, I think that its modeling tools are nothing short of spectacular! Sure, there are requests open that haven't been implemented... granted. There are things that other modeling software does that it doesn't... agreed. But any time I need to make a model, I have absolutely NO problems building one!

As a matter of fact, these other modelers cannot work with Daz 3d figures as we would expect to use them in Poser or Daz Studio. Being able to do that in Carrara gives us a LOT more power towards making models that support other figures - especially when combined with either Daz Studio's Content Creation Tools or Poser's (I think... haven't tried Poser in quite some time) Content utilities. For example, we don't need to export (from DS or Poser) special OBJs to create special morphs. We can simply load the correct figure, apply the expected morphs, and model accordingly - then export our modeling job as an OBJ for use with the Content Creation Tools or other utilities! It's very dynamic and comfortable!

So anyways, in my adventures within these Carrara Discussion Forums, I've discovered that I am certainly not alone in really enjoying my modeling experiences in Carrara. So I'm going to add some links here to some really cool modeling threads that currently exist - just so that you, too, can see how much fun and success others are having:

* Polygon Modeling, Post your creations! Learn and share experiences - many pages long!

* Modeling Objects in Carrara - Q&A - Come One and All - Adventures of modeling of all sorts and types!

* Using Formulas in Carrara - Fun with Formulae!!! Wendy's GIF on right >>>>

with a cool caveat HERE

* weight painting and rigging issues excellent notes from the mind of diomede64!

* Projection Mapping

* Sculpting alternatives in Carrara 8 Pro

* I need a screw

* Low Poly Modelling for Game Mods another GIF by Wendy >>>

* WIP - English Town Hall / Square - an adventure in modeling by our very own

Tango Alpha before he became published by Daz3d!

* How to create a Triangle Primitive in Carrara? - FUN!

* 5 ways to fix poke through without using conforming clothes! An informative tutorial by diomede64

* Does anyone use Carrara for Modeling?

* Export and paint UVmap - workflow - how to do it…

* Separate Materials on Polygon selections

- For professional courses to purchase:

* Modeling in Carrara with the help of Phil Wilkes

...and mmoir has a good one as well below

Dartanbeck · August 2016

PhilW · August 2016

You're nothing if not comprehensive, Dart! Thanks for this and in particular, I have had the Delphinia product from Dimension Theory for years and yet never noticed the tutorials that were included!

Dartanbeck · August 2016

PhilW said:

You're nothing if not comprehensive, Dart! Thanks for this and in particular, I have had the Delphinia product from Dimension Theory for years and yet never noticed the tutorials that were included!

Thank you, Phil!

Definitely watch those... he's got some really cool stuff in there. You know Jeff, always thinking! Yeah, that's a really nice product, and we can inject any of our textures sets in those shaders too!

Dartanbeck · August 2016

Have you ever wanted to learn how to work with rigging figures or just adding morphs to rigged figures? Check out diomede's cool thread:

►►► Creating a custom Carrara character and morphing in posed position

Dartanbeck · August 2016

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