Using store-bought Venus Dynamic hair?

Comments

• Elele Posts: 1,097

  August 2012 edited December 1969

  Hello, i got the hair too, and it might be my absolute favorite item... ever :D.
  It kinda depends on where you install your stuff, but normally there should be a folder for the shaders (in the shaders tab). I think by default it is inside a folder called "hair".
  The shaders themselves are global shaders, you need to drop them on the multicolored ball in the shaders tab. There are different hair groups that you can apply different shaders too, thoough i don't think the product comes seperate shaders for the groups. You can extract them yourself from the global shaders though so you can mix & match, like i did with the black & red from my promo pictures here:
  http://www.daz3d.com/shop/lucy-swimsuit-for-v4
• revenger681 Posts: 156

  August 2012 edited December 1969

  Hmm. Thanks for the help! I spent all day yesterday playing with lengths, brushing, curling, blowing, throwing my chars head around then using "simulate", it's quite an awesome head of hair :) I noticed none of my shaders for that hair were in my "shaders" list. I was going to the texture room and: "Textures>Wizard>Hair>Dynamic Venus Hair" but the wizard would make the hair all black. I went back now and manually added the folder where I knew the shaders were to my Carrara 8 Shaders and did what you did, drag them onto the hair. Works great. This is indeed a fantastic product :)
• revenger681 Posts: 156

  August 2012 edited August 2012

  I still find it incredibly hard to use Carrara for anything landscape related. For example: I tried positioning a new scene using the landscape wizard to pull up one with 2 plains. I wanted to use a sniper rifle set, and V4 in military gear to be on the edge of the plain, tripod on the edge with her aiming down at some soldiers down below. This to me seemed impossible. I just couldn't get Victoria to be on the plain. I spent literally in upwards of 5 hours trying to get her there. Using top, left and right views. Finally, I got her around 100ft from the rock. I figured that'd be close enough, using a blur effect on the camera to focus on her and angle it right. Next task was to get the actual camera to be in position instead of one of the views. That turned out to be impossible for me... Every time I tried to move in close to her the entire screen would disappear. Finally I looked at the camera itself: it looks like it's the size of the moon or something, it's larger than the plain.. I finally gave up after 1 day of doing this. Loaded up the figure in DAZ with the rifle, clothes and hair. "export to bryce. Then used Bryce to make the same flat plains and mountains. In around 40 minutes everything was set up perfect. I wish there were more tutorials on positioning people/objects into large landscape views in Carrara. Most of the time my renders lack any "environment" because it's just too hard to do in anything else, Except Bryce. In Carrara's sky I also tend to have an annoying "ground" color in my renders which is more fake than any cartoon I've seen. Turning the ground off makes a flat white (or whatever color) right smack in the middle of my render. So again I tend to once more pop up bryce, get the same effect but turn off the annoying horizon line. I'm sure all this can be done in carrara, but it just seems so hard to get anything done there.

  There are good basic lighting techniques on youtube, modeling, importing "properly" skinned models and etc. But none for having a model in a large-scale landscape (girl standing on the edge of a large mountain, overlooking the canyon walls, for example). I'm not sure if my troubles are simply because of the sheer scale of C8's imported landscapes or what....

  Then again I'm sure I'm so completely new to this as many of you guys are on here. I've never had any classes in any of this. Most of what I know is from wiki pages and what Youtube videos I can find. lol. Still I do have a lot of fun making in-door scenes, and landscapes in Bryce, I just wish I could find more on Carrara. My manual seems to be for Carrara 6 as well whenever I open up my "help" manual from within C8. Seems odd to me considering the program is over $100.00 for a none-upgrade purchase. I would think they'd have the money to make an updated manual.

  Post edited by revenger681 on August 2012
• Elele Posts: 1,097

  August 2012 edited December 1969

  What exactly do you have a problem with when posing your model?
  I had some serious problems with landscapes too at first when posing smaller things.
  When you create a default landscape, the scale of everything is huge. This includes the scale of the camera, so the smallest movement you make with it is still huge wich makes it difficult to frame relatively smaller objects (like v4). Two things i found helpfull:
  1. when you select a figure in the scene and then press "numpad 0", the camera zooms to that figure (i'm on win, might be different on mac)
  2. When you lower the overall scale of your camera in the "motion" tab, the motion of the camera will be a lot less sensitive (the camera will move in smaller steps if you take the scale down)

  There is also an option in the viewport toolbar to "use collision detection". You can check this on so that when you move an object towards another object, it will automatically stop when the objects touch. If you keep moving it, it will start to move again when the object completely passed through the other object.

  As for the documentation, there was talk of it but i wouldn't hold your breath. I learned everything (wich isn't much yet btw :D) from tutorials too and here on the forum. The carrara forum guru 3dage is absent atm though, we are eagerly awaiting his return :)

  Here are some great free tutorials you can watch too. Even if you're not really interested in the main topic, they also show how carrara works in general:
  Cripeman on youtube, tons of great videos! (They really should link to these sites here on the forum)
  http://www.youtube.com/user/cripeman
  Mark Bremmer:
  http://www.markbremmer.com/3Bpages/darkarts.html
  Carrara Cafe for all things carrara:
  http://carraracafe.com/
  Carrara expo magazine (free pdf format), also contains tutorials:
  http://www.carrara3dexpo.com/

  There is also the 9hour video tutorial here in the store:
  http://www.daz3d.com/shop/carrara-8-training-instant-digital-download
• revenger681 Posts: 156

  August 2012 edited December 1969

  Elele said:

  What exactly do you have a problem with when posing your model?
  I had some serious problems with landscapes too at first when posing smaller things.
  When you create a default landscape, the scale of everything is huge. This includes the scale of the camera, so the smallest movement you make with it is still huge wich makes it difficult to frame relatively smaller objects (like v4). Two things i found helpfull:
  1. when you select a figure in the scene and then press "numpad 0", the camera zooms to that figure (i'm on win, might be different on mac)
  2. When you lower the overall scale of your camera in the "motion" tab, the motion of the camera will be a lot less sensitive (the camera will move in smaller steps if you take the scale down)

  There is also an option in the viewport toolbar to "use collision detection". You can check this on so that when you move an object towards another object, it will automatically stop when the objects touch. If you keep moving it, it will start to move again when the object completely passed through the other object.

  As for the documentation, there was talk of it but i wouldn't hold your breath. I learned everything (wich isn't much yet btw :D) from tutorials too and here on the forum. The carrara forum guru 3dage is absent atm though, we are eagerly awaiting his return :)

  Here are some great free tutorials you can watch too. Even if you're not really interested in the main topic, they also show how carrara works in general:
  Cripeman on youtube, tons of great videos! (They really should link to these sites here on the forum)
  http://www.youtube.com/user/cripeman
  Mark Bremmer:
  http://www.markbremmer.com/3Bpages/darkarts.html
  Carrara Cafe for all things carrara:
  http://carraracafe.com/
  Carrara expo magazine (free pdf format), also contains tutorials:
  http://www.carrara3dexpo.com/

  There is also the 9hour video tutorial here in the store:
  http://www.daz3d.com/shop/carrara-8-training-instant-digital-download

  Hey Elele!
  Thanks for all those resources! I never would have realized this was your learning method as well, that is quite inspiring! It's funny, you pretty much hit my issues right on the head! Must be a common headache for new people like myself. I started a thread just for that topic here: DAZ/POSER Characters interacting with landscapes in Carrara, a few people replied with some great tips on how to solve my issues. The two biggest one's were the 2 you mentioned: The huge scale of ALL items in the scene, except those like imported figures (E.G. MASSIVE landscape, and a tiny tiny tiny dot of a person). It was like finding a needle in a haystack. The second issue was your other tip: Scaling the camera, and how quickly it was moving. Even when I finally found my figure: the camera zoomed so fast I couldn't stay on track. The other option for colliding objects was 1 I knew of, but just couldn't align things well because of the scale issue.

  Thanks for all those links! Your products are very nice! I hadn't realized you were a person on Renderosiy I've bought from. I've got your desk, office chair, the Gatling gun prop and some more. You do excellent work! Thanks again for those links, and your tips you left here, they were the exact issues I had.