[Launched in Store] - Carrara EnviroKit - Woodlands [commercial]

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Comments

  • CypherFOXCypherFOX Posts: 3,401
    edited December 1969

    Greetings,
    I have to admit, Carrara makes me desperately want a top of the line iMac. I snuck a render or so on my work machine, with 8 effective cores (4 cores X 2 hyperthreads) and it worked remarkably well, but my home systems are a lot older...and will remain so until I get a solid 6 months of buffer in savings...

    But I look forward to sneaking some work cycles into this, as it looks absolutely gorgeous, and crazy cheap for what it is. Thank you!

    -- Morgan

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Cypherfox said:
    Greetings,
    I have to admit, Carrara makes me desperately want a top of the line iMac. I snuck a render or so on my work machine, with 8 effective cores (4 cores X 2 hyperthreads) and it worked remarkably well, but my home systems are a lot older...and will remain so until I get a solid 6 months of buffer in savings...

    But I look forward to sneaking some work cycles into this, as it looks absolutely gorgeous, and crazy cheap for what it is. Thank you!

    -- Morgan


    I run Carrara 7.2 Pro (and the C8.0 when it was in public beta) on my primary machine which is a circa 2003/04 PPC G5 with a single processor. I also have a MDD G4 on my network and an Intel iMac, which works fine for a render node but is too unstable for the main C7 application for me for some reason.


    The point being, you should be able to easily handle the Carrara 8.1 production build if your older system is anywhere near my system's specs. The only thing you won't be able to run on a PPC system is the 64 bit Carrara, which requires an Intel chipset. 32 bit works fine.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    edited December 1969

    Carrara rendered faster on my dual core than anything else I've tried. It also handled larger amounts of stuff in a single scene. I built my eight core to speed up my animation renders - but I built it for less than a $grand! Kinda cool, eh? And that included an OEM of Win7 64 bit and Sony HD Platinum - but I already had a monitor and keyboard. Needed a mouse, though.

    I was thrifty, but I didn't skimp. She's a fine machine, my workstation!
    Bought Carrara 6 Pro, 7 Pro Upgrade in early 2010 - 8 Pro came so close behind that, that I just used the 8 beta to learn on because it's 64 bit played nicely on my 64 bit Windows - which was on a laptop. That laptop still runs Carrara 8 Pro.

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921
    edited December 1969

    finally had another chance to play with this kit!
    great stuff dartanbeck!

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  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    finally had another chance to play with this kit!
    great stuff dartanbeck!


    Very nice job Headwax!

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    finally had another chance to play with this kit!
    great stuff dartanbeck!

    It's really fun, isn't it? I love building scenes with this thing - and it was only intended to make quick 'backgrounds' with.
    Here's a peek at a new thing:
    Doc1.jpg
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  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921
    edited December 1969

    thanks Evil and yes it is dart, wow your new image looks interesting!

  • Salem2007Salem2007 Posts: 513
    edited December 1969

    I finally had time to finish an image using the Woodlands kit. I added the rain in Photoshop...

    outlanders2.jpg
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  • StezzaStezza Posts: 7,757
    edited December 1969

    got around to getting this today... downloading now..

    going to mow the lawn, feed the birds and do the shopping..

    should be downloaded by the time I get back :ohh:

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921
    edited December 1969

    beautiful work Salem,
    Stezza the download time is worth it ;)

  • StezzaStezza Posts: 7,757
    edited December 1969

    sure was :)

    had a mess around with it today... I likes it :coolsmile:

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  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,139
    edited December 1969

    I loving the atmospherics in these latest posts - great work!

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    edited July 2013

    Wow, you guys... Great works!

    I've been wanting to get Flipmode's "Easy Environments" Series since the Mountain Trail hit the scene. Now that I finally have it, I wanted to try using it with the EvironKits - Woodlands base lighting. Since I wanted to use the skybox that comes with it, I chose to load the Base scene from the "Background Map" list and simply remove the background image. Being new to the FM - Easy Environments, I got stuck for a short period - but quickly found the solution. But first, allow me to describe what I did immediately upon loading the skybox scene to get the skybox, itself, to work - as I would with any surrounding background displayed onto a mesh.
    First I select the skybox and be sure to remove the checks from Cast Shadows and Receive Shadows. This keeps them from blocking our lights. Second I enter the Texture Room and [Cntrl Drag] the image from the color channel to the glow channel. I also drag the map into the color channel by itself - so that it's no longer multiplied by black. Since the skybox uses six domains, I repeat this process for each of them.

    Much to my amazement, when I hit Cntrl R to render, the sky was not showing! Okay... I missed a step. Don't panic. Checked through everything... nope - should work. [Don't do this part because it didn't work when I tried it:] So I opened the box in the model room and reversed the normals. Still wouldn't render. Well I haven't even investigated the reason for why it works or what it does, but I applied the one morph that the box comes with:
    Smooth Skybox
    Drag the slider all the way to the right and, bam. Renders away! :)

    So here's Rosie giving my a hard time about the whole situation, while reminding me that, if it wasn't for Phil Wilkes I still wouldn't have tried the Gamma Correction feature! Along for the ride is Raw Art's new Raw Satyros offering to my Genesis Monsters collection. It doesn't behave as expected in Carrara 8.5beta build 204. I really hope we get some more Genesis bug squishing before it's deemed official.

    And I added in some of the object groups from the Woodlands kit and set the Gamma Correction to 2.2, added indirect lighting... aside from my Carrara 85/DJB stamp, I did no postwork - which was hard, since I just got Paintshop Pro X5 while it was on sale for $29!!! I didn't realize... I just went to see what it normally sells for as food for thought. It had a few hours to go at that price - so I grabbed it. Putting my little stamp in was the only thing I got to try with it so far :(

    Due to Rosie Expression, I've entitled this one: "WTF?"

    WTF.jpg
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    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    edited December 1969

    Salem2007 said:
    I finally had time to finish an image using the Woodlands kit. I added the rain in Photoshop...

    I love the image. The rain really looks fantastic! But I also really like the characters you have in here - the mood of it all.

    head wax said:
    beautiful work Salem,
    Stezza the download time is worth it ;)
    Stezza said:
    sure was :)
    Glad you guys feel that way. After seeing complaints, I started the scouring and found a big part of the culprit being the animated backdrop - since I wanted full, uncompressed frames for more compatibility with anyone and everyone's machines - without the chaos of sequenced images.
    Then I thought for a while - and the DAZ folks loved it. I wouldn't really want to leave anything out of it - as it's the complete collection.


    had a mess around with it today... I likes it :coolsmile:

    I loving the atmospherics in these latest posts - great work!Yeah... very great!
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    finally had another chance to play with this kit!
    great stuff dartanbeck!

    Man. I love it when you get a chance to play!
  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    finally had another chance to play with this kit!
    great stuff dartanbeck!

    Man. I love it when you get a chance to play!

    thankyou Dart, so do I.!
    It really is a good product.
    Congratulations are in order.

  • bighbigh Posts: 8,147
    edited December 1969

    did they pull this - don't see it in the store any more - get 404 error

  • ncampncamp Posts: 345
    edited December 1969

    bigh said:
    did they pull this - don't see it in the store any more - get 404 error

    It works for me

    http://www.daz3d.com/landscapes/carrara-environkit-woodlands

    ncamp

  • bighbigh Posts: 8,147
    edited December 1969

    they fixed it - did you buy it ?

  • edited December 1969

    I don't know if he bought it, but I just did! *giggle* This one looks like FUN! I love environments!
    Boojum the brown bunny

  • ncampncamp Posts: 345
    edited December 1969

    I bought it the day it was released. Great package.

    ncamp

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    edited December 1969

    After seeing Phil's image of his new Carrara Fantasy Terrain within Woodlands, I thought I'd try out the same thing using First Bastion's New "A Dungeon Entrance", which I bought right along with Phil's Kit. As it turned out, with such a large, detailed set, it really worked magnificently! I must add that, in Carrara 8.5, it seems that loading content into large scenes can tend to "lock" the newly brought in items in place. I've found that by immediately selecting the entire object, as if it was selected when it first loaded in, hit Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) + G to group it. Even if it's a single object. Now it moves and behaves freely.

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  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    edited December 1969

    Yeah... just like I demonstrated in the Build a Scene video for Woodlands, I just selected the "Dungeon Rise" terrain piece and set the shader to 'dB_ForestTerrain' and everything suddenly matched! But I was going to try it as it came, because he really did a great job with texturing this thing. I really like FirstBastion stuff. All the rest of the shaders are as they came in fresh. Really sweet!

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    edited December 1969

    I set up EnvironKits - Woodlands to be quick at rendering, while having a pretty cool environmental element about the place. So it really works good as a basic starting zone for outdoors scenes. Check this out as an entirely different twist:

    I thought I'd try a different take on Carrara Freebie: Fantasy Village by evilproducer. The village is very complete, with a river running through a damn directly past it, making it an excellent place to settle. Well I decided quite some time ago that I was definitely going to use this kit for several of the rural villages in my movies. This scene will be reoccurring all over the place. On such time, I'll not be needing any shot of the water - or even need water to be there at all. A lot of it is just close up work beyond the entry shot and the high tailing it out of there!
    So here's whwere I opened up my Woodlands Base scene and got rid of the primary terrain and water. Brought in evil's scene and removed lights, effects, water, etc., and the replicated trees inside the village and bought in some of my 'blocks' of trees and such from the Woodlands kit. Added fog... no post, just a quick test render.

    epFantVillWoodlands_1.png
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  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited September 2013

    Looks really good Dart! Glad you're getting good use out of it!

    Post edited by evilproducer on
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    edited December 1969

    And here's Camera 2
    Again, nearly no changes made to either scene, except for what I've mentioned. The added blocks include 1 evergreen block with three duplicates. I then duplicated just the ground to change the shape fo the terrain in a few places. Added one Forest Block, duplicated twice, which are there for "In Town" render background purposes, and are barely visible from either render - but help to enhance the shading throughout.

    epFantVillWoodlands_2.png
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  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    edited December 1969

    Looks really good Dart! Glad you're getting good use out of it!
    Well, most of "the use" I get out of it is animated, and won't be released yet. Unless I decide to add some to the beginning of my videos, like the Sci Fi event at the beginning of My DIM 101 video, which actually launches her to just outside of one of the versions of this village, and the struggle with the three orcs helps to save most of the village! I love this kit - you are most generous!
  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    After seeing Phil's image of his new Carrara Fantasy Terrain within Woodlands, I thought I'd try out the same thing using First Bastion's New "A Dungeon Entrance", which I bought right along with Phil's Kit.

    It seems to me that our intrepid heroes look like they asking, "Well now WTF do we do?" instead of confronting that pesky lizard head-on! :-)

    PS: Yes, I've been away from the forums...no, I won't explain why because I prefer to avoid censorship/flame-warring.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    edited December 1969

    Garstor said:
    After seeing Phil's image of his new Carrara Fantasy Terrain within Woodlands, I thought I'd try out the same thing using First Bastion's New "A Dungeon Entrance", which I bought right along with Phil's Kit.

    It seems to me that our intrepid heroes look like they asking, "Well now WTF do we do?" instead of confronting that pesky lizard head-on! :-)

    PS: Yes, I've been away from the forums...no, I won't explain why because I prefer to avoid censorship/flame-warring.Actually, Rosie is saying: "Oh, right... so you're just going to go stab it with your sword? Now That's a plan!"
    as Dartan just grunts in frustration. :)

  • FractalDimensiaFractalDimensia Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Garstor said:
    After seeing Phil's image of his new Carrara Fantasy Terrain within Woodlands, I thought I'd try out the same thing using First Bastion's New "A Dungeon Entrance", which I bought right along with Phil's Kit.

    It seems to me that our intrepid heroes look like they asking, "Well now WTF do we do?" instead of confronting that pesky lizard head-on! :-)

    PS: Yes, I've been away from the forums...no, I won't explain why because I prefer to avoid censorship/flame-warring.

    Actually, Rosie is saying: "Oh, right... so you're just going to go stab it with your sword? Now That's a plan!"
    as Dartan just grunts in frustration. :)

    I'd do more than "grunt" if I had to face a dragon dressed like that! ;)

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