-HOLY SMOKES! AN UPDATE!- Carrara Challenge V: Movie Night - Work In Progress (WIP) thread.

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Comments

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921
    edited December 1969

    pleasure ncamp! stezza, I love it, !!
    one from me, no modelling

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  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,139
    edited December 1969

    Nice one, head wax! I wonder what he is seeing that is so shocking!

  • bighbigh Posts: 8,147
    edited December 1969

    PhilW said:
    Nice one, head wax! I wonder what he is seeing that is so shocking!

    Santa ;-)

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,139
    edited November 2013

    bigh said:
    PhilW said:
    Nice one, head wax! I wonder what he is seeing that is so shocking!

    Santa ;-)

    ...being gored to death by his reindeer, if the expression is anything to go by!

    Or getting up to something he shouldn't...;-)

    Post edited by PhilW on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    PhilW said:
    Nice one, head wax! I wonder what he is seeing that is so shocking!

    A Santa snuff film? :lol:

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921
    edited December 1969

    ha ha thanks PhilW et al :)

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    ha ha thanks PhilW et al :)

    Great job so far Headwax! The expression on the figure is great! The only technical thing I might suggest is to stick the image map you're using for the fire into the glow channel of the shader to help illuminate it.

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    ha ha thanks PhilW et al :)

    Great job so far Headwax! The expression on the figure is great! The only technical thing I might suggest is to stick the image map you're using for the fire into the glow channel of the shader to help illuminate it.

    thanks evil, great idea!!!

  • ncampncamp Posts: 345
    edited December 1969

    Filling up the theater (and corrected the spelling)...

    ncamp

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  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    ncamp said:
    Filling up the theater (and corrected the spelling)...

    ncamp

    Lookin' good! :)

    Sorry I haven't posted much in this the last couple days, but other commitments have kept me pretty busy in the non-Carrara world. Around the middle of next week I hope to put up a WIP for an idea I have for a second entry.

    If you all have been following this thread and debating entering something in this month's challenge, I encourage to go ahead and put something in!

  • stu sutcliffestu sutcliffe Posts: 274
    edited December 1969

    Hi All,
    Here are some WIPs I shared with Holly recently.They are for a picture I started about a week before the challenge started. So I was umming and arring about entering.
    After wading through the rule book,I am still not sure it will be applicable. Any way its all good fun eh...
    I have already posted a finished piccy on the renders thread and also on my blog, so I will render up a fresh one for the final entry thread.

    Here are the WIPs
    I wont talk about the thought processes but if you are puzzled by the way I do things I will endeavor to talk my way out of it.I usually have a plan of attack at the start,but generally regret stuff and have to rethink along the way.

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  • stu sutcliffestu sutcliffe Posts: 274
    edited December 1969

    It seems I can only attach 5 pics at once .....more to come.

    Oh And did I mention what it is ? Its an homage to The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

  • stu sutcliffestu sutcliffe Posts: 274
    edited December 1969

    Next 5.

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  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    So Stu, do you do any of the shading in Carrara?

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921
    edited December 1969

    n camp, looks much better with the correct spelling :)

    stu, amazing work, as always, thanks for sharing your process!
    and you did all that in the spline room! (small joke :) )

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921
    edited December 1969

    a little more work on this, will reverse engineer the splines once I know what I am doing :)

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  • ncampncamp Posts: 345
    edited December 1969

    OK, I think I have added all the characters that my system will support.

    I have 3 GF2, 2 Genesis, 1 Dawn, 1 A3 and 1 Toon Scientist.

    Now to get to work on general lighting issues.

    ncamp

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  • stu sutcliffestu sutcliffe Posts: 274
    edited December 1969

    EP... I do have to use the shader room obviously,but I don't really use any procedurals. Except maybe for the bump map and SSS shader for ears. I use the metal shaders also.And hair shaders.

    My workflow for main characters is to sculpt and paint in 3dCoat then fiddle with them in Carrara. Could you pinpoint the question?
    On this piccy I was going to paint some dirt on some chain links then combine the map with a metal shader,I have done this before but for the life of me I could not remeber how to do it this time....so I just went with a steel shader.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    EP... I do have to use the shader room obviously,but I don't really use any procedurals. Except maybe for the bump map and SSS shader for ears. I use the metal shaders also.And hair shaders.

    My workflow for main characters is to sculpt and paint in 3dCoat then fiddle with them in Carrara. Could you pinpoint the question?
    On this piccy I was going to paint some dirt on some chain links then combine the map with a metal shader,I have done this before but for the life of me I could not remeber how to do it this time....so I just went with a steel shader.

    I was wondering if you generated UV Maps for your creatures. It looked like from the screen caps you posted, that a lot of the detail was in the mesh or created using displacement. Do you hand paint the textures in an image editor then?

  • stu sutcliffestu sutcliffe Posts: 274
    edited December 1969

    Evilproducer,

    Basically my process is
    1.Sculpt creature in 3dcoat.
    2. Retopo in 3Dcoat...it does it automatically,but often makes loads of errors which can be corrected manually,or you can do the whole thing manually.( this part of the process is a complete pita.But it has to be done to get the thing into Carrara.It takes ages!
    3.Then you draw on your seams where you want it unwrapped,but I just press the "autoseams" button and it just chops it up ito a patchwork quilt sought of thing.Then press "unwrap" this makes all the UVs ( I think...all this stuff is really tedious for me.)
    4.Then I "bake" it to a normal map. And it is done.
    5.Now you can just paint the creature,you can paint a colour map, a spec map and a bump map...all at the same time if you wish.And it uses layers pretty much the same as photoshp.
    6 When that is all done you just hit the "Export Model" button .It saves you retopoed obj, the spec map ,the colour map( it flattens all your layers) and the normal map( which includes all the painted bumps also.)
    7. So basically you import the obj into Carrara. It comes in with the colour and spec maps already attached.But you have to navigate to the folder and apply the normal map into the bump shader channel manually. ( when I tried the 8.5 beta it seemed to dump the colour map also?)

    I've never really bothered with displacement maps,so I dont know anything about that. My exported objs are usually a massive amount of polys so they pretty much follow the contours of the model and the normal map pretty much finishes it off. Am I correct in saying displacement maps are mainly for really low poly objects.
    One thing to note about 3dcoat is that when you are painting the model it is not smoothed off so if the model is low poly you can see the facets on the edge.But you can smooth it off in Carrara.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    edited December 1969

    Evilproducer,

    Basically my process is
    1.Sculpt creature in 3dcoat.
    2. Retopo in 3Dcoat...it does it automatically,but often makes loads of errors which can be corrected manually,or you can do the whole thing manually.( this part of the process is a complete pita.But it has to be done to get the thing into Carrara.It takes ages!
    3.Then you draw on your seams where you want it unwrapped,but I just press the "autoseams" button and it just chops it up ito a patchwork quilt sought of thing.Then press "unwrap" this makes all the UVs ( I think...all this stuff is really tedious for me.)
    4.Then I "bake" it to a normal map. And it is done.
    5.Now you can just paint the creature,you can paint a colour map, a spec map and a bump map...all at the same time if you wish.And it uses layers pretty much the same as photoshp.
    6 When that is all done you just hit the "Export Model" button .It saves you retopoed obj, the spec map ,the colour map( it flattens all your layers) and the normal map( which includes all the painted bumps also.)
    7. So basically you import the obj into Carrara. It comes in with the colour and spec maps already attached.But you have to navigate to the folder and apply the normal map into the bump shader channel manually. ( when I tried the 8.5 beta it seemed to dump the colour map also?)

    I've never really bothered with displacement maps,so I dont know anything about that. My exported objs are usually a massive amount of polys so they pretty much follow the contours of the model and the normal map pretty much finishes it off. Am I correct in saying displacement maps are mainly for really low poly objects.
    One thing to note about 3dcoat is that when you are painting the model it is not smoothed off so if the model is low poly you can see the facets on the edge.But you can smooth it off in Carrara.

    Sorry I've been missing from the forums lately. I had a second, and this is what I saw... Stu, this is very cool. I never tried 3D Coat, but it sure seems like a great solution for high detailed model making. I agree... displacement is mainly to assist in adding fine details to lower poly meshes. Personally, I often find that I'm better off using more polygons and no displacement - I feel better control over what I'm doing, plus it seems to render faster in Carrara. I've never actually made a study of which is faster, however - it just seems to me, on my system, that high polygon counts are handled pretty well - and render quickly, while displacement can (seem to) add a lot of extra time to each frame.

    As far as displacement goes, however, Carrara has the ability to use "Displacement Painting". You don't need to export a displacement map. You can actually use this feature like the sculpting apps to paint details, creating extra SubD poly shapes directly onto the mesh. The higher the polygon count of the model, the lower the SubD count needs to be to get higher details, and vice versa. Really pretty (no, Very) cool that we can do that in Carrara. It reminded me of using Sculptris. But again... I didn't do much with either.... just quick tests is all.

    One day I think I may just buy 3D Coat, just to give the coins to that cool developer. He just seems so donate-worthy to me. Always trying to please his customers.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    edited December 1969

    Oh my goodness...
    Just a quick perusal of this thread... I need winter to hit already so I can have some sit-down time!!! ;)
    Looking great, everyone!!!

  • stu sutcliffestu sutcliffe Posts: 274
    edited December 1969

    Dont wanna dis Carrara, but I did experiment with all the displacement painting and maps when they were introduced.They just didnt cut the mustard as they say, for me.
    And I am not in the Carrara forum to sell 3dCoat either.But at the moment the sculpting is like butter ,really nice.Though the developer seems to have introduced a new auto retopo routine that just crashes my computer so I have had to roll back a couple of updates but the version I now use seems pretty stable.
    You can get a 30 day demo,and what I did was to buy the Educational version for about $100... it took me a whole year to grow out of it. It really is pretty close to the Pro version.The only differences are only 7 layers in paint and a limit of 2k in the maps.And dont use it professionally! I've had the Pro version exactly a year And I still havnt used it professionally.But I do have unlimeted layers and 4k maps now! I tried an 8k map but my "computer said no".

  • stu sutcliffestu sutcliffe Posts: 274
    edited December 1969

    5 More.

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  • stu sutcliffestu sutcliffe Posts: 274
    edited December 1969

    5 More.

    in the last pic (020) I was trying to emulate a trick we used to do when I used to shoot stop motion. We would put a gauze behind the miniature set, but in front of the sky background and a few miniature trees , this gave a feeling of depth to what was a really small model.
    It sought of worked in Carrara ,but in the end I am doing the background as a layer and altering it in post where I have more control.

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  • stu sutcliffestu sutcliffe Posts: 274
    edited December 1969

    ...please notice the use of a couple of fluffy clouds ...which means no spline room for me ...daddio!:coolsmirk:

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,026
    edited December 1969

    5 More.

    in the last pic (020) I was trying to emulate a trick we used to do when I used to shoot stop motion. We would put a gauze behind the miniature set, but in front of the sky background and a few miniature trees , this gave a feeling of depth to what was a really small model.
    It sought of worked in Carrara ,but in the end I am doing the background as a layer and altering it in post where I have more control.

    Great job. Thank you so much for posting your WIPs, and discussing your workflow.

    Headwax, I like what you have done with the projector. Is that a spline model? If so, did you make it along the lines of EP's tutorial?

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921
    edited November 2013

    diomede64 said:
    5 More.

    in the last pic (020) I was trying to emulate a trick we used to do when I used to shoot stop motion. We would put a gauze behind the miniature set, but in front of the sky background and a few miniature trees , this gave a feeling of depth to what was a really small model.
    It sought of worked in Carrara ,but in the end I am doing the background as a layer and altering it in post where I have more control.

    Great job. Thank you so much for posting your WIPs, and discussing your workflow.

    Headwax, I like what you have done with the projector. Is that a spline model? If so, did you make it along the lines of EP's tutorial?

    thanks diomede64, :) ah I can't take credit for that, no its a sharecg job, I've decided to do the scene then see what I have and figure what I can make in the spline room, given time, which I am lacking at the moment - the star and the table legs look up to my abilities so far :) cheers!

    edit thanks ep for the prompt on the firelight - looks much better tah .!

    Post edited by Headwax on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Been a busy couple weeks for me too, Dart. I know how you feel time-wise! Just finished a video job, now I have another to do. It's for students at a school so I want to get it done before Christmas break!


    headwax, I'm glad I could help with the fire! The spline object does not need to be complex. The requirement for a cloud or spline object is just an excuse for people to pop their respective editors open and take a look, maybe learn a thing or two, even if all they learn is that they don't like it! I'm not a huge fan of vertex modelers. Not because I don't like vertex models, but because I have a harder time translating what I see in my mind, to the screen. I'm currently forcing myself to learn some how to model and use it's features. Most of it is still greek to me.

    Stu, thank you for the detailed description of your work flow. It's most impressive. I've eyed 3D Coat for awhile, but never really had a clear idea of how it worked or how to use it with Carrara.

    BTW, Shader work counts as created or modified in Carrara, so does dynamic hair. The cloud is a required item, so that's cool that you've got one in there. I would say an atmosphere you've created in the realistic sky editor would count, as would a terrain or even plants you've modified.

    For those sitting on the fence about entering, it's really not hard or restrictive to use something you've made or modified in Carrara.

  • StezzaStezza Posts: 7,757
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    a little more work on this, will reverse engineer the splines once I know what I am doing :)


    I can see that cup of coffee going quick smart all over the place.. or is it green tea?

    ncamp said:
    OK, I think I have added all the characters that my system will support.

    I have 3 GF2, 2 Genesis, 1 Dawn, 1 A3 and 1 Toon Scientist.

    Now to get to work on general lighting issues.

    ncamp

    Looking good ncamp.. I had to look a few times before seeing Albert in there.. :)

    ...please notice the use of a couple of fluffy clouds ...which means no spline room for me ...daddio!:coolsmirk:

    Looking awesome stu... but no spline modelling!!... lost brownie points for that one lol ;)

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