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Welcome Chickenman! It's so great you decided to join the challenge.
I agree with Antara. Image #1 has the strongest impact from composition. I think the metal shaders on the text (very nice!) come across best and the lighting is punchier in #2 though.
I just checked out the DAZ 3D shop. Carrara 8.5 Pro (http://www.daz3d.com/daz-original-software-sale/carrara-8-5-pro) is on sale right now as part of a limited time DAZ Original Software Sale. The price is $65 (77% off) with PC Club discount.
Welcome Chickenman! That is a wonderful mech approach, but I have to ask, will we be seeing your chickenman character in the scene? Remember him from an rrrr image and loved it.
OK, I've been playing around with my silly entry #2, which is with the alien character that I made originally for entry #1. The alien was made by taking my male mannequin and using the magnet tool on its head. I also created and rigged a tentacle monster and a raygun. My raygun is not as cool looking as everyone else's, but it s effective! I used a vertex cone to create a relicator region. I inserted a sphere, made it tiny, and applied the explode modifier. I then replicated the exploding sphere on the vertex cone for a sparking effect. I need to play with it more but you get the idea.
More work to be done, obviously, but this is the basics. No alien motorcycle.
diomede I'm so happy to see the one-eyed-magnet-modified alien again! Tentacle monster is way too cute! Please don't hurt it with your cool cone particle beam. Maybe it just wants to be friends?
I picked up Carrara in Aug when it was on sale for same as it is now.
I also got PhilW's training while they were on for 50% off.
I was sick a few weekends ago so managed to watch the first disk of the tuts.
I have dabbled in DAZ Studio for a few years or as my wife calls it mplaying with my virtual barbies.
I will revisit the first cover and see it I can get the lighting a bit better.
As to the Chickenman appearing I will have to see if I can figur out how to make him in Carrara.
No pressure to force your Chickenman character into the scene, but I do enjoy it.
For future reference, if you can load chickenman directly in Studio from a content library, you can most likely also load it into Carrara. Because of genesis, there are two basic content file types, with slightly different loading protocols. You will often want to adjust shaders, textures, and materials.
Pre-genesis figures, such as Michael 4, Aiko 3, Victoria 4 are generally in a "poser" runtime file structure. These are easily loaded directly in Carrara from the content tab. Just make sure the runtime library has been added to your browser. PhilW shows how.
Genesis, Genesis 2, the most recent dragon, and some other more recent content is in a .duf (or dsf) file structure. Carrara 8.5 is able to load this directly from an appropriate content library, which is not the "runtime" structure mentioned above. However, many users have gotten better results by saving such figure out of Studio in the.duf format, then loading in Carrara, rather than loading directly in Carrara. Others, like me, have gotten better results loading genesis directly in carrara. Your results will vary. PhilW's tut for C8.5 shows how, so not sure if that is the version of Phil's intro tutorial you have or not.
So, bottom line, because you can load your chickenman in Studio, I am confident you will be able to load the character in Carrara 8.5. The best method will depend on whether it is genesis based, or based on M4 or similar character.
In any case, that is one fine WIP for a mech crumbled wall pulp cover.
I just need to work on creating the chickenman in Carrara, I took the toon chicken and the Gen 2 Male/ or M4 depending on the clothing being used.
I have the 8.5 version of Phil's tuts and have only looked at the first disk. I can get around alright with the content sofar and had fun with the Shaders.
Here's another possibility. I built the war machine myself and picked up the old Chevy here:
http://www.sharecg.com/v/67332/browse/5/3D-Model/41-Chevy-Pickup
I tweaked the shaders. The Highlight and Shininess was really bright. I added lights and light effects to the headlights.
The war machine has two particle emitters parented to the "head." One to generate the beam, and the other to emit bulbs set at 1% intensity and with a 35ft. range and 30% falloff. The beam emitter is set so that it does not cast or receive shadows.
I'll go into more detail tomorrow. Off to bed now.
Aaaaaaargh!!!!
The DIM ate my homework.
I picked up some stuff during the recent sales. When I tried to install it, instead of installing, the DIM freaked out and began uninstalling my content, including Carrara. When I tried to reinstall Carrara, it won't run. It just hangs on startup with a (not responding error).
So my most recent WIP is the (not responding) Carrara startup screen. :sick:
If it is not fixed soon, I probably will not be able to get to the one-eyed, purple, magnet-tool, people carrier.
Aaaaaaaargh.
EEEEEEKKK, the dreaded computer gremlins. >:-(
Had a similar issue with DAZ before I bought Carrara.
Now don't use DIM at all.
Is a bit slower on the download/setup side of things but am happier with the result.
Hope a computer guru comes riding to your rescue !!!!!
Or better yet the computer gremlin goes away and allows you to get Carrara fixed.
Regards, Bunyip
EP, looking great !!!!!!
A question about the lighting, should there be some additional minor light underneath the Martian ship/from the green sections ?
Also the effect of the light radiating onto the hill next to the left hand side head-light made me look again.
Would a similar effect to the right head-light look better with a less over-powering light-up of the hill (2/3rds the intensity ????) ?
Have another look and see what you think after you have recharged your batteries from a good sleep.
Love your Martian ship !!!!!!!
EP, looking great !!!!!!
A question about the lighting, should there be some additional minor light underneath the Martian ship/from the green sections ?
Also the effect of the light radiating onto the hill next to the left hand side head-light made me look again.
Would a similar effect to the right head-light look better with a less over-powering light-up of the hill (2/3rds the intensity ????) ?
Have another look and see what you think after you have recharged your batteries from a good sleep.
Love your Martian ship !!!!!!!
Good points. Perhaps I need a stronger intensity light, but I do have a shape light under the war machine. The light on the hillside is from a particle emitter emitting bulb lights set to 1% intensity. I can see if I can lower the intensity in decimals, lower the range or distance fall-off or lower the number of emitted particles.
Man, that sucks! Did the database get corrupted? Hopefully you'll get it all sorted out.
Kind of glad I can't use the DIM and Smart Content.
If you have Studio installed, you should be able to run it and perform a database reset. Hopefully that'll get it back for you - it worked for me after the PostGreSQL fubar.
Woohoo! Carrara is up and running again. I appreciate everyone's suggestions but the helpful administrators watching the Commons forum sorted it out for me. Thanks, Daz.
The content side of it didn't matter that much because up to this point I haven't used content for the one-eyed alien project, but I really needed Carrara up and running to complete a Carrara project. I had actually considered digging through my old file storage devices and installing Carrara 7.2, but that turned out not to be necessary.
Oddly enough, in reinstalling stuff on the content side, this is one case in which Carrara was using content more smoothly than Daz Studio. When I did some tests to see if everything had reinstalled correctly, the Genesis 2 Female was giving me an error (duplicate formula) in Daz Studio, but not in Carrara. Didn't matter for this project, but given all the complaints about Genesis in Carrara, it was interesting to have an example of problems in Studio that were not problems in Carrara (once I got Carrara running, that is).
Just because my content has been reinstalled, there may be some gratuitous use of extra objects and figures, just to make sure stuff installed correctly. If so, the word anachronistic may creep into the title. We'll see. This has put me in an even more silly mood.
Glad you got it sorted. Gratuitous is good! Nothing wrong with using Content either. ;-)
Agreed - that is one reason I still try to throw a few renders in the RRRR events.
I actually thought it might be a fun challenge to pick a theme and then say that people had to use exactly 5 pieces of content - no more, no less. In some ways, the "no less" requirement could be just as challenging as the "no more."
Won't have to worry about that one for a while. ;-)
So, my scene is starting out using Howie Farkes' Forest Drive. For some reason, the trees wouldn't render correctly across the network. It wasn't a leaves issue. Those are installed on the nodes as well as the host machine. The issue was with the render buckets.
My Carrara 7.2 Pro network consists of the host machine which is a PPC G5 1.8 Ghz. single processor Power Mac running OS X 10.4.11. The node machines are an MDD Dual Processor 1 Ghz. G4 running OS X 10.5.8 and an Intel 2.66 Ghz Core 2 Duo iMac running OS X Mavericks. The issue I was having was that the tree branches rendered by the Intel iMac wouldn't line up with the branches rendered in adjacent buckets by the PPC Macs. The PPC Macs lined up with each other. When I replaced Howie's trees with the trees in the Basic Plants directory in the Object browser, they worked correctly. I'm not sure what the issue could be that would cause this bug.
So, as I mentioned, I replaced Howie's trees with a couple from the Basic Plants directory. Specifically, the Burr Oak and the Maple. I went into the plant editor and got rid of the leaves as I wanted more of a late fall look. I also edited the trees in the advanced tab by adding some more curvature to the branches and other adjusting other settings. I replaced the bark shader with one of my own.
The other changes I made to Howie's scene was to greatly reduce the number of replicated objects all across the board. I also got rid of the fake GI light rig and the atmosphere. Instead of the atmosphere, I'm using a bi-gradient color in the Background.
Cool. Could you post the gradient? This is probably an underutilized approach.
Agreed - that is one reason I still try to throw a few renders in the RRRR events.
I actually thought it might be a fun challenge to pick a theme and then say that people had to use exactly 5 pieces of content - no more, no less. In some ways, the "no less" requirement could be just as challenging as the "no more."
Won't have to worry about that one for a while. ;-)
You never know. I thought for sure Hermit the Amphibian rounding second base and heading to third with Vickie on the Zeppelin would have had a few more votes the last time around. I wasn't expecting to win, I just thought it was more original than the Cheesecake in a Studio with a Nearly Nekkid Vicky render.
Cool. Could you post the gradient? This is probably an underutilized approach.
As my old cousin Jason Voorhees used to say, "axe, and ye' shall receive!"
Edited to add, that you couldn't really hear him saying that, what with all the screaming and dying and stuff. Ahhh... Those were the days....
The lighting in this scene is a bit more simplified than in my last scene. For my "moon" light, I'm using a simple distant light set to a medium blue/gray at around 50% intensity. I use a distant light set to around 20% intensity and a more gray/blue color, pointing straight up and excluding the ground and some of the replicated leaf litter models, to simulate light reflected from the ground.
The lights with the generic names are accent lights parented to the Martian War Machine models to provide internal lights or to simulate reflected lights. I also used two spotlights on the pickup truck for headlights. For effect, I added a 3D light cone, 3D light sphere (to hide the point origin of the cone), and a lens flare, which I dialed down quite a bit.
The named lights are named for the function they perform. For instance, I have two shape lights to under light the volumetric clouds with a reddish orange color, and a yellowish orange color to suggest burning fires beyond the crest of the ridge.
I have a bulb light selected as a particle for a particle emitter. This is to create light for the heat ray, which is another particle emitter that emits the triangle 2 shape in the emitter.
The particle emitters are parented to the "head" bone of the war machine. There are two. One for the light and one for the particles in the heat ray. The shape I iused was the the Triangle 2 shape in the pulldown menu.
To add a light or other object to the emitter, you would select Object from the pulldown menu, and then in the Advanced tab near the bottom is where you would add the object.
I have both emitters set so that they don't collide with the war machine. If you have a rigged figure like I do, or a V4 or Genesis or whatever, you need to make sure that it is the Model or Actor that is selected and not just the top of the figure group or bones.
For the heat ray emitter I used a color gradient to set the color. to drive the gradient I used the Particle shader and chose particle size as the method.
For the light emitter, I initially tried a brightness of 1%, but that was a bit much. fortunately, you can enter a decimal value in the field even if it doesn't display it. For instance, I changed the brightness of the bulb to .25%. It shows up as 0%, but renders at the set level.
More particle nonsense:
The Martian War Machine is inspired by the machines created for George Pal's 1953 version of H.G. Well's War of the Worlds.
I modeled it in the vertex modeler mostly by using symmetry and soft select to push and pull polys around on a flattened disk shape I made in the Spline Modeler and converted to a vertex model. I used extrude along a poly line to create the neck, and edge fillet on the neck to create the joints.
The model consists of two polymeshes and is relatively low resolution, though I do smooth at level two for rendering. The main polymesh is the craft. The second one is the light/reflector inside the heat ray lens.
The rig for the neck has a ridiculous amount of bones. I want to re-rig it more efficiently when I get my entry done for the contest.
Well poop!
Perhaps it wasn't just Howie's trees that were rendering wrong as I wondered in this post:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/47148/P495/#700799
I see the included Carrara trees are also doing the same thing with the render buckets. Maybe it didn't show up in my low AA test renders? Howie's trees did, but then, they're more detailed and better all around so any imperfections in the render would stick out like a sore thumb.
Below is a sample of what I'm talking about. You can see where on tile rendered because some of the adjacent branches don't line up where one tile ends and the other begins. How do I know the difference between the PPC rendered tiles and the Intel iMac rendered tiles? easy. The iMac renders its tiles much more quickly while the older Macs take longer to get their job done, so observing which tiles are advancing faster and comparing them to the slower rendered tiles leads me to the conclusion that PPC host and render node line up the branches in the tiles and the Intel iMac doesn't.
Although.... I do notice it is worse where there are a lot of branches and not as much where the branches are thinner.
Diomede Goodness! I just checked in and read about your Carrara problem. I'm so glad you got it working.
Evilproducer Your Martian war machine is awesome! I especially like the subtle lighting of the sky, the silhouette of the trees on the ridge, high contrast light on the trees near the war machine, and headlights.
thanks for the mini tut s evil, I always learn a lot when I read your posts instead of just looking at the pictures :)
Thanks Mister Finney and SukyL.
I thought that I was going to do my final render, but then I noticed a mistake in my light linking. I wanted the ground bounce light to ignore the ground and slightly under light the plants, but I forgot that they would create shadows. Normally not an issue, but with the war machines in the air, and with me upping the number of replicated plants and leaf litter, the light created shadows on the bottoms of my machines. I could have used soft shadows, but that would have taken forever. My solution was to exclude the machines along with the ground from the light, then duplicate light and have it light only the machines.
I'm re-rendering with some slightly denser clouds, fixed bounce lights and a couple other minor tweaks. The rust shader is on the hubcaps of the soon-to-be-cooked truck.
The underused feature is the particle emitter. I don't use it nearly enough!
Edited to add: I rendered this with just the PPC Macs and no weirdness with the branches. It must be how something is calculated on the Intel iMac or something.
wow that looks amazing evil !