Modeling Objects in Carrara - Q&A - Come One and All

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  • Thanks, Phil.  I had not changed rotation to angles.  That did it!  

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited September 2016
    I would rreally love to be able to have the front wheels turn together.  Any way I can do that?  I have ERC from Fenric but havve never figured out how to use it.

    At first I thought about grouping the wheels/tires... don't bother it will not work like you want. So I sit here deep in thought drumming fingers on desk... hmm ERC what does that stand for?????  "Enchanted Reality Crater"... Naaah that can't be right. Hmmmm... "Equal Rotation of Centers".... sounds more likely but probably still not exactly what it means. Hmph...Oh well.

    That Other Persona,  Knobby tires had occurred to me... here is what I was thinking... either raise or lower every other poly... for each row I'd want them staggered... will also work with either odd or even number of rows. "Thinking to self"...Could I also take it a step further and divide each poly into triangles and do the same for a the triangles for a tread design??? Sure that would also me thinks.

    Me also thinks I got up too early and didn't get enough sleep.

    Perhaps I will read this once my mind clears up.  ERC Tutorial - ShareCG.com   I've not read this yet. Let me know if you have a problem with the file or link.

    I've looked for ERC in the Carrara 7 manual with no luck. :(

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584

    It's also important to UV map our models before we duplicate them, otherwise wer'e just creating a whole bunch of extra work. (thinking of things like those tyres above...)

    True Dat!

    Did you ever forget? Sure you have... otherwise you likely wouldn't have said it! LOL

    Personally, I can't count how many times I did that! The cool part is that Carrara makes duplication such an fun and easy task. Just delete all the duplicates, perform UV Mapping, get it shaded, start over with duplicates! LOL

    Great point, Tim!

     

    Yup. Many times! And you're right, it's almost always quicker to delete the duplicates and redo them after mapping. Not so bad applying shaders after the fact, but it's still much quicker if you don't have to! (And there's nothing like a stint or two applying the same shaders to a whole bunch of things in DS to make you appreciate Carrara's Master Shader system!)

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    wgdjohn said:

    Thanks,

    Took me a bit to figure out how to move the detached polys so I added some text to the included pic. Seems like I did a fair job... Ok class dismissed... hope I don't flunk.

    It depends on the result. In my example, I had to scale my detached polygons backwards to flip the left edge to the right, or that column of polygons would go backwards against the shader.

    Dart,  By scale I imagine that you mean you resized the huge rectangle of detached polys to make them equal in size as the original squares.

    This is what I did... I think it's the same or close to what you did and TangoAlpha described further.  After detaching polys I moved the offending row off the grid to the right side... not touching/moving the the left side I then grabbed the right side and dragged it beyond/past the left side. So now I have a new, so to speak, left side... what I mean by, so to speak, is that it used to be on the far right side.

    By North and South Poles do you mean the two peaks, upper left and lower right? I never touched either the North or the South poles but did move the "new" left side a tiny bit to be as close as I could for aligning to create equal squares...Also didn't add a seamless texture map to check my work... should have.

    Alert --- Santa lives at North Pole, don't want to end up with charcoal in stocking this year. Don't get presents from South Pole. :)

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,224

    I would rreally love to be able to have the front wheels turn together.  Any way I can do that?  I have ERC from Fenric but havve never figured out how to use it.

    I would make half of an front axle, and put a morph on it that bends the end one way, then another that bends the opposite way. Then duplicate that axle and flip the duplicate so that the morphs oppose each other. Then parent the wheels to those ends ;)

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,224
    wgdjohn said:
    wgdjohn said:

    Thanks,

    Took me a bit to figure out how to move the detached polys so I added some text to the included pic. Seems like I did a fair job... Ok class dismissed... hope I don't flunk.

    It depends on the result. In my example, I had to scale my detached polygons backwards to flip the left edge to the right, or that column of polygons would go backwards against the shader.

    Dart,  By scale I imagine that you mean you resized the huge rectangle of detached polys to make them equal in size as the original squares.

    This is what I did... I think it's the same or close to what you did and TangoAlpha described further.  After detaching polys I moved the offending row off the grid to the right side... not touching/moving the the left side I then grabbed the right side and dragged it beyond/past the left side. So now I have a new, so to speak, left side... what I mean by, so to speak, is that it used to be on the far right side.

    By North and South Poles do you mean the two peaks, upper left and lower right? I never touched either the North or the South poles but did move the "new" left side a tiny bit to be as close as I could for aligning to create equal squares...Also didn't add a seamless texture map to check my work... should have.

    Alert --- Santa lives at North Pole, don't want to end up with charcoal in stocking this year. Don't get presents from South Pole. :)

    LOL!

  • wgdjohn said:
    I would rreally love to be able to have the front wheels turn together.  Any way I can do that?  I have ERC from Fenric but havve never figured out how to use it.

    At first I thought about grouping the wheels/tires... don't bother it will not work like you want. So I sit here deep in thought drumming fingers on desk... hmm ERC what does that stand for?????  "Enchanted Reality Crater"... Naaah that can't be right. Hmmmm... "Equal Rotation of Centers".... sounds more likely but probably still not exactly what it means. Hmph...Oh well.

    That Other Persona,  Knobby tires had occurred to me... here is what I was thinking... either raise or lower every other poly... for each row I'd want them staggered... will also work with either odd or even number of rows. "Thinking to self"...Could I also take it a step further and divide each poly into triangles and do the same for a the triangles for a tread design??? Sure that would also me thinks.

    Me also thinks I got up too early and didn't get enough sleep.

    Perhaps I will read this once my mind clears up.  ERC Tutorial - ShareCG.com   I've not read this yet. Let me know if you have a problem with the file or link.

    I've looked for ERC in the Carrara 7 manual with no luck. :(

    ERC is a plugin from Fenric, thus no info in the C manual.  Yeah there is stuff over on ssharecg, but I am not a member there and well that is that.

    http://www.daz3d.com/carrara-enhanced-remote-control

    I bought it on sale ages ago, tried it unsuccessfully, and let it collect a little dust.  Until now.  It is so nice to see tires moving together.  One thing I haven't figured out yet is: the tire group is set up with the hubcap on one side.  Duplicated and fliipped around, when linked with ERC it flips back.  I solved this by recreating a new version, but there could be a solution within ERC.  

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,139
    wgdjohn said:
    One thing I haven't figured out yet is: the tire group is set up with the hubcap on one side.  Duplicated and fliipped around, when linked with ERC it flips back.  I solved this by recreating a new version, but there could be a solution within ERC.  

    You probably have the "All" option selected, so that all rotations of the Master wheel are being transferred unaltered to the second wheel, and this is overriding your previous "flipping sround". You can select an option to limit the transfer to just the X, Y or Z axis and you should be able to use this to get the effect you want.  Eg, Use the Z-axis for the turn of the wheels, and use either the X or Y axis (depending on the orientation of the wheels) to flip the wheel.  But if you want the wheels to rotate as they more along, you are into another issue, as if you flip the wheel, they should rotate in different directions.  For this you will need the Advanced options in ERC, with (let's say) X-rotation of one wheel = -X of the other.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    wgdjohn said:
    I would rreally love to be able to have the front wheels turn together.  Any way I can do that?  I have ERC from Fenric but havve never figured out how to use it.

    At first I thought about grouping the wheels/tires... don't bother it will not work like you want. So I sit here deep in thought drumming fingers on desk... hmm ERC what does that stand for?????  "Enchanted Reality Crater"... Naaah that can't be right. Hmmmm... "Equal Rotation of Centers".... sounds more likely but probably still not exactly what it means. Hmph...Oh well.

    That Other Persona,  Knobby tires had occurred to me... here is what I was thinking... either raise or lower every other poly... for each row I'd want them staggered... will also work with either odd or even number of rows. "Thinking to self"...Could I also take it a step further and divide each poly into triangles and do the same for a the triangles for a tread design??? Sure that would also me thinks.

    Me also thinks I got up too early and didn't get enough sleep.

    Perhaps I will read this once my mind clears up.  ERC Tutorial - ShareCG.com   I've not read this yet. Let me know if you have a problem with the file or link.

    I've looked for ERC in the Carrara 7 manual with no luck. :(

    ERC is a plugin from Fenric, thus no info in the C manual.  Yeah there is stuff over on ssharecg, but I am not a member there and well that is that.

    http://www.daz3d.com/carrara-enhanced-remote-control

    Thanks for pointing out that ERC is a plugin... I checked the link and ends up that I'd bookmarked it quite awhile ago but thought it was for Figure control... hah... should have read it entirely.

    I have had a different email addy set up for ShareCG for quite some time... there is some very good content there for Carrara etc, some created with other programs but will import into Carrara, by some very good modelers as well as some plug-ins for Carrara to make life easier.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,224

    Yeah, it may be well worth the free account over at ShareCG, maybe not. fabaone (Faba, here) has some pretty fine examples - tutorial images with accompanying CAR files as examples. I still get confused by them, but I have a short attention span.

    The thing is, it seems like it's fairly easy to get going once one gets used to it. Like so many other things, it takes practice. PhilW gives an excellent tutorial using it to control the flaps of the biplane we build in Advanced Carrara Techniques, too.

    When it was released, Fenric was saying that he was building under the requests of Faba (mostly) for some much needed animation assistance in Carrara - helping to allow us to build Enhanced Remote Controls, like in other things, like Poser. But this thing grew beyond that. Anyways, he was saying that it's a hugely different thing - making the tools work than trying to explain how they work. So Faba created those pdf tutorials to help us learn how it works.

    There was a time when I started out to learn it, and I think that I had a pretty good understanding of how it works in many different ways. But I was still in optimization mode - not so much animation setup mode... so I never got into the practice of making it work.

    Faba has a tutorial showing:

    • How to easily control the swaying motion of a lizard's tail
    • Bounce a Ball
    • Control all the joints in a hand
    • Follow a Path
    • How to Talk using ERC

    She also has a cool little truck model with ERC set up on it - probably doing what you're doing now - and prabably more, knowing Faba! ;) 

  • Thanks, Phil.  Thanks for the help.  Played with it for just a bit, but it will take longer to get a hold of it.  For now I will stick with Basic settings; that is a lot more than I had just the other day.

    Dartanbeck - Advanced Techniques. . . I have a copy and will to dig it out!  

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,224

    Dartanbeck - Advanced Techniques. . . I have a copy and will to dig it out!  

    Chapter 4 is the Modeling of the Biplane - the beautiful (and deadly) Sopwith Camel

    The 8th episode of Chapter 4 begins with the discussion of dealing with the moving parts, now that the model is all built and beautiful (Phil did an Outstanding Job!!!)

    Better still, since you own ERC, you can have a look at his final product from the working files for a hands-on look!

    I absolutely Love the working files from this course - and love breaking them out for just that - dig around inside and have a look within Carrara of exactly what his already clear instructions are teaching.

    Phil says I'm his #1 fan... and that very well might be true, for I absolutely cherish these lessons.

    In this example, we get the Sopwith Camel ready to fly, sitting in a beautiful grassy field scene by the time he saved the final example file! It's gorgeous!

    The rest of the course is just as magical. The furniture exercises are wonderful, several ways to make clothing for V4 (works for any model), Particles techniques, UV Mapping, Building pretty much anything in many different ways, using shader's displacement to build an entire city from a single flat plane!!! 

    I really enjoy this exercise of building this wonderful, yet easy-to-make and tweak city scene!

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945
    edited September 2016

    Hi,

    I'm trying to build a shower head and I don't know how to connect the part between the loop selection and it's duplication.

    Dynamic extrusion and bridge  won' t work.

    Help please !

     

    Capture (2).JPG
    691 x 704 - 45K
    Post edited by DUDU on
  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945

    OK, solved.

    I had to fill the polygons first and make the bridge after.

    I don't think it's the first time I ask for that, perhaps my neurological problems... frown

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited September 2016

    Dudu,

    Why didn't you just select the line, before duplicating, and just extrude it in the first place?

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • wgdjohn said:

    Why didn't you just select the line, before duplicationg, and just extrude it in the first place?

    Hindsight is 40/40. :)

    Another way would be to extrude one loop until the extruded points just about exactly line up with the other circle and then weld them.  Only works if the number of points are the same and they are more or less overlapping each other though.

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945

    Ha, you are right both, it wasn't working because the face with the holes is to hight polygons and my computer is not really new.

    Therefore, I must wait about 15 seconds until the extrude tool operates.

    Thanks for your answers !

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Updated links page. Now has more modeling questions/problems links to help out. Check out the additions Here.

  • 3DAGE3DAGE Posts: 3,311

     

    MDO2010 said:

    Hindsight is 40/40. :)

    thinking about it now,. you're probably right

  • 3DAGE said:

     

    MDO2010 said:

    Hindsight is 40/40. :)

    thinking about it now,. you're probably right

    Ha! :)

    I just noticed I typed 40/40 instead of 20/20. blush

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Updated links page. Added one link today - Creating faces from vertices?.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Removing Named Polygons - Is there a way to to this?

    I've created an object and have named polygons for different sections of the object. Is there a way to clear all the names?  I've tried selecting different polygons and renaming those to existing names but they seem to retain the original polygons and not remove polygons I have already named. I looked in the Carrara 7 pdf manual which seems to only show how to name them and not how to clear all the names back down No names. I can of course change their original names to different names but I want to create entirely different polygon selections. Gosh... had to quit fighting it and ask... started to get me dizzy... well dizzier than normal. :)

  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584

    Don't think there is. best I've managed is to put everything into a single name group. There might be a way by hacking the .car file, but I haven't investigated that.

  • 3DAGE3DAGE Posts: 3,311

    The only way to clear,. or remove the names of selections,. is to overwrite,.

    for example,. If i make a model and then name three different polygon selections (tom, dick, harry,),. i can then select those areas by name.

    If I select the entire object,. go to name / selection / polygons,. and name it Bob,. then all the previous selection names are deleted and the only available selection becomes Bob.

     

    The same applies to shading domains,. or any other named selections or groups,.

    If you have 50 different shading domains set up on a model,. and you select the entire model, and set it to one domain,. then nothing can be set to any other domain because all domains have become one.

    hope that makes sense.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    TangoAlpha,  Thanks... I quit trying.... now have to wait until everything quits spinning. :)  Perhaps I take a look into a .car file with no names and compare it to one that has a name.

    Andy,  Sadly it makes too much sense.  I see a need for a "Clear one" or even "Clear all".  I'll have to keep that in mind before I go naming anything in the future and to save a version of the object with No names before I go crazy handing names out and saving as a different filename.

    Thanks folks!

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,224

    No... it's really simple if you want to "Clear All". All you have to do is Select All, then Selection > Name > and name it anything. Now you'll only have that one name in there - so then you can make more precise selections/names from scratch, except that that one name will always remain, unless all of the verts or whatever you're naming get replaced.

    So for that one name (when renaming All), you could just call it: "Everything Else", if you were planning to do more naming of other selections.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Dart,  Cool... Are you referring to Domains also. I've not yet tried Andy's suggestion but planned to experiment anyway as well as look into the .car file for what changes and where it changes.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,224

    Nope. Just named selections. Domains are even easier - just select a domain and hit the DEL button in the global tab. The bottom-most (upper on the list) domain will gain the polygons of the newly deleted domain.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited September 2016

    No... it's really simple if you want to "Clear All". All you have to do is Select All, then Selection > Name > and name it anything. Now you'll only have that one name in there - so then you can make more precise selections/names from scratch, except that that one name will always remain, unless all of the verts or whatever you're naming get replaced.

    As you and Andy suggested I did Select All and rename as 1 name. Still that is not the same as "Clear All"... since there is now 1 name there is still a name for either a polymesh, polygon, edge or vertex if any name(s) were assigned after the vertex object's creation. It's no longer brand spanking new. :)

    Thinking about this last night and today I came up with a few other things to try which did not work of course. Below is what I have tried unsuccesfuly.

    • Open the file to clear all the names from. Copy the object either from Assembly room or Model room. Open a New File... insert vertex from menu... first create a new polymesh... now Pasted the object to be cleared. No dice! Retained the names.
    • Tried much as above but after Copying the one with names I closed that file... then chose New/Empty scene file. Problem here was Paste of the Copied object was not available... probably because I closed the file... Nope I messed up... tried it again and Paste worked this time... but No Dice! names were still there.
    • Wondering what would happen if a different polymesh was welded to the one with the names I tried that. Still No Dice!

    No dice... no dice... me gets No Dice. :(

    I was able to clear all the names... Knowing what would happen to the vertex object I converted it to a Primitive and then back to a Vertex object. Aha No More Names... However each quad has now been converted to a tri. Not Acceptable!.

    Guess I'll next dive into a .car with no names and one with a few names. Best to just use a simple vertex cube for this test.

    Hmmm.... wonder if another modeler has a function for clearing the names and retaining the quads or whatever was used??

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584

    You can untriangulate a vertex model from the Model menu, although in my experience it doesn't get them all (maybe because that'd create n-gons or non-planar faces?)

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