WGD Crazy Artwerks

wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
edited October 2016 in Art Studio

John's Crazy Scenes and 3D model creations.

InPrismed by wgdjohn

My first experimenting with Caustic renders in Carrara. Below is was entry for Carrara Challenge #26: “Caustics and Nautical”. Note that very simple shaders are used... caustics does the rest of what looks which adds new levels to appear as shaders. The possibilities are cool... not as predictable as a shader but very interesting. All objects you see and one you don't were created by myself in Carrara for the render below.

InPrismed img

If you are interested in modeling check this out Modeling Objects in Carrara - Q&A - Come One and All. There are many tips offered by PAs and experienced models as well as myself. There are also some mini tutorials and more.

John ~Wilson Graphic Design~

Post edited by wgdjohn on
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Comments

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,026

    Looking forward to more of your "crazy artwerks."    Will be following with great interest.

  • That's an interesting image.  I haven't done much with caustics in any program yet.  I do like the effects, though.

  • Cool!  I know very little about Carrara,  Looking forward to seeing more!

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited October 2016

    Knittingmommy,

    I've just gotten interested in Caustics which has, to me so far, rather unpredictable results. What is so cool is that it can create some nice looking shaders out of nearly nothing, very simple shaders. head wax has been an influence and help in getting me very interested in Caustics.

    TabascoJack,

    See page 1 in my Modeling Objects in Carrara - Q&A - Come One and All thread. I have some links to other threads and YouTube videos that were extremely helpful and easy ways to learn more about other Carrara learning sources... not just modeling. For many examples of the many varied things Carrara is capable of check out Carrara Challenge #27: “Carrara 9, Give us a Sign” Voting thread: Winners Announced! there are some incredible renders there as in past Challenges. Hey... why not vote while you are there. :)

    If you don't have Carrara it is on sale at $45.50 today which is a bargain for what you get... all the DAZ and Carrara content along with plenty of example scenes. Note that Genesis 3 will not yet work in Carrara as is... but hopefully soon...this nuisance is being worked on so it will.

    diomede, At this time I'll be posting scenes that you have seen in a Carrara Challenge or my Modeling thread... I just can't crank out the renders as fast as PhilW, Stezza, Dartanbeck, head wax, yourself and others.

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • That's very cool.  I am going to check out the modelling thread when I get a chance.  going out of town tomorrow for the weekend but will hunt it down when I get back.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited September 2016

    John's Crazy Scenes and 3D model creations.  "The Future Is Upon Us"  by wgdjohn

    My further Caustic Rendering experiments. My entry for Carrara Challenge 27 "Carrara 9 Give us a sign" entry thread

    The only objects not created by myself were the Fonts which I restyled in TypeTool 3 from Fontlab and then imported with Carrara's Text editor. The 9 I later changed into a vertex object.

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited October 2016

    John's Crazy Art.

    Sedum Bloom by wgdjohn

    This was created on my Amiga 4060 Tower. I used ImageFX to tranform and composite at least 2 digital pictures. One is of some Sedum in my garden... the other is of another flower in my garden. Ran accross this image I'd worked on quite awhile back looks pretty kewl to me. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did creating it.

    Sedum Bloom

    SedumBloom-2037cm2.png
    1024 x 768 - 1M
    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited November 2016

    Voting for Carrara Challenge 28 Marriage Voting Thread is over.

    I've posted my entry here... see Below.

    Hey folks I have an idea, imagine that,... why not go vote if you find time,  Please vote for the render you think is the best... not necessarily mine... I enter in order to learn and take my Carrara art and modeling to new levels.

    Keep an eye on the Carrara Challenges. New ones are entered in the Forums in the main Carrara discussions.

     

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • I've been following the thread.  Not ready to enter a Carrara challenge, but I've been playing with the software.  I love seeing what you guys come up with in the challenges.  :)

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548
    edited October 2016

    I open it, stare at it for half an hour then close it again lol.  I'm totally lost

    Post edited by IceDragonArt on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    I've been following the thread.  Not ready to enter a Carrara challenge, but I've been playing with the software.  I love seeing what you guys come up with in the challenges.  :)

    In each Challenge I either learn new features that Carrara has. Whenever I run into a problem folks in the WIP are eager to help me out. I've had Carrara since version 4 Pro but never put a scene together until after watching one WIP early this year and entering the next one.  Wish I'd stumbled upon them a long time ago.

    For anyone wanting to learn a lot about Carrara I recommned the below videos available from DAZ.  They are on sale at various times.

    I also have some good links available on YouTube in my Modeling Objects in Carrara - Q&A - Come One and All thread. A great point to get even more links and information is... ►►► Carrara Information Manual ◄◄◄  - All things Carrara. Keep your eyes open for all of the many links.

    Modeling in Carrara is funnnnn! - Carrara Rocks!

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited November 2016

    [Edit]  All seems to back to normal now or very close to it.  Ignore my rambling below.  If you still experience/find any problems report to Site down and malfunctioning or open a request for the problem so it/they get fixed. [end Edit]

    Alert to All:  Seems that the the DAZ3D site inculding the Forums are experiency problems. See Missing renders in gallery which kinda explains why many images do not appear.. including nearly all but the latest ones of mine and many others.  Some images are shown while others are not. Note if you see the tiny version for an image  you will most likely get a 404 image/page not found error.  I've made Help/Support aware that I'm not impressed by this since it's still going on.

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    I open it, stare at it for half an hour then close it again lol.  I'm totally lost

    You open Carrara an are lost?  Naa... this can't be true. What do you want to do? Long ago when I first got Carrara 4 Pro I started out in the browser tabs... loading landscapes and then some of the other content it still comes with. Even today I'll watch a video either on YouTube or by Phil Wilkes or mmoir to help improve my modeling, shading, posing etc.

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    I think I will go look up the videos you mentioned above.  I learn best by watching tutorials to get an idea of where everything is and what everything does.  Sadly, the links in the carrara thread to tutorials don't work anymore.

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    I'm interested in modelling and rendering mostly.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Ice Dragon Art,  Those videos are often on sale... Carrara Modeling Tutorials is not expensive but after not using Carrara for awhile I'd forgotten what I knew... I found that before watching it again I needed to learn more about the modeler in Carrara so watched a bunch of YouTube videos and playing them again and again until I could recreate what they were doing.  To start my re-learning I found that Carrara Vertex Modeling Tutorial Part 1 and Part 2 were great in learning some of the tools again and is one of a few very good one that I have listed in Modeling Objects in Carrara - Q&A - Come One and All.  The ones by Cripeman are *very* good also. After watching the video I've found that I can find things easier in the manual for Carrara... there is a lot of good info there but I need a video as reading manuals ain't my thang... they expain what a feature does and basically how to use it. Even with videos and manuals I still have questions which is why I created my Modeling thread.

    For rendering I found that the Carrara Challenges to be very helpful. Carrara folks are always eager to lend me a hand when I get stuck. Carrara 8.5 Tutorial Video will walk you through rendering and all other aspects, things to know, about Carrara and is the best Infinite Skills video by Phil Wilkes to begin with. PhilW's other videos will take you beyond that.

    I'm happy with all my rendered images... each Carrara Challenge makes me even better... my latest is entry 1 in Carrara Challenge 28 Marriage Entry Thread I'm even more pleased with. After voting is over I'll post it here... probably in late October or in November.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    That's an interesting image.  I haven't done much with caustics in any program yet.  I do like the effects, though.

    Caustics work great with *very* relective surfaces and messing around with it's settings in Carrara'a render room. Caustic's does slow down rendering a bit so when I'm just positioning things at the beginning I'll turn it off after getting the settings just right... when everythings placed I'll turn Caustics back on and make any final adjustments that are needed. Same is true for Hair and other objects that take a long time to render... place them, do render to check, then uncheck "General/visible" for object or groups in Assemble room.

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548
    wgdjohn said:

    Thank you!  As well as the links for the other stuff.  Will start watching these as soon as I have a spare second.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Understand that... take your time... I did... bookmarked any that looked good and watched as I had the time.

  • I'm still lurking around in the Carrara Discussion threads.  I had a major computer meltdown and I'm not completely back up to speed.  Looks like I'll be trying to set Carrara up in Linux and, if I can, I'll start playing around with it again.  In the meantime, I'll continue to lurk.  :)  I do have that First Steps thread bookmarked!  :)

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Knittingmommy,  Just read about your losing the Windoze machine yesterday. :(  Reminded me that I need to buy another one or more hardrives to store my backups to.. the ones I have are mostly full.

  • Well, I can't say I'm going to be sorry to see Windows go bye, bye.  I had nothing but problems with the upgrade to Win 10.  My upgrade was the flakiest thing I have ever encountered and I've some very flaky Windows installations.  I had just managed to save up for another 3 TB HD when this happened so I put Linux on the new HD and once I get everything transferred over I'll probably just end up reformatting the Windows drive which will give me another 3 TB of HD space.  I have a portable 3 TB drive that I store all of my zipfiles from DAZ, also, as well as other important downloads.  I should be good as far as memory for awhile now, I hope.  DAZ related stuff can certainly fill up a hard drive.  :)  As soon as I get all of my DS files transferred and situated, I'm going to see what I can do about getting Carrara running under Linux.  I'm hopeful.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited October 2016

    John's Crazy Modeling:

    Below shows a simple tombstone I created/modeled for a group animation. Click on the image to be wisked away to YouTube for the full video with sound FX. As stated... this was a gouip effort... my contribution was Livonia's tombstone.

                                         The Final Gesture - Animation Clubs First Animation

    image

     

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,026

    Enjoyed teaming up with you, wgdjohn.  Just noticed that the background tombstones switch places!  In the opening the Murphy stone is on the left, but in the latter half the Murphy stone is on the right.  LOL.  At least we can't see the sound boom come down from the top. This was only my second or third attempt at anything related to animation, so I look forward to try to learn more and practice more.  Everyone is welcome to contribute ideas, or models, or texture maps, or animation sequences.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited November 2016

    And teaming up with you as well. It was nice not having to do everything... I was happy to model my small contribution. Much simpler than your cool skelton arm.

    For those wishing to learn Carrara or further their learning check out No one asked me - Diomede posts screenshots on whatever use to be named "First steps - a place for Diomede to post screenshots on whatever"... which shows how to set up a sceen, pose a figure, make a model, change shaders and much more. I've found it very helpful... thanks diomede.

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Voting is taking place now for Carrara Challenge 28 Marriage Voting Thread

    Voting Ends: Saturday 29 Oct 2016

  • I was following the thread as you guys made that animation.  I really enjoyed the final version!  You guys all did good!  :)

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Kewl.... now go vote for your most liked 3 + HM. :)

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    That was awesome lol.  Great sense of humor!

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