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...meanwhile with only 11 GB of available memory on a first generation 4 core i7 I could render this in Carrara in something like 15 - 20 min.
@kyoto kid
Wow, that was done in Carrara? also, when did Carrara get G3 compatability?
...Mistra has a plugin (though it isn't free) that assists with G3. You find the link in this thread
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/158171/genesis-3-in-carrara-yes-we-can-thanks-misty
check out World Machine..the basic program is free....
https://www.world-machine.com/
...going to give it a try The Price for the Pro version isn't all that bad to get unlimited resolution and up to 256 processor cores (makes that idea for the dual Xeon HCC system all that much more interesting)
I believe Mistara's G8 characters are free, but as Kyoto Kid points out, not G3. The G8F for Carrara has an issue with one of the toes getting a strange morph when bent.
Great scene, KK.
That's https://www.daz3d.com/secret-lake
Dense landscapes are one of Carrara's specialties.If you're considering buying, go for the Pro version - it's 64-bit, as well as having extra tools that Standard doesn't. Also, Daz very often discounts it. Heavily. So keep an eye out for the bargains. Even better if you're a PC+ member. (right now I'm seeing it at less than half the price of Standard!)
Btw, this https://www.daz3d.com/the-harpwood-trail-mallard-pond is an adaptation of that scene for DS, using Howie's own Ultrascatter to handle instances.
...indeed, I just used it to illustrate the level of quality the Carrara render engine is capable of.(rendered at the highest setting).
Picked up Howie's Ultrascatter during the final MM Ketchup Sale
...a bit late to the party but heres my two cents :). I started many years ago with Terragen v.9...moved to Bryce because at that time Terragen didnt import things, then went to Vue and in this entire debacle have moved to Unreal game editor.
My main interest has been in doing landscapes of a larger scale with some of a closeup scale. Of the first three I would say honestly that Vue is my favorite. You can get any of the versions and add on modules later when needed. Vue had been operating on two sites, cornucopia3d and e-on software. E-on being the software side and Cornucopia3d being the assets and forum etc side. Later last year they got hacked badly. I dont know exactly what has happened but from emails from the community mgr they will wanted to rebuild from the ground up. It sounded bad and of course that takes time. I will make no guesses at why it is still down. I have been through several versions of Vue and until this last version had much success with a stable and easy to use software. It is rather easy to get pretty results and if you choose it has real depth. You can import meshes and if you do get it get the Ecosystem module. this lets you scatter basically vegetation, rock, well any object with a high degree of control. That said this last version I bought was 2014 and was a nightmare. Renders were very slow, it crashed alot, it glitched alot. i tried it with three pcs all of good specs. i worked with the techs extensively to no avail. Tech spt was slow. When it worked right it could be beautifull.
What I would suggest is giving it a test drive and make sure it does well on your box and you like the controls. Cornucopia3d sold alot of really nice plants and atmos and things but no idea when that will be back.
Terragen....early on this was beautifull. User friendly and easy to use and the skies were really pretty. I turned away from this last version because I dont like nodes...I get enough of that in other software I use lol. At that time it didnt auto populate vegetation like vue so i would also suggest giving Terragen a test drive as well.
Bryce was able to do some pretty skies and decent renders, esp with a light dome. But I didnt like the terrains, never seemed to look natural. I would say skip Bryce unless you dont like terragen and use it until Vue is available. Oh, also look at pprices. for the really nice capabilities in vue you're getting pricey.
Unreal....learning this at present so can only give a partial opinion. This is free. You get some good and free starter content and can buy more on their marketplace. Tons of tutorials available and Epic games just released a huge free content pack from one of their big games. You can scuplt terrains or import terrain files that can look really nice I've done this from world creator and machine. Terrain sculpting is easy, fun and creative. You can load a brush with foliage, rocks etc and paint on the terrain and tons of ways to control those. Can import meshes and textures. meshes are easy and straightforward as are most textures, some you will need to create the texture in a node editor much like maya. Its not difficult. You can go as deep as you want to. just mess around and make small environments or large maps. You can just make the physical terrains or you can add flowing water, moving wind that blows the vegetation, birds flying in the sky, sound. basically think what you have in a AAA game and thats what you can do if you take the time to learn. And the BEST thing of all...you can press 'play' and enter this world you're working on and run around in it. At this point I am learning to do the lighting and atmosphere etc.
I hope that this will help someone. have fun :)
Scott
Did cornucopia3d ever relaunch the assets site?
Not yet. Last heard via the Facebook group is that the reopening is scheduled for Fall this year.
Ciao
TD
A whole year to make a new site? o.O
Yeah, Vue just flew to the bottom of my "to get" list.
Laurie
I'm intrigued World Creator, but -- having looked at the site -- it's not clear to me what it provides in the way of rendering facilities, of if it's simply a landscape generator. They have some gorgeous landscape images in their gallery, but it's unclear if they're rendered within World Creator or an external app. So my questions for @will2power (or any other WC users) are:
1. Does World Creator have a capable rendering engine, or are the sample images rendered in some external renderer? (Unity?)
2. If it does have a good built-in scene renderer, how easy is it to import external content (i.e. DAZ figures) into a World Creator scene?
someone mentioned watching for sales of Carrara.
Post in another thread says Carrara 8.5 Pro is under $10 for PC+ members.
In my excessively humble opinion, even if it's no longer being developed, Carrara Pro is absolutely worth the $10 (or $27). It still runs fine on current OS's, and -- once you allow for a few quirks -- it's a very capable program.
Someone also pointed out that if you're clever with today's gift card offer, you can shave a little more off the price as well.
World Creator, as far as I know, does not render anything, but makes very detailed landscapes for import into other software.
My biggest issue with world creator is textures when brought into Daz. You can create cool masks in WC. But still, if close and far is in a shot, you have the usual problem that close stuff is pixelated or far stuff is noticeably tiled.
Although the original poster was looking for actively supported software, for anybody else who was potentially interested and following this discussion, I'd like to point out that Bryce is currently on sale for $3.99 . https://www.daz3d.com/bryce-7-pro .
...the render engine is one of the better CPU based ones and the more cores you have the faster it performs (it can support up to 100 CPU threads so look out when that 32 core Threadripper hits the market)
Carrara is also compatible with Octane for those who desire photo real results (though again Carrara's render engine can get pretty darn close). With Octane4 on the horizon (currently in beta development) there will be both the standard perpetual licence as well as a subscription track for 20$ per month that as I understand, will allow access to all plugins. One nice feature of Octane is it's out of core rendering (which splits the workload between the CPU and GPU so you don't necessarily need a monster GPU card to get good performance) and ver. 4 also has AI denoising.
There are a few additional options:
1) Terrasculptor - but pricey at $169 for 'Indy' edition. https://store.demenzunmedia.com/
2) Unity 3D - https://www.unity3d.com $0 + Terrain Toolkit Plugin https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/83490 $0 = $0 but much hand texturing work.
3) Unity 3D - https://www.unity3d.com $0 + Gaia https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/42618 ; $67 = $67 but probably the easiest option & landscapes look decent
4) Blender https://blender.org/ $0 + Blender Ant plugin (part of default installed but must be turned on) $0 - well more difficult than Terrain Toolkit & other options but also free
5) Blender https://blender.org/ $0 + various public domain heightmaps $0 = $0 Here is link to a tutorial: http://johnflower.org/tutorial/make-mountains-blender-height-maps
A landscape modeler/renderer that hasn't been mentioned yet (as far as I can tell) is Artmatic Voyager, written by Eric Wenger, who created the algorithms that went into the original Bryce (Kai Krause basically packaged up Wenger's world creation system and put a pretty UI on it). Voyager (with its companion texture synthesizer Artmatic) is sort of "Bryce 1.0 -- 2017 edition". I've only played with the demo version, but it produces some quite pretty landscapes with a definite Bryce feel to them. It's $149 for the Voyager software alone, $200 bundled with the texture synthesizer.
I'd be tempted to buy it just for old time's sake, but for the fact that it's 32-bit, which means -- among other things -- that it's going to stop working in some near-future version of the Mac OS. The FAQ on the site is non-committal about whether Eric will make a 64-bit version; he's aware of demand for a 64-bit version, but won't say whether he plans to make one.
If you're on Mac, there's also TerraRay, which is very cheap, but not as capable as the others, and may be abandonware by now.
Pandromeda's Mojoworld is, sadly, no longer supported. I actually run Mojoworld 3.1.1 on Windows 10 under Parallels on my Mac. It works pretty well, but it's definitely in the "no longer current" category.
Quadspinner Gaea is in early access preview but looks promising http://quadspinner.com/gaea/ ; Since it's still in pre-release there's not really alot of documentation on how to use it yet.
Unity intrigues me. Are you able to export scenes/levels to another piece of software for rendering, or must it all be done within Unity? How is Unity's rendering?
Didn't Quadspinner used to do a lot of procedural rock materials for Vue?? Before Cornucopia3D went "poof!"?
Laurie
Quadspinner had procedural rock materials and many more plugins for VUE. One of the things that made me decide to buy VUE was their "Shimmerwind" series of plugins and scenes, but I can't get them of course. I am going to try to see if I can get them directlly from Quadspinner.
E-On has stated that some shadow of Cornucopia3D will be back up 4th quarter. How anyone these days can take a freakin' YEAR to rebuild a relatively small webstore, even with DRM, is beyond me.
Yes,
Use the free Unity Technologies FBX exporter:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/101408
Or there is also an free obj exporter:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/22250
Also a couple of OBJ exporters at the Unity Wiki:
http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/ObjExporter
http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/ExportOBJ
Unity can do PBR renderering via the Octane renderer that is bundled free with Unity 2017+. Octane is more or less the functional equivalent of iRay:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/105646
Note - for the FBX & OBJ exporters you'll need to adjust material settings and things. I have though exported entire scenes in one swoop and most of the times they work, but not always. Of those, I'm more inclined to use the Unity FBX Exporter for complicated scenes.
I'm amazed at what Unity and Gaia can do (by watching the videos). How easy/hard is it to place Daz characters into Unity these days? I remember trying it in the past but I had to adjust every single material zone, and it was a huge pain.
It's pretty easy actually since about 2014. You have to setup the materials to look good yourself though the Unity Standard Shader default is a PBR shader so knowing the Surfaces iRay concepts in DAZ Studio will help you in Unity.
I haven't tried fibre hair or fibre eyesbrows though.
This looks interesting. If I understand correctly, this is basically a major add-on for World Machine 2.x, not a standalone product. The combo could be a good subsitute for VUE if they never recover from their problems.
Can't find much about the QuadSpinner Vue products, so I raised the question on their FB page. Looks like they moved on, but I will wait for their response to be sure. Can't blame them, with the Cornucopia3D store down for so long, they can't sell their VUE stuff, particularly if they are dependent upon that site's restrictive DRM.
There seem to be two products: GeoGlyph 2 is the add-on for World Machine 2.x; Gaea is a standalone application.