Digital Art Zone

Just to let forum members know that I have just released a new Carrara product - a set of realistic sea surfaces.  See here for details:
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/carrara-realistic-seas-2/

I hope you will like them.  You can use this thread to post any images using them.

Thanks,

Phil

nice work PhilW, love those whitecaps

Nice choices, too! I just bought it and hope to try it out in the next couple weeks when I get some extra time.

Kevin Sanderson - 17 June 2012 03:40 PM

Nice choices, too! I just bought it and hope to try it out in the next couple weeks when I get some extra time.

Thank you - I hope you enjoy it!

PhilW - 17 June 2012 03:44 PM

Kevin Sanderson - 17 June 2012 03:40 PM

Nice choices, too! I just bought it and hope to try it out in the next couple weeks when I get some extra time.

Thank you - I hope you enjoy it!

Also purchased! Now I’ll finally have no excuses to use the HMS Victory model in a scene! 

Victory is a nice model - you’ll have noticed that I used it in one of the promo images.  I think I added a little translucency to the sails but otherwise it was rendered “out of the box”.

Well done Phil. Just bought your latest creation. Looking forward to using it soon.
Marlo

Phil -

I bought the product and hope it helps me create realistic sea scenes.

I have found an issue - in the 3D window, using Gouraud or Flat display brings everything to a VERY slow crawl.  I am running a Core i7 machine with 8 GB RAM, Windows 7, so it should be adequate.  With only the preset in the scene (I’ve tried #1 and #8 so far), just changing from Camera 1 to Director’s Camera can take a minute or so.  The same for virtually any scene adjustment - re-aim the camera, select “Scene” in the hierarchy window, etc.  Oddly, the renders are quite fast, just a few seconds.  But even returning from the Render to the 3D Window results in a long delay while “Preparing Data ...”  I tried scaling down the size of the sea object to 10% and even 1%, no help.

If I switch the 3D View to Wire it gets almost acceptable, e.g. several seconds lag to re-aim the camera.  Using the Bounding Box view is pretty instantaneous for most adjustments.

Does this sound right to you?  I can live with it, it just seems surprising that it gets so slow, even with wire frame.

- Steve K.

Steve K - 12 July 2012 08:57 PM

Phil -

I bought the product and hope it helps me create realistic sea scenes.

I have found an issue - in the 3D window, using Gouraud or Flat display brings everything to a VERY slow crawl.  I am running a Core i7 machine with 8 GB RAM, Windows 7, so it should be adequate.  With only the preset in the scene (I’ve tried #1 and #8 so far), just changing from Camera 1 to Director’s Camera can take a minute or so.  The same for virtually any scene adjustment - re-aim the camera, select “Scene” in the hierarchy window, etc.  Oddly, the renders are quite fast, just a few seconds.  But even returning from the Render to the 3D Window results in a long delay while “Preparing Data ...”  I tried scaling down the size of the sea object to 10% and even 1%, no help.

If I switch the 3D View to Wire it gets almost acceptable, e.g. several seconds lag to re-aim the camera.  Using the Bounding Box view is pretty instantaneous for most adjustments.

Does this sound right to you?  I can live with it, it just seems surprising that it gets so slow, even with wire frame.

- Steve K.

Hi Steve,

Thanks for buying it. No, it does not sound right to me at all.  I have a much less powerful machine than you and at most I am getting maybe a second’s delay when using Gouraud display.  For switching cameras the response is near instant and I can happy move the camera interactively. I have tested with C7 and C8 (inc C8.5) with the same results and the Daz testers also did not report any issues.

So I am at a loss to explain it, but I do have a suggestion to make your life easier.  Select the top level of the sea object (eg. “00-Flat”) and in the Properties panel above, you will see an item that reads Display with the “Mesh” option selected.  If you change this to Bounding Box, it should make setting up and interacting with your scene much faster. You will not be able to see the sea surface in the same way, but hopefully it will allow you to use the seas more effectively.

I hope this helps.

PhilW - 13 July 2012 01:58 AM

...  I do have a suggestion to make your life easier.  Select the top level of the sea object (eg. “00-Flat”) and in the Properties panel above, you will see an item that reads Display with the “Mesh” option selected.  If you change this to Bounding Box, it should make setting up and interacting with your scene much faster. You will not be able to see the sea surface in the same way, but hopefully it will allow you to use the seas more effectively.

I hope this helps.

Yup, that did it, thanks for the quick response.  I’m glad I asked (and you answered), since I would never have tried that, having never realized Carrara HAD such a variable.  I can now have all the other objects set to Gouraud and everything responds instantly to camera motion, etc.  The loss of detail of the sea object in the 3D view is no big problem.

I might mention that making the change you suggested happened instantly, but switching back (from bounding box to mesh for the sea object) resulted in a long delay, maybe 30 - 60 seconds.  So there is still something screwy with something, apparently in my Carrara setup at least (C8 64 bit).  I dunno ...

Attached is a render that came out nice IMHO, the water is just what I was hoping for.

- Steve K.

Cool render - although I think I would be worried sailing that ship so close to the rocks!

The sea surfaces are based on a terrain, which is then placed in a replicator to produce a very large surface area.  You can reduce the replicator parameters (I think they are set up for 100 x 100, so you are getting 10,000 instances!).  The “display” parameter is for replicators and determines how each instance is previewed in the Assemble Room.  I found that mesh was OK on my system, but bounding box will always be much faster.  I think that replicators are vastly underused by most Carrara users - it’s like having Vue and never using Ecosystems!

PhilW - 14 July 2012 03:28 AM

Cool render - although I think I would be worried sailing that ship so close to the rocks!

The sea surfaces are based on a terrain, which is then placed in a replicator to produce a very large surface area.  You can reduce the replicator parameters (I think they are set up for 100 x 100, so you are getting 10,000 instances!).  The “display” parameter is for replicators and determines how each instance is previewed in the Assemble Room.  I found that mesh was OK on my system, but bounding box will always be much faster.  I think that replicators are vastly underused by most Carrara users - it’s like having Vue and never using Ecosystems!

I think you could get the ship in that close if the current was holding it off the rocks.  You might have to strike sail and tow it close with row boats ... not sure I believe this, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  I do recall a story about the HMS Diamond Rock, actually a small but very tall and rocky island that the British fortified around 1800 and actually commissioned as a naval vessel.  I vaguely remember a sketch showing how they used a pulley system to lift cannons off the ship to the top of the tall island, while the ship was anchored very close.  So maybe it is possible.

Interesting info about the replicators, I never stop finding more depth to Carrara. 

- Steve K.