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Every time I'm in Carrara, I'm impressed by how powerful it is, how many things come standard in it that are plug-ins and extra expense in Daz studio. I wish it had better support for later generations, and I wish I was as comfortable with navigation, manipulation, content management and loading, in Carrara as I am in Studio. Carrara is just a much steeper learning curve and requires a lot more knowledge across the board, starting out.
Yes. Everything in my store (for both Daz Studio and Carrara) was created in Carrara.
As Tango says, you can create content in Carrara, and package it to work in Carrara. To make it work in Daz Studio is some extra steps but it is certainly possible (as Tango has proved!). Making stuff that other people will use is harder, because when you make something for yourself, you can take short cuts (not modelling in detail parts that won't be seen, fixing an awkward bit with postwork, etc). As you don't know how someone else will use something, you have to put in that extra effort so that it can be used in any reasonable way - seen from any angle, from a range of distances, in a variety of lighting conditions, even in different renderers.
Really no different than any other craft for consumer consumption, right? I mean... I tape off my charcoal drawings and use professional grade equipment and remove the tape with a heat gun so it won't tear the paper and make sure I leave enough border to mat a finished piece and take dozens of other steps beyond just taking the medium to the canvas and creating something. Craftsmanship goes far beyond just creating the thing and calling it done.
I was thinking about this while watching your tutorials - the professionalism of the packaging and design and thinking about how much work you must have put into that which most people never even *think* about, let alone notice. Anyone can record a tutorial video and post it to Youtube. But if you're going to try and get someone to pay, you better go a step beyond.
When most people complain about the price of art, be it a gallery piece that is $5000 or a print that is $500 or digital content that is $15... they have no idea of all the details and costs that go into making that piece of art actually happen in a way that someone would *want* to pay for it.
Which is why I'm asking these questions about Carrara. I know there are other tools better suited to creating modeling, and if this is just the digital equivilent of student grade paints - I just want to understand that going into it.
Although TangoAlpha's post gives me a certain comfort that it is powerful enough to do what I want to eventually achieve.
Being that we're on this topic...
One thing that seems to be missing from the engine that your publisher uses for video playback is a "X speed playback," option.
Udemy, I think, has this option on their web player. It allows me to refresh on a topic by playing back the instructor at 1.5 or 2x normal speed. They tend to sound like a Chipmunk on too much caffeine that way - but I find that after I've listened to it once at normal speed, it is very convenient to be able to listen at a brisker pace than the orignal instruction was delivered at. I know you probably don't have a lot of control over that - but if you have a way to make suggestions to your publisher, that might be something to float to them. If there is an option to do this in the VideoPlayerPC.exe app, I've looked all over for it.
On my way to peruse TangoAlpha's store, now. :)
There's another whole learning curve for Daz Studio when it comes to creating optimized objects, packaged for sale - but it's a comfortable work flow, I feel, and is fairly easy to become acquainted with - even though the learning never ends when creating items for sale - especially for Daz Studio, since it's in rapid development.
Carrara, as you'll discover, may start out 'seeming' like a steep curve, but it's really not so bad. It's mostly a matter of just using the tools, investigating options, and using them some more.
Ask questions, and try the answers. Before long, it's as easy as drinking milk (I like milk), even though it's still a vast pile of more options yet undiscovered.
So try to discover how to do your main intentions, and grow from there. Carrara is vast and can cater to many tastes of uses - so there's really no need to try and Master the entire work force of the software all at once.
Work towards getting that cool model of your just the way you lke it. Like 3DAGE says, the tools in the modeler can still give you a cylinder, but this one has the options to be tweaked in any way we might imagine. I can tell that what you need to do will be simple for you to learn.
Then we can focus on getting that model optimized as a prop for Studio, perhaps also for Poser and, while your at it, provide a Carrara-optimized version along with it!
And just looking at Tangy Orchard kind of reinforces what we're talking about. Not just the detail, scope and size of the set/scene, the number of props, the textures on the props... but even the time spent rendering the promo images... speaks to why the product can support the price it asks.
I hadn't even thought on that scale yet with Carrara. Clearly I'm going to spend some time learning the ropes if I hope to get to this level of command of the product.
I figured starting off, I'd be happy to release some well received freebies at ShareCG. :D
Great way to start, indeed!
Yeah, the immensity of infinity in Carrara did take me some time to get used to as well! Funny you should bring that up just now... kakman just posted an image he's made in Carrara using the Multi-plane Cyclorama
Again, try and take Carrara one step at a time, focusing on what you truly like to do first, then expand as you learn. It's fun and the software seems to continue to grow in immensity the more we learn! ;)
I remember that when I first started in Carrara, I was really used to using the Millennium Environment in Poser, and so started with that in Carrara - and in the default camera, it looked positively tiny!!! LOL
I also had to figure out how to light the background planes without casting and recieving shadows. It was hard. Then it came to me... Don't light them... instead, copy the texture maps from the color channel into the glow channel and lower the image brightness slider until it looks right! Bam!!!
Shortly after learning that, I discovered that I don't really need the Millennium Environment anymore. But that doesn't mean that it isn't still useful! ;)
Yeah, the scale of Carrara is certainly better for world building and navigating. DAZ is more focused on figures and portraits. Carrara is a great world builder.
Although honestly, I think some of what you touch on above, exists with all programs, especially of this nature. I have bursts of intense learning with DAZ, where suddenly something clicks that I simply just didn't understand before. It happened recently for me with shaders and UVs. Before I didn't get the concept at all - now I have a firm grasp of their basic capabilities. D-formers was the same thing. Emitters just clicked for me. Of course, a lot of these breakthroughs, I realize that things I wanted to do months ago and couldn't, now I know how - or I bought some plug-in or package to do something that I had the capabilities of doing all the time, if I put a little more time and effort into getting it done.
Carrara strikes me as being critical in that development. I think Phil's tutorials on shaders in Carrara is what made it click for me in DAZ. It all starts tying together and opening up your abilities to bring what you've learned into a more complete end product - regardless if that is just renders of the content other people put out, or taking their content and putting your own custom mark on it, or creating your own content from the ground up. I enjoy that part of it tremendously.
Hey, I've got a question. In Phil's tutorial, in Render Options Part 2, he describes the Enable Multi Threading option in Misc.
I'm on a dual core i7 mobile, and I only show a tickbox for Enable Network Rendering and Log Network connections.
Is this a problem?
Hmmm... there should be a checkbox for Multi-core. Make sure that your using your Carrara Pro serial number.
As you probably already know, I enjoy using content from the store just as much as I do working with my own creations - but making my own stuff is the main reason I wanted Carrara. That and the fact that it also behaves like Poser/DS when working with content made for Poser/DS.
Phil's tutorials have really opened my eyes a LOT.
There were quite a few feature within Carrara that I've never explored until Phil has shown me examples of how they work and how to use and tweak them. As a matter of fact, I still get a LOT of inspiration for using more tools I Carrara from his videos. His new Animation course is the only one I don't have yet. I love them. They're my TV a lot of the time! :)
donovancolbert, You're modeling questions *scream* Vertex Modeler, the Model (Wrench tool) next to Assemble. It's very powerful and will allow you to create objects to Share or even to Sell. See my Modeling Objects in Carrara - Q&A - Come One and All thread for some good links to YouTube videos, other threads and pay tutorials about modeling and to learn the tools. You are also welcome to ask questions about modeling there. I've been very lucky and thankful for folks like PhilW, 3DAGE, TangoAlpha, Dartanbeck, diomede, MDO2010 as well as many other great Carrara PA's an established artists and modelers who have helped answering questions. I do have some mini tutorials of my own as well as some object examples/renders.
If you don't have it already check out this modeling tutorial available at DAZ...
Regarding shaders to textures... if I understand it right you can Bake them using inagoni's Baker feature for Carrara... I've not yet tried this. Check out...
Regarding making textures, texture maps. This can be done with any good paint program like Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop, Gimp and hopefully Filter Forge which is not a paint program but a texture making program. Ohh... I have make textures in PSP.. saved and applied it to a vertex object... note that mmoir suggested that I make it 1024x1024 which I have heard elsewhere also... higher will make it look better but lower will make it look worse.
Filter Forge is available at DAZ, note that there is either a Windoze or Mac version, or you can get the latest version at their Filter Forge site. Windoze link below.
For your shader questions you are welcome to ask in my Shader Creating & Settings for Carrara - Q&A - Come One, Come All thread. There is some great help by PhilW, 3DAGE, EvilProducer and others.
Another source to get questions answered quickly is of course the main Carrara Discussion.
When rendering you get numbered and different coloured squares for each core, so you can easily see how many cores you have active. If it is rendering just one square at a time, you do not have Multi-Threading enabled.
Start small, is my recommendation. The temptation is always to start big, and start with that dream project. Just just as a young kid's eyes are always too big for its stomach, we'll often bite off more than we can chew (grief I sound like I've been shopping at metaphors R Us!)
MMoir's tutorial, mentioned above teaches you a bunch of things that you'll use over and over, and also that even something you might think of as really simple, has hidden depths. A pencil might just be a six-sided cylinder with a point on one end, and that might be okay for a distant render. But what if it's a hero prop? ("Hero" props are designed to be in the foreground of a render, or used by a character. They have lots of extra detail compared to something that will only ever be seen in the background)
Hero Pencil's finest moment!
PhilW's tutorials are not aimed just at vertex modelling. They give a much more holistic approach and look at different kinds of modelling, scene construction, lighting, rendering. Again, I keep going back to them and pulling out different things. Cripeman on Youtube is well worth bookmarking, pluse there are a bunch of others.
Many projects will call for some kind of pen/pencil/wielded stick, or a bottle of some kind, a cup or glass. Cupboards with opening doors. Tables with sliding drawers. Doors, windows. Belts need buckles, small furry animals, trees, clumps of grass, an apple. These are all small, self contained projects on their own, and great ways to spend the odd half hour making them, and they'll never be wasted.
I do get FOUR boxes, blue, yellow, red, and magenta - when I render in Carrara. My system has 4 logical CPUs but 2 physical cores - it is an i7 mobile (Surface Pro 4 i7).
But no option to select the number of cores used in the render when I scroll down to Miscellaneous.
I'm using Carrara 8.5 Pro 64 bit with Windows 10. Honestly, I can't imagine a time when I wouldn't want all 4 logical CPUs used by Carrara. I just thought it was strange that the tutorial mentioned this but I don't have it.
As for all the advice, thanks everyone, I'm on my way to the other thread now, to subscribe to it, too.
Probably harks back to an era when the world still thought that "one core, really really fast" was better than lots of cores slower. Back then, maybe it was, but these days we do multi-threading much better, so those kinds of options disappear down the trousers of time (or is it the pants of progress?).
Yes, no option on mine now either, I always had it on anyway and it looks like this is now the only option. I wouldn't loose any sleep over it.
I don't ever recall seeing where we can select how many cores to use. It wa just Use multi-core or not.
EDIT: they probably removed that from 8.5
I mean, nobody would want to not use their cores.
If we want there to be a bit of a throttle for the purposes of multitasking during a render, we can use the Batch Queue, and Carrara will throttle the render priority to allow for other apps to also use the cpus ;)
Speaking of cores, I have 8, they are most often big blocks and occasionlly tiny blocks. Is this due to the scene size? I usually load a medium scene... the ones with tiny blocks are from Carrara PA content.
You can set the block size in the render settings - it is Tile Size down the bottom of the right hand panel. I usually set it to the minimum, because sometimes you have a scene where one block will take ages due to something in the scene (hair combined with light with blurred shadows will do it!) and the rest of the scene has finished and you get one core working on this one remaining square. By having the minimum tile size you are making sure that as many cores are working that area as possible. I think there are some memory overheads for having smaller tile sizes, but the effect on most computers these days for that is negligible.
Found it Thanks Phil... have a render in progress to check it out. Looks like I'll be saving scene with it set to 1 from now on.
1, 16, same thing ;)
Now this new Carrara user really knows what she's doing! So inspired = Me!
Wow, so Vyusur, I couldn't help myself but to check out your YouTube channel for more fun.
Nice music too... I also have Corel Video Studio but have yet to explore all of the music it came with. It's cool how it can run the music according to the video... I like that. I started with the lower-priced Vegas called Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum, and got really used to it, then got Video Studio bundled with Paint Shop Pro when I went to buy that - so I haven't used it a whole lot just yet. And now I also have HitFilm Express, which I love as a compositor, not sure about it as an Editor just yet. Has some great features but seems... well, I'll need to practice with it.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your skills on video! Looking forward to seeing more! Subscribed!
What a great painting! Cool Creature! Awesome Skills!
Many thanks, Dart! You unearthed my video, which I already forgot. I love Krita, and it can create stunning textures for 3d stuff, but after the last mac update Krita works not without issues.
Bummer. I'm an avid Project Dogwaffle Howler user anyways... but I still think Krita looks really nice.
Vyusur, Seems I'm running on the same track as Dart. Last night I watched your Scroll Wing Chair video a few more times and visited your YouTube channel to check out what else you've done... Imagine my surprise to find your Seamless decor digital painting in Krita. Quite impressive, your painting as well as Krita's seamless capabilities... needless to say I have Krita since last night. On down the rabbit hole I tumbled tonight and found CorelDraw: Dragon Vector Character Drawing Technique. Is there no end to my madness... I'll have to crank up Corel Draw or another of my vector programs when I pry myself out of modeling mode. Thanks... you seem to be an inspiration to all.
Thank you, John, for your interest and for your kind words. Krita is awesome for drawing seamless textures. My golden décor was used in this my 3d scene, where the every item was modeled by me from scratch.
Great work and a great looking scene!
Thank you, Phil! I really appreciate it.