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Surface Replicator and NLA Clips Question

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  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    joeping said:
    View the revised animation on YOUTUBE.COM by clicking here.

    The great people over at CarraraTors, for Carrara Animators ( http://bond3d.wix.com/carrarators#!home/mainPage ) wanted to use my last experiment on their website, so I put a few experiments together to thank them for their insights and inspiration. I would also like to thank everyone on this Board for putting up with my annoying questions.

    These are a few experiments with Carrara 8.5 Pro's surface replicator. Using 2 DAZ Genesis Figures and 2 DAZ Skeleton figures to create 5,000 battling knights using Carrara 8.5 Pro's surface replicator. The figures used Poser Mocap's Swordplay Volume One aniblocks and the Dragon uses Mill SubDragon Animation Max Set (http://www.medhueanimations.com/products/subdragon-animation-presets).

    Thanks for looking.

    I'll have to look at your latest videos this weekend when my bandwidth resets. Just from the thumbnails you've been posting, I wanted to let you know that the look of the sub-dragon really benefits if you use one level of smoothing.

  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited February 2014

    Thanks Evil, I will have to try that on the final renders. How do I do that in Carrara?

    There are still tons of problems, like the wrists are doing something wierd and I am not sure why. =)

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

    It's no big deal. It's just something I discovered through trial and error. The close-up of the eye made me think of it.

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  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited December 1969

    Thanks for the image. Love the lighting and textures too.

    That eye was bugging the heck out of me too. I do these experiments very quickly with the intention of refining them later if I come across something cool. This process keeps me learning and from getting bored. But it constantly makes me aware of how much more I have to learn.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,219
    edited December 1969

    joeping said:
    There are still tons of problems, like the wrists are doing something wierd and I am not sure why. =)
    This is the number one reason why I enjoy animating by rotating joints rather than relying only on IK. I'm not say that this is where it came from, but it can be a culprit. I also try to not use "Disable Limits" when it comes up from importing a pose file, unless it really needs it. Once that joint is limitless, all sorts of mayhem can occur.
    In Poser, sometimes the same joint rotation would get expressed as either 350, for example, or -10. So if you applied a pose that read -12, and then the next keyframe had that joint at 315, you would get a spin effect. The fix is easy if there's only one joint, just change the -12 to 348. Carrara 8 or Carrara 8.5, or even perhaps earlier, never stops counting up. So you can go from 0 to 45, then 90, then 368, 456, 921... which helps tremendously for animations where you need full control over an ongoing rotation beyond 360. That was an amazing find, when I found it! :)
  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited December 1969

    Thanks Dartanbeck,
    That information will help a lot and looks like it might be the problem.

    The dragon uses Mill SubDragon Animation Max Set which look amazing in DAZ Studio, but I am having a problem when I import them into Carrara 8.5 Pro. Strange things happen if I import the DAZ Studio version of Mill SubDragon with the animation. It's like the DAZ Version and the version loaded in Carrara have subtly different structures. For instance, I can't apply any body morphs (ie spikes, boney head, muscular, ect...) on Mill SubDragon imported from DAZ, but I can on the ones loaded from the content library in Carrara directly. There is a lot about Carrara I still need to learn.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    joeping said:
    Thanks Evil, I will have to try that on the final renders. How do I do that in Carrara?

    There are still tons of problems, like the wrists are doing something wierd and I am not sure why. =)


    Sorry, I missed the question. D'oh!

    To change the smoothing, open the figure's hierarchy to display the model. Select that, then the Modeling room. This will open the VM. Select a polygon, line or point. Doesn't matter which. You should see an option for smoothing on the right side of the screen. It's set to one level by default. Select the little button or checkbox or whatever to enable it. Done!

    You can also do this in the Assembly room by selecting the model, and then clicking the wrench to enter modeling mode.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    joeping said:
    Thanks Dartanbeck,
    That information will help a lot and looks like it might be the problem.

    The dragon uses Mill SubDragon Animation Max Set which look amazing in DAZ Studio, but I am having a problem when I import them into Carrara 8.5 Pro. Strange things happen if I import the DAZ Studio version of Mill SubDragon with the animation. It's like the DAZ Version and the version loaded in Carrara have subtly different structures. For instance, I can't apply any body morphs (ie spikes, boney head, muscular, ect...) on Mill SubDragon imported from DAZ, but I can on the ones loaded from the content library in Carrara directly. There is a lot about Carrara I still need to learn.


    If the files are aniblocks, can you use the aniblock importer for Carrara, or is that a purchased plugin? If the plugin is required and you don't have the dough, you can bake the aniblock to keyframes in DAZ Studio, then use the free(?) PFE script available from DAZ to convert the aniblock to an animated pose and apply that in Carrara your figure. I usually then convert that to an NLA clip.


    My suggestion for non-Genisis/Triax figures, such as the Sub-dragon, V4, M4, etc. etc. is to load them from the Content Browser directly in Carrara. You can build your character, work on shaders, clothe them, etc. and save the figure (if clothed, then group), to the Objects browser for later use! If it's not Genesis figure, it should even load faster!

  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited February 2014

    View the revised animation on YOUTUBE.COM by clicking here.

    Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions.

    This is a revised version of my previous NLA/Surface Replicator experiments. The file for second half of my previous experiment got corrupted so I had to reconstruct it and I smoothed out the eye (thanks to evilproducer's information).

    I couldn't get a straight import of the Millennium Sub-Dragon DAZ Studio aniblocks to work with any of methods suggested. The only solution that sort of worked was to import the Millennium Sub-Dragon from DAZ Studio with the animation applied and then add a Millennium Sub-Dragon as a conforming figure. This got rid of the weird wrist problems and allowed me to add Body Morphs. There are still lots of problems but I think it's a lot better than the previous attempt.

    What do you think?

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    Post edited by Joepingleton on
  • tbwoqtbwoq Posts: 238
    edited December 1969

    Hi joeping.

    When I first saw your videos and screen shots I immediately thought of the "Kingdom Under Fire II" trailer(...on YouTube). Massive armies fighting among creatures. Not easy to create in any 3DCG program. Your work in progress is looking really good so far and shows the power of what Carrara can do in a very short period of time. :)

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Finally was able to watch this video this morning. Looks great so far.

  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited December 1969

    Thanks,
    I really am surprised by how much power and simplicity is in the surface replicator when you combine them with NLA clips. Many more experiments are needed.

  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited December 1969

    Thanks for all the great feedback,

    This is another very quick experiment with Carrara 8.5 Pro's surface replicator. This time is used 2 spheres with Carrara Hair attached to create 1,000 characters using Carrara 8.5 Pro's surface replicator.

    I am thinking that PySwarm may be the best method of animating this scene. The characters are simple spheres and don't need to be animated other than moving about and not running in to each other. They also need to not run into the main Character. I am thinking that I would use PySwarm to make the main character a "repulser" object and the other characters swarming objects moving randomly around it. Also I think that the blinking for them all could be accomplished using videos as surface shaders.

    Does this sound like something PySwarm could produce?

    See a stereoscopic 3D version on 3dvisionlive.com here!
    Thanks for looking.

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  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Those guys look great! :lol:

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