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

Dartanbeck · July 2016

wgdjohn said:

Dartanbeck said:

In the Vertex room is there any difference, reason or time I should use Copy/Paste instead of Duplicate or vice versa?

I'm not as much of a modeler as some of the folks around here, though I do a lot of it! LOL

I think that there really is a difference which will present itself at the time we need to use any of those functions. When I was talking about copy/paste, I was actually meaning to demonstrate another method of adding thickness to a model, though the end result would create another polymesh.

Ctrl D is a single, simple command. Done. Nice! I use that a lot.

But let's say that there's part of a model that is supposed to be glass. It's part of the main mesh, the original artist just provides an Alpha map and a separate material zone for the glass area.

In Carrara, we can produce some really realistic-looking refraction effects. But if we apply refraction to a single plane of mesh (with no thickness), the refraction will go way out of whack - since it takes that second layer of mesh to 'end' the zone of refraction - though I'm most certainly not explaining that very engineering-correct! LOL

So I want to 'add thickness' to that glass area of the model. Call me silly, but for some reason, I really need that refraction! If I 'Add Thickness' while just that material zone is selected, it will add thickness to that whole polymesh. If I duplicate the selection of mesh, I'll have that second mesh, but no surrounding polygons between the two layers.

So as a work-around, I'll:

- Select the area and Crtl C to copy it

- While still selected, I'll use my Dynamic Extrusion tool to extrude the mesh to the thickness I want/need

- Satisfied with the new extrusion (if not, use the transform/scale tools until I get it just right) I'll Ctrl V to paste the original select maesh back into place, effectively "Adding Thickness" to that specific part of the mesh - hence providing my refracting gless shader with a more correct result.

This sort of thing works great for star ship where we need to see some characters through the glass of the bridge/cockpit. Some models don't even have the glass there, since there's no interior. With Carrara, it's really quite simple to change that - especially in just a small, simple way - just for that 1.5 second end of the camera zoom, which then switches view to the actual interior model set.

Anyways, that's where I was going with Copy/Paste. Not as a way to keep resources to a minimum, but to add thickness where thickness is needed. Truthfully, I was unaware that Add Thickness doesn't always do an accurate job, since it seems to always do the trick for me - but I don't need that stuff that often. My time is quite limited to where I really enjoy buying in most of my geometry.

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Earlier I was mentioning Ceiling and Floor of the result of Adding Thickness, and how I might even give those a separate material zone. I feel compelled to clarify:

What I meant by Ceiling and Floor of the result, was the connecting perpendicular polygons at the top and bottom - thinking of adding thickness to walls. Actually, there are also extra perpendicular polygons on the side too! LOL

Anyways, instead of performing a UV Unwrap, simply because of those small perpendicular polygons never really appealed to me much. Instead, I'd give those polygons a separate material zone, simply to: A - give me a simple way to select them in the UV Editor, and B - Give me an easy way to give those borders an entirely different shader (sometimes I make them glow, make them invisible, give them some other commonly used shader to save on resources) compared to the walls themselves.

I find myself enjoying the axis projection method of UV Mapping. Then if there are perpendiculars that get lost in the projection, I simply select their far edges and either push them out or pull them in, to give them some UV space. Hmnpf... does that make sense? Much easier to do that to write! LOL

Dartanbeck · July 2016

MDO2010 said:

wgdjohn said:

Oh please let me know what you mean by "reinforce any corners"... think I know what you mean but may have the wrong idea about this. I would want the object to work in any program not just Carrara. TangoAlpha says later that it works in D/S. I'm wondering also about Blender, Hexagon and others.

Let me know if I am on the right track to "reinforce corners" as shown in the pic below... I may be entirely wrong. I would think that only the 2 corner sides would need this and the polylines could be very close to the actual corner itself .

What I mean is best seen by applying a level of smoothing to your model. You will see that any edges that are not creased will be sort of pulled by all the edges resulting in a roundish shape. Adding additional edges near an edge helps it resist this tension and will keep it relatively sharp depending on close together the extra edges and the original edge are.

There are two quick ways to do this in Carrara: by adding a filet to the edge (which splits one edge into two edges) or by using extract around to draw an edge on either side of the original edge. I probably use the filet option most myself, selecting an edge and then using Quick Filet on it to turn it into two edges, but you have to be a little careful with this as it can create some weird geometry at corners sometimes.

In real life almost nothing has a perfectly crisp, razor-sharp edge so it's a good idea to add a litle fillet to the outer edges of a model anyway, since it makes it react a little more realistically to light.

Absolutely, and when I posted (which came directly after this post) about Mike's Carrara Vertex Modeler Tutorials, I certainly did NOT mean to undermine this excellent explanation on the topic, especially since Mark is Spot-On in his reply!

Adding a bit of extra geometry to create a much more stable, well-shaped mesh is one of the many topics that Mike covers in his awesome set of short, but quite complete project tutorials.

Very nice explanation, Mark!

Dartanbeck · July 2016

I just watched one of the projects in this course again and cannot state enough how excellent Mike Moir is at working with Carrara. All of the voices chiming in to this thread are offering excellent advice and inspiration, and it's really fun to read through this thread for instruction, inspiration, learning that there are ALWAYS many ways to accomplish tasks within Carrara.

Still, watching a profesional modeler go through and explain the process during the operation of the process is so priceless. Mike is not only an excellent modeler, but he excells at building custom shaders from scratch, mixing up various features of existing shaders within the browser, laying out the models with their shaders and lighting them up for a beautiful finished render... this straight-to-the-point style set of projects is certainly worth its weight... and then some... and then some more....

Just sayin'! ;)

wgdjohn · July 2016

Dart, your silly. :)

I understand why you use Copy instead of Duplicate... [light bulb when on].

Glass... in the past for glass I've always inserted a cube, at 1 division, with only sides then scaled it. Dynamic Extrusion does make sense. Everything you do seems to make sense.

Dartanbeck · July 2016

wgdjohn said:

Dart, your silly. :)

I understand why you use Copy instead of Duplicate... [light bulb when on].

Glass... in the past for glass I've always inserted a cube, at 1 division, with only sides then scaled it. Dynamic Extrusion does make sense. Everything you do seems to make sense.

I am silly! It is known ;)

probably the shortest video I've ever made!!! LOL It's not... but....

TangoAlpha · July 2016

I always use a vertex cube for window glass. 5mm thick (or 1/4" if you prefer), and slightly oversized to the frame. UV map it and set the shading domain before you copy to other windows. For different window shapes, just resize and remap.

Ah but, why bother remapping? I hear you ask. Surely the window is transparent, and a little stretching here & there won't notice? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps you want to add grime to the corners of the glass, or you want to add shop window sign decals, or...

Dartanbeck · July 2016

TangoAlpha said:

I always use a vertex cube for window glass. 5mm thick (or 1/4" if you prefer), and slightly oversized to the frame. UV map it and set the shading domain before you copy to other windows. For different window shapes, just resize and remap.

Ah but, why bother remapping? I hear you ask. Surely the window is transparent, and a little stretching here & there won't notice? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps you want to add grime to the corners of the glass, or you want to add shop window sign decals, or...

I usually do something similar, except that I normally map them all in the end, rathher than remapping. Cool... I'll have to try it your way, if it works out that way. I'm usually not doing buildings, so it's not always applicable to simply copy the one piece of glas elsewhere.

The example I was talking about above was just adding thickness to existing content that I didn't create. I don't do it like that much... just mentioning it during the add thickness dialog, but then due to my confusing way of speaking, it got blown a bit out of proportion! ;)

wgdjohn · July 2016

TangoAlpha said:

I always use a vertex cube for window glass. 5mm thick (or 1/4" if you prefer), and slightly oversized to the frame. UV map it and set the shading domain before you copy to other windows. For different window shapes, just resize and remap.

Ah but, why bother remapping? I hear you ask. Surely the window is transparent, and a little stretching here & there won't notice? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps you want to add grime to the corners of the glass, or you want to add shop window sign decals, or...

Sounds very much like how I do this in the Vertex room. I'll be posting in a bit included instruction pics for my preferred way for others to see and comment on. Glad you mentioned adding grime, sign decals or anything else. I'm wondering how the windows for Medieval Hall and Garden, on my list to have, were created... rectangle, extrusion or another method.

wgdjohn · July 2016

A simple example for adding a cube at Divisions set to 1 and having precise mesurements. I prefer the control the Vertex modeler has. Note that you can enter only numbers for measuments and leave off "ft" which Carrara will default to. If you wish "in" instead that can be entered instead.

Something I didn't mention in the 2nd pic is that Carrara intreprets .25 in as .02 ft.

[Edit] - See next post by MDO20210 below for what can be also be entered "m", "cm", "mm" etc. Check out TangoAlpha post below pointing out a the way to change units and decimals.

MarkIsSleepy · July 2016

wgdjohn said:

Note that you can enter only numbers for measuments and leave off "ft" which Carrara will default to. If you wish "in" instead that can be entered instead. I've not tried "mm" or "m" that would likely require changing Preferences/General Scene Settings to Metric I suspect.

Something I didn't mention in the 2nd pic is that Carrara intreprets .25 in as .02 ft, see pic.

You don't have to change the preferences to metric to use millimeters or meters. Even if the units are set to "U.S" by default you can still type, for example, "30 cm" into a field and Carrara will convert it to feet when you hit enter. Works for mm, cm and m for sure but I've never tried it with any other units. You only need to change the preference units if you actually want to see all the measurements in metric. I keep my default in feet but often type in measurements in metric and let Carrara convert it when modeling some real world object that I only have metric measurements for.

wgdjohn · July 2016

MDO2010, I should have checked before posting that. Thanks for pointing that out.

wgdjohn · July 2016

Modeling a Plant, Tree trunk or Tubing. I needed a short break from a building and room with windows.

Starting by dropping in a flat disk/circle into the Vertex room and using "-" key to cut down on the Edges and Vertices and scaling the circle extremely. I then used the curve tool to draw out what I call a template or path for the circle to follow. Next I de-selected the path and selected and deleted points/lines that I didn't want for a more or less upright path. Selecting the circle I then used the Path Sweep tool at it's bottom most line. Walla... Instant tubing. Wanting to create a plant stem I first checked making sure that both ends were solid by selecting the any end where I needed a Filled Poly... use Model/Fill Polygon.

In order do taper the bottom to the top I selected the top poly only and then turned on Soft Select, at right side of screen, and cranked it all the way up to get the taper I wanted. To create the taper I went to top view and scaled this top poly until I had a fairly nice taper. Not too bad for my 2nd attempt at a plant stem.

DimensionT shows how to make tubing in Carrara Vertex Modeling Tutorial Part 1 and Part 2.

TangoAlpha · July 2016

wgdjohn said:

TangoAlpha said:

I always use a vertex cube for window glass. 5mm thick (or 1/4" if you prefer), and slightly oversized to the frame. UV map it and set the shading domain before you copy to other windows. For different window shapes, just resize and remap.

Ah but, why bother remapping? I hear you ask. Surely the window is transparent, and a little stretching here & there won't notice? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps you want to add grime to the corners of the glass, or you want to add shop window sign decals, or...

Sounds very much like how I do this in the Vertex room. I'll be posting in a bit included instruction pics for my preferred way for others to see and comment on. Glad you mentioned adding grime, sign decals or anything else. I'm wondering how the windows for Medieval Hall and Garden, on my list to have, were created... rectangle, extrusion or another method.

The windows themselves are simple "cubes", 1/4in thick. The leading is made from simple cubes, stretched and with the ends knocked off. Duplicate them into a lattice or diamond design. I make the verticals a slightly different thickness to the horizontals to avoid texture clashing where they overlap (or you could offset them). The frames were either really simple wood beams or ornate carved stone affairs. (I did post a few wips at the time I was making them - probably in another discussion like this. I'll try and find it when I get a chance)

Units: Carrara's parser is not very clever, so while you can type ft, mm, in, or mi even, it won't understand Ft or FT or extraneous spaces, and it'll scold you for being a naughty boy.

To change default units, you need to go out to the assembly room and select the scene. In the Interface tab at top right, you can then select the units and also the number of decimals displayed (John's 0.25in = 0.02ft point above). It's a shame there's no quick change from inside the vertex room)

wgdjohn · July 2016

Nice tip/advice to avoid texture clashes... now perhaps I'll not sit scratching my head for hours wondering what went wrong.

Messed around with setting display units and decimals at 3 using Scene/Interface tab. Staying with "ft" as unit entering .25 in = .021 ft or with decimals at 4 shows .0208. Changing display units to "in" instead of "ft" will show .025. But of course you already know that.

DesertDude · July 2016

wgdjohn said:
In order do taper the bottom to the top I selected the top poly only and then turned on Soft Select, at right side of screen, and cranked it all the way up to get the taper I wanted. To create the taper I went to top view and scaled this top poly until I had a fairly nice taper. Not too bad for my 2nd attempt at a plant stem.

Nice approach, not too bad at all!

Another method for tapering your model could be Model>Deform>Basic Deformations>Taper. Sadly, in the Vertex room modifiers are not interactive, but you could apply the same modifier in the Assembly room, dial in whatever look you want, note the settings, delete, then jump into the Vertex room and apply the same modifier.

wgdjohn · July 2016

Note the path I used was curved at the top and the poly at top ended up at an angle which didn't look good to me so I rotated it first before doing the scale with soft select. After rescaling it I then rotated it with soft select either off or at 0.

I gave Taper a try and it is quite fast. The original object with Taper is furthest one at rigtht of the replicated bunch.

wgdjohn · July 2016

Yesterday I finally started something that appears to be a good start for Carrara Challenge #26: “Caustics and Nautical” in which I created a Prism object, very simple walls/floor and a half sphere... all created in the in the Vertex room. My instructions for what I did are there but then I don't claim to have a best way of doing anything. :)

Note that for the Prism I did crease all it's outer vertical lines/edges but not the inner... wondering if I should go back and crease the inner verticals also.

otodomus · July 2016

Dartanbeck said:

wgdjohn said:

Dartanbeck said:
But let's say that there's part of a model that is supposed to be glass. It's part of the main mesh, the original artist just provides an Alpha map and a separate material zone for the glass area.

In Carrara, we can produce some really realistic-looking refraction effects. But if we apply refraction to a single plane of mesh (with no thickness), the refraction will go way out of whack - since it takes that second layer of mesh to 'end' the zone of refraction - though I'm most certainly not explaining that very engineering-correct! LOL

That's quite true, I remember having some issues trying to get a realistic refelctions on a light bulb and the solution was to add thickness to the glass area, I can't recall if it was by duplicate the geometry or simply add thickness but this was the result so far:

wgdjohn · July 2016

otodomus said:

Dartanbeck said:

wgdjohn said:

Dartanbeck said:
But let's say that there's part of a model that is supposed to be glass. It's part of the main mesh, the original artist just provides an Alpha map and a separate material zone for the glass area.

In Carrara, we can produce some really realistic-looking refraction effects. But if we apply refraction to a single plane of mesh (with no thickness), the refraction will go way out of whack - since it takes that second layer of mesh to 'end' the zone of refraction - though I'm most certainly not explaining that very engineering-correct! LOL

That's quite true, I remember having some issues trying to get a realistic refelctions on a light bulb and the solution was to add thickness to the glass area, I can't recall if it was by duplicate the geometry or simply add thickness but this was the result so far:

Wow... nice looking light bulb. Add Thickness comes in handy.

wgdjohn · July 2016

Simple Stuff - At play again.... Wanted to add a cylinder which is easy to choose Cread3D/Cylinder... thought I'd take a different route and make one the hard way instead. Below is the route I took. Note that I creased the top and bottom polygon's edges to make it circular. The screen grab was before I'd creased the top... look closely and you can see that the end is rounded.. haha.

There are many youtube videos decribing various ways to make more complicated objects. It's good practice to learn and used the tools in the Vertex room. The very simple description is just that... very simple.

wgdjohn · July 2016

Simple Stuff - This time I finally created something that I could use in this month's Carrara Challenge along with other Vertex objects created for my current WIP.

I'd been wanting to make a jewelry stone that would be for an earring, necklace or a ring. Years before Carrara I made a diamond in Imagine, on the Amiga, and thought I'd start out with something simpler.

A few things not mentioned in the pic about creating the object...

I did verify that this one has 12 faces or what I call sides. Polyhedrons have an incremental number of faces, polygons. I really must look up a definition of the word to find out what the choices for the increments are. Luckily Carrara doesn't bother to holler if the wrong number is entered. Example: A Cube has 6 faces/sides but if 4 or 5 are entered it creates a cube with 6 faces.
Next I added thickness at a very low negative value to give the object an inside also.
Not wanting a smoothed object I chose the "line" tool in the right panel and selected all the lines... then choose Crease Edges from the Model menu to get a sharp edged object. Note: If you want a smoothed value you have a lot of control over this in the Vertex room in the right side panel.
Next I added the texture color, shininess, reflective and transparency values... a bit of tweaking and got something rather nice.

Side Note: This object uses polygons with 5 sides which other programs do not recognize. That needs to be fixed... chose either Triangulate polgons or Tesselate from the Model menu list

3DAGE · July 2016

A polygon is generally a flat plane with straight sides,.

Many Angles,. is a poly gon,. .. many faces,.. is a Poly hedron,.

They all come from the Greek,..Poly,. means many. / as in, Polynesia. (many islands).

Gon is angle,. and Edron is face, or side

just a note of your cylinder,. ..If you have Snap to grid enabled,. you don't really need the guide line,. if you create a circle,. then select dynamic extrude,. and hold Ctrl while you drag to keep the extrusion straight,. then the tool will snap to each grid sector, as you extrude up.,. it's not a instant gratifying as a Path sweep,. but it saves you making the line.

Also,. if you want to crease all the edges on an object,. just double click any face,. (to select the whole mesh) then choose crease edges, you end up with the same thing in less time than selecting each edge.

wgdjohn · July 2016

3DAGE, It's all Greek to me. :) Should I change what I call sides to faces? Think I will as either face or surface is a better choice... [done].

Your method of using Dynamic extrusion is faster than my example.

Oh no... I didn't select the edges one at a time... instead I unselected the object, chose the line tool and drag selected the entire object which only highligted the lines. Not neccesary of course but was how I chose to do it at the time. Why... I don't rememer the last time, if ever, that I creased all edges before... also it may have been a bit late at night and I wasn't thinking straight.

wgdjohn · July 2016

A Silly Object I created:

In my search for an object that would work in the Carrara Challenge #26 "Caustics and Nautical" I choose Caustics. The pic shows a 4 side pyramid in both Vertex and Assemble room views. that I tried which didn't work at all for me. I'd gotten a bit carried away with a shader for it but it's design and a simpler shader may not have worked either.

How did he make this your might ask. Good question indeed... had to go figure out how. Choose "Construct/Insert 3D/Cone" then when the requester pops up...

Most important is to choose the Y axis at right side of requester. Tells Carrara where the base is placed. Y puts the base on the bottom with the peak/top pointing up. This way is faster than rotating the Cone later.
Diameter = your choice
Height = your choice - I believe that I'd changed this to less than the diameter to give it a shorter look.
Number of Sides = 4
Number of sections = your choice - Entering 1 would give you 1 filled face per side.

Another easy method would be to drop in a rectangle onto the floor and then using Dynamic Extrusion bringing the top/peak close. It wold have 4 corners at the top which then would need to be welded to have a sharp peak if you wanted.

I've thought about using Dynamic Extrusion to design a structure similar to Palenque Ruins in a not ruins state and of my own design as well. The entire basic design could be made all with Dynamic Extrusion... afterwards any steps could be designed, openings could be punched out out by Extract Around and finally if wanting a ruins look as for a corner Soft select along with move would be used... I suspect... oh don't forget to add Shading Domains for textures/maps. I can pick out 18 for it but there could be more or less... likely there are more since I didn't factor in each side. I have it already so could just load it and see how many there are. Note that Palenque Ruins is PC+ and only $1.99 - a bargain of course.

Feel free to offer other ways to model this or other objects/structures/people/etc. Don't hesitate to question or correct me when I'm wrong especially if/when I'm wrong.

wgdjohn · July 2016

Update about using Dynamic Extrusion to design a structure similar to Palenque Ruins.

Had to play with my idea last night. Didn't go as easy as expected, figured that I'd just first create the structure with vertically spaced and lined up polylines and go back an adjust them for each level. Note that I'd not put any thought into it ahead of time. Thinking about approaching the task either using snap to grid or perhaps even creating it first as a path similar to what Roygee uses, mentioned earlier. Wait... perhaps I could create it from paths for Ruled Surface to use as guides. Oh the ways, the ways they are endless it seems. No problem only my first attempt. First I must learn how not to do it as last night. Compare this to hammering a nail... first you learn how Not to hit your thumb then how to Not to bend the nail. :)

Note: Dropping a simple 4 corned rectangle is not the best approach. That would not give you vertices and polygons to modify later unless you add those later which would be rather tedious.

Dartanbeck · July 2016

wgdjohn said:

Note: Dropping a simple 4 corned rectangle is not the best approach. That would not give you vertices and polygons to modify later unless you add those later which would be rather tedious.

Sometimes we do, however, and then apply smoothing and push the 'convert' button to give us the additional vertices. Sometimes that's not the way to go, but I like it when I can.

wgdjohn · July 2016

Dartanbeck said:

wgdjohn said:

Note: Dropping a simple 4 corned rectangle is not the best approach. That would not give you vertices and polygons to modify later unless you add those later which would be rather tedious.

Sometimes we do, however, and then apply smoothing and push the 'convert' button to give us the additional vertices. Sometimes that's not the way to go, but I like it when I can.

Ahhh... thanks for reminding me. I recently read about applying smoothing, upping the modeling level then converting which adds more vertices. The higher the render level the more vertices/polys get added. I imagine that if the right edges were creased first they would stay that way without rounding off the sharper corners. Gotta go give that a try.

Dartanbeck · July 2016

Yes... tweak creases, smooth edges, etc.,

A good thing to remember for this is to NOT go more than a smoothing of 1 for converting at any one time. Instead, just use a smoothing of 1, then make whatever tweaks you need at that level of detail. then, if needed, convert another level, etc.,

The reason being that you may (will) end up having to make more difficult selections than what you really need. You'll see what I mean ;)

Dartanbeck · July 2016

Palenque ruins in Woodlands! LOL

wgdjohn · July 2016

Dartanbeck said:

Yes... tweak creases, smooth edges, etc.,

A good thing to remember for this is to NOT go more than a smoothing of 1 for converting at any one time. Instead, just use a smoothing of 1, then make whatever tweaks you need at that level of detail. then, if needed, convert another level, etc.,

The reason being that you may (will) end up having to make more difficult selections than what you really need. You'll see what I mean ;)

Know exactly what you mean. There's no need, most of the time, to have umpteen number of polygons to be edited later.

Dartanbeck said:

Palenque ruins in Woodlands! LOL

Watched that video long time ago. It is very good as well as Woodlands is also even though I don't yet have it.

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