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I think I hit two issues; one, that I hadn't tracked down all textures to switch to Sampling, and two, that the masking I was making with 3D paint proved trickier than I thought.
I had to save it, then go into Photoshop to extend it beyond normal borders (content aware fill), and then load it AGAIN into my shaders.
(Basically, I'm using 3D paint to brush in masks to control various layers of procedural shaders)
Another push toward Carrara:
So I was trying to do skin in SP2 and running into a problem; the tiling of skin patterns was too obvious. So I tried Fractal. But their fractal implementation wasn't scale independent -- I ended up with obvious lines between face and torso. What the heck??
Meanwhile, in Carrara, fractal noise is seamless and I can build a skin base on that and then paint extra details on top.
(Although I really wish I could get Baker to only process certain surfaces)
Yeah, it is confusing, some noise is 2D and some is 3D. With 3D noise it seems it might be possible for it to be seamless across different shading domains, but this is probably dependent on whether the UVs are set to local space or world space. Someone with more experience here please chime in ... as I'm going off my recollection of reading the Baker docs and general UV knowlege.
The other thing I like about Carrara, after wrestling with Shader Mixer in Daz Studio, is how human readible the shader is. It's not that hard to figure out what stuff does, and being able to easily click-drag or copy/paste stuff onto other stuff is... well, pretty easy.
A skin done in Substance Painter: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=358&t=1382998
I took to that really well too. When I first started playing with it I had this thought:
Hmmm... a Node editor with presets set up to have all of the major nodes already connected, then we just turn on needed nodes when and how we want - and it's all animatable!
All possible nodes are available in the drop-down of each major node (Channel) LOL
I know this was a funny way to think of it... but I still think along those lines many years later.
In seeing shaders this way, now I've come to know of Carrara as a 3D software with all features already plugged in and ready to go. All we have to do is activate the features we want by opening the questionaire and filling out the simple form of each feature. It's actually a very simple software to get to understand - just that there's a lot to it.
...and here's another thing:
When I first got Carrara, I was mainly getting it to use like Poser on Steroids. I really wasn't interested in most of what it has to offer.
That has all changed entirely over the years. This community is amazing for that. But grabbing those courses from Infinite Skills - lessons by Phil Wilkes - that really helped to open my eyes to many more things. In the forums, I can pick and chose torics of interest and ask when I'm stumped or curious. But watching Phil's lessons has shown me things I didn't think I was going to be interested in until it was too late to zip forward to the next topic. Bam... Hooked.
Well back then, there was also a lot of negativity about a good many features of Carrara. 3DAGE, Sub 7th, Extru-D, Tim Payne, Ringo... a bunch of folks, were really helpful in vanquishing some of that, and then comes along Cripeman! A superhero showing on video how "off" many of these negativities were/are! I love him for that - as his tutorials could not have come at a better time.
"Carrara sucks because this and that is just ...."
Cripeman Tutorial on how cool Carrara is because it does what the above comment complained about! Light amidst the darkness!
Why am I always so optimistic about Carrara? I guess I learned from the best! And there were a lot of them. Many are still here - some hiding in the shadows. Some have disappeared to other places - perhaps still using Carrara. I can't imagine ever leaving it, myself.
Oh my... I'm really going on, eh? Whew look at the time!
Yeah... SP has got a great name for itself - and the following of great artists truly helps with that!
I think any of these tools can do well in the right hands. It's the artist who does the magic, the tools provide the means and help to dictate how many headaches will be involved. Like anything else, a new tool requires a bit of practice and experience before one becomes proficient.
The first time I tried Carrara's 3D Paint, I thought I'd never get anywhere with it.
After watching PhilW in his Advanced Carrara Techniques, I learned some new things and tried them out. Liked them... played some more.
Someone asked about it in our older forum... not the first one, but the one after that. I hopped in so I could take some screen shot to help answer, and found that, by then, it was getting easier and easier for me to use. I got excited and bought all of the brushes for it that Daz3d offers. I still don't use them much, but I do use them more often than I ever seem to admit - simply because it's like a pencil and paper to me now. While I don't always recall every time I write myself a note - the same applies to tweaking something quickly in Carrara ;)
I'm bouncing back and forth between SP and Carrara. There are little things I like better about one vs the other and I'm trying to evaluate workflow.
Absolutely! Nice to find a flow that works best. We're all so incredibly different from one another. Copying one person only cheats the cheater!
I'm likely going to stick with my method for now. If I get an opportunity to grab Substance Painter, I'll likely grab it. Same applies to 3D Coat.
I must say, though, that the Blender examples Vyusur is showing are really nice, so that's likely my next port of call. And if the interface doesn't still drive me absolutely bananas, I might just try all manner of tools it's been getting over the years. I'm big into vfx now, and it's got some nice node-based measures for that now too... so I may just really like including Blender into my flow. We'll see.
I really wish I could stomach Blender's UI, because it does seem super cool in what it can do.
What I will probably end up doing is grabbing SP and then using Carrara for the specific things it's better at (mainly, painting full body masks).
...and terrains, atmospheres, lighting, shading, texturing, animating, (Dart just continues babbling, listing off features that he loves about Carrara, never even realizing that we've disconnected the microphone a long time ago! LOL)
I never seen Terrain Shader in action for close up shots, why it always looks OK(-ish) for distant terrains but crappy on close-up detail ?
Things to ponder about, lol
Because they were created for being shown on very distant terrains.
Check them out and they're all blending color shapes in various blended layers, which really look cool from a distance. For my EnvironKits, I used Texture Maps that tile really well. Still, depending upon where we place the camera, we get very different results. I originally intended those kit to be a Scene Starter sort of thing - to be the background element for whatever it is we want to render. So for closer up shots, I've found that increasing the tiling can be better.
This is default tiling for the Forest Floor Woodlands terrain shader, which is used on all terrain in this shot
and this is the Grassy terrain shader at default tiling. I change the tiling to my own liking quite often.
Yeah, texture maps, that's easy, creating procedural with fine detail which looks good from any distance is what I was refering to (using terrain shader), sorry for the confusion
I think (not 100% sure but I think so) that the terrain shaders are based on fractals that add more details the closer the terrain is to the camera, so it should be possible get results that work at a variety of distances.
You know, that... gives me an idea for a shader design in Iray. Hmm.
I agree, though. The terrain shader examples in the browser don't look very good close up.
Gotcha. I am using the Terrain Shader though. I love how it blends the various (three in this case) maps together between their placements. I think it just looks great - and there are many ways to get good tiling texture maps these days ;)
Does 3d paint in Carrara have any sort of blend/soften tool? It'd be nice to be able to easily touch up seams from other stuff.
No - it is really quite a basic tool, good for what it does but it lacks a number of tools that would take it to the next level.
Bleh. Do you happen to know if Hexagon crosses seams?
I've poked at it a few times but I don't get most of it yet. (And I'm not inclined to bother unless I can do something really different with it)
Sorry, I don't really know - maybe others can help.