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If you have Photoshop, perhaps there's a grass texture in the included samples. There was in mine. You may also find some free resources for tileable images if you do a web search.
Do you know what the file name for it was?
Grass Square.car
- inside of that?
Me? I don't have the training videos.
The grass texture will be in the final scene on the ground. The original files were called GrassPhilW_Color.jpg and GrassPhilW_Bump.jpg but I am not sure if they were included in the working files or not (it was all done months ago!). If you really need them, post a reply to this thread and I'll see about uploading them here. Don't get too excited, its only pictures of my weedy lawn!
I just finished my first go round of watching the Realism videos. There's so much good information in these that I almost felt like I was stealing them at the introductory price.
And since what little Carrara knowledge I do have comes from Phil's Basic Carrara Training videos I knew from the get-go that there'd be a lot of good info contained in this new set. If I didn't already blow through my 3d budget for the week, I'd pick up the Advanced training videos, but they'll have to wait or week or so...
So to anyone on the fence about getting any of Phil's videos I'd say get them, and you'll be overloaded with a lot of good information. His knowledge of and passion for Carrara is infectious!
I still use the Basic Training videos all the time for reference, or when I forget how to do something.
(and on an unrelated subject, why does the Daz spell checker insist that I'm spelling "Carrara" -- their own product -- wrong?)
The spell checker is in your browser I suspect - as with me. Mine insists Daz is spelled adz if I don't capitalize it... Gets old really fast...
Mine insists I spell colour wrong
Looks fine to me! It may depend on your browser etc, but in mine, if you right click over a word that is marked as spelt (or should that be spelled...) incorrectly, you can add it to the dictionary and so it doesn't get marked ever again.
First off, thanks so much PhilW for shedding so much light on the subject of Carrara rendering!
My renders have benefited greatly from the 2.2 gamma correction tip alone!
I find Carrara renders very "realistic" now. However, realism means that most colors are still a little washed out as in the real world.
My question to the group is : How do I make the render colors more vibrant?
I'm posting this here because it seems PhilW is showing how to optimize Carrara's built in features.
If you are OK with 3d nudity, google "cempion" for examples of what I mean.
Cempion uses Octane to render. While Octane is now available for Carrara, $$$ is my issue.
If native Carrara can't produce something similar, so be it.
But if someone (PhilW?) out there thinks it can, I would much like to know how.
Thanks!
The 2.2 Gamma thing can be effective, but like most things, it is really scene dependent. You can try lowering it or even turning it off. Remember, if you've taken time with your lights and shaders, your render should look good with it or without it.
This one did not use gamma correction. I did use postwork to add the DOF and background, but no color correction.
evilproducer,
Your render is beautiful. In fact I think it is more "realistic" than cempion's work.
Despite this, I am drawn to the render quality in the cempion image.
I've attached a portrait to illustrate my point.
The colors are deep and saturated.
Now, it may be naive of me to want to do as well with the Carrara render engine.
Octane and other unbiased render engines are all the rage for good reason.
Otherwise, why would people buy the graphics cards and plug-ins to use them.
Still, I was wondering if I just wasn't setting up my render correctly.
It is a very beautiful render and I have no problems with being compared to him/her. Deep shadows like that are very possible.
First let me say thank you for your feedback, I am so pleased you are seeing the difference in your renders.
I have to say that in general I am not seeing any "washing out" of colours. There are a couple of exceptions, those being hair and backgrounds and I address these specifically in the Realism training to correct them.
If you want a little more contrast in your images, you can by all means reduce the value of the gamma from 2.2, try doing small test renders which are fast to see what works best for your image. While this will increase contrast, if you move it all the way back to 1.0, you are basically getting the default Carrara linear response which I have been arguing against! Values of between 1.6 and 2.2 can work well.
I have attached one of my test renders from when I was exploring all this, it features strong colours that I hope you would agree do not look at all washed out.
Just to let you know that renderers like Octane and Luxrender do an automatic gamma correction of the images, in Octane Render for Carrara it is coded into the Response curve which is used to select a film response from a large number of choices. It is not evident that this is also handling gamma correction, but if you turn it to "Off/Linear" you can get some quite Carrara looking renders! You would generally only do this if you were saving as an HDRI format to do your own offline correction later.
The images you referred to may have a more saturated look for a number of reasons - coloured lights may have been used, Octane has an inbuilt control for saturation which may have been tweaked up, and of course there may have been post-processing to give a more saturated look. But in my like-for-like tests between Carrara and both Luxrender and Octane, I have found that colours are generally just as saturated in Carrara with gamma correction given matching lighting conditions.
And here is an example with a person in it, this is lit with an HDRI plus a single distant light for the sun's direct light.
P.S. Nice image Evil! Kinda reminds me of someone!
Thanks all for your responses.
You reinforced my belief that I need to adjust something in my scene.
I found an improvement by taking the skin texture I was using (Vanilla Sky) and increasing the saturation (with IrfanView I added 100/255).
The scenes below are lit with:
1 key light (white, 100%)
1 flash on the camera to bring out eyes (white, 10%)
Default Bi Gradient Background
GI: Sky Light, 50%
The last image is the 2nd render post-saturated again by 100/255.
I'll keep looking for other things to tweak.
Rock on Carrara!
You can also get some interesting results using a multiplier with the image map and a color.
This image has the exact same skin texture for both models. The difference is that I added a multiplier to the color channel and mulitplied the image map with a very light tan color.
LordGhoul - looks like you are getting close to the results that you were after. The original skin looks very pale, so your changes are helping bring it out more.