Carrara Challenge #32 They Only Come Out At Night - VOTING IS NOW CLOSED
UnifiedBrain
Posts: 3,588
Announcing Carrara Challenge #32
DAZ3D and Carrara Professional Artists sponsor a monthly art contest to:
Build community spirit
Share tips and tricks
Highlight the creative potential of Carrara 8.5 software
Carrara is a full-featured 3D software suite. It has robust tools for 3D modeling, particle effects, landscape design, hair creation, texturing, animation, high-quality rendering, and more.
But one of Carrara's most unique features, is that it easily accepts most Daz and Poser content! So, not only can you create your own content, you can also load and pose content from the world's largest 3D library.
The Current Theme: "They Only Come Out at Night."
Old rock-n-rollers will undoubtedly associate this with an Edgar Winter album by the same name, released in the early 1980's. It's a coincidence, but if that idea inspires you, go for it!
Others will likely think about vampires or horror scenes. - a natural connection - but the theme can just as easily reflect goodness and great beauty.
A partial list of things that come out at night:
Nocturnal animals - Owls, Bats, Raccoons, Mice, Badgers, Cougars.
Insects - Moths, Fireflies, Scorpions, Tarantulas, Giant centipedes.
Plants - several species of plants only bloom at night, including the once-a-year Night Blooming Cereus.
Other - Vampires, Werewolves, Monsters, Santa Claus, Stars, Aurora Borealis, Prostitutes, City lights, Spacecraft lights, Nightclub goers (night life), Criminals and so forth. And false teeth
(thanks Wendy!)
These are only suggestions. The goal is to create a render somehow connected to the theme, based on how the phrase inspires you. It may even be a daytime scene if it expresses the theme in a clever way.
This month, in addition to the standard prizes, we are adding the prize category of "Best Nonphotorealistic render", to showcase the Carrara NPR render engine, and toon filter.
Rules and prizes are posted in the official Challenge thread in the Carrara forum. Sample images from that thread will be posted here as they become available.
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Comments
Posted originally by Head Wax.
Used Aura filter, Light Cone, Fire, and Caustics.
No post work (a rule for this specific Challenge).
Posted originally by Stezza.
Click to see larger images.
And he posted some of his secrets:
Posted originally by MDO2010
His notes: "The bats were just made roughly in the vertex modeller by extruding a few pieces from a low-poly vertex sphere, then deleting two spots and putting in spheres for the eyes. Fur is Carrara dynamic hair. The ceiling is vertex object and the floor is a terrain. The mid-ground bats are replicated on an invisible plane. The distant back-lighting uses a light cone and the render has a toon effect on it."
The prolific Stezza again, with another creative render.
"2 lights... glow channel, translucency, lens flare and light gel was used"
Thanks UB for doing this :)
Here's a couple straight out of the box. I used the Location shader from Shoestring to cut Michael Model down the middle cleanly.
I've had it for a few years but finally had a serious play with it http://www.des-web.net/html/location.html ;
It has a randomiser for the join so the transition isnt so abrupt but I couldnt get it to work yet.
One renders in Toon1Part11 combined with ToonPro lines.
Another is the straight render
The next is the striaght render with toon pro lines. The worked up ones are here https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2321376/#Comment_2321376
And the ones I forgot Pity I pulled his left shoulder out.
I'm struggling to get started this month but I'm determined to at least try and get something done. One of my favorite genre's and I haven't found time to start lol.
Reminder
I think it is amazing and great that so many people have responded with wonderful NPR and toon renders. Just a quick reminder that there is also a challenge for "Best Photorealistic Render." If anyone prefers photoreal, such entries are more than welcome. Note that there is a lighting requirement for photoreal entries this month. People only have to use NPR or toon if they do more than one entry. This is UB's rule #3 for this challenge. 3. NPR/Toon. If you enter more than a single render (you are allowed 3), at least one of them must be done by using either the NPR render engine*, or the Toon! part lll filter.** The lighting requirement is waived for these entries.
Another Head Wax effort, including comments:
The coloured lights courtesy of putting a map in the lighht gel - the face on the carpet near the tv is just the map projected by a bulb.
I made a mask to go in front of the camera lense to drop the light intensity at the image edges - normally you would do that in post of course. The flies are from a snow tool that transmaps images to scattered plenes in 3d
The story is.... two Gremlins arguing about what to do with the kid in the corner. The Bunny on the Tv is acting as the aerial. They had a lot of fun running the wire up to his ears I think. Not sure what the bunny thought though...
It's quite a challenge not doing postwork - it takes much longer to set up a render !
Here is Varsel, getting started on a classic image.
Varsel's comments:
I have started to sketch out an idea I got.
So far I am using Light Cone and Anything Glow.
The UFO is only a preliminary model. Have to do some detailing and grebling on it.
I also have to put in some grass and trees. But I guess HowieFarkes can help with that.
Hope you find time! Your last entry was very creative.
thanks UB, @Ice Dragon Art, good news!
@Varsel, that UFO image is superb. It captures the scene and the atmosphere :)
Here's somethin with DOF. The flower patterns on the wall are projected maps - not sure if you can see them. They give texture to the lighting. The owl has a Fresnel thingo attached to its glow shader.
The light cone light is behind the owl in the image - plus there are some starry thingys, plus aura for the glow.
I made the scary bird out of focus following the tactics of scary movie makers...
Originally posted by Vyusur.
Experimenting with the Octane render engine for Carrara.
Thank you! Its been a bit of a difficult month with my MIL's health (nothing life threatening) and my husband is an only so it falls on us alone when something is going on. Fortuantely she lives 5 minutes away but its still time consuming so not much time for more than a couple quick renders in Studio to see what new products look like. I have an idea in mind and am hoping to at least load the beastie I want to use and get a start on it.
Sonja, bless you for your service. Regarding my wife's parents and my parents, when they had health issues we both had siblings much closer. Like you, they did all the heavy lifting.
Load that beastie!
Another from Stezza:
These killer squirrels only come out at night!
Originally posted by Diomede:
I have now started to assemble my elements. This is the first layer, done with the NPR render engine. It is only the outline mode. I have outline set to white and the paper color set to black. I plan to put this in as background for the next image, which will mostly be text.
The stars and the text for "Swinging in Starlight" are vertex objects made using the polyline tool. The other text objects are simple text objects.
Originally posted by Bunyip02.
Moon Howler
Originally posted by namtar3d:
My work is inspired by the wonderful book "The Night Land" by William Hope Hodgson.
The Sun has gone out and the Earth is lit only by the glow of residual vulcanism. The last few millions of the human race are gathered together in a gigantic metal pyramid, nearly eight miles high – the Last Redoubt, under siege from unknown forces and Powers outside in the dark. These are held back by a shield known as the "air clog", powered from a subterranean energy source called the "Earth Current". For millennia, vast living shapes—the Watchers—have waited in the darkness near the pyramid. It is thought they are waiting for the inevitable time when the Circle's power finally weakens and dies. Other living things have been seen in the darkness beyond, some of unknown origins, and others that may once have been human.
To leave the protection of the Circle means almost certain death, or worse an ultimate destruction of the soul. As the story commences, the narrator establishes mind contact with an inhabitant of another, forgotten Lesser Redoubt. First one expedition sets off to succour the inhabitants of the Lesser Redoubt, whose own Earth Current has been exhausted, only to meet with disaster. After that, the narrator sets off alone into the darkness to find her love..."
On my pic you can see a new girl adventurer (in the left) leaving the last redoubt ( the pyramid in the back) to achieve another epic quest. A forgotten devastated city lies beside the great redoubt, abandoned thousands or maybe million of years ago. And one of the terrible giant watchers, (is my wish to add at least another one), hide between clouds and mist.
There's yet a lot of work to do :D
Originally posted by myself:
Lady of the Evening
It's a V4 image made via the Carrara NPR (nonphotorealistic) engine, and then composited with some textures in the Carrara shader room. No postwork.
Originally posted by evilproducer:
Northern Lights Above the River Dells
So many super cool renders! I am so disappointed that I am probably not going to make it this month. LOVE that squirrel lol. I'm consistantly astonished and amazed at the different ways people interpret the themes of the challenges.
Sonja, there are still a full ten days left! That's an eternity in artist time.
Lol this is true most of the time but this month has been twice as busy as normal. My youngest graduates from college on Mothers Day and there is a lot of shopping for interview clothes, shopping for graduation dress and shoes, pinning dress and shoes (because God forbid you wear the same thing lol), practice interviewing and helping to study for finals. Plus my nieces confirmation, and some overtime at work. I've also been testing some products so what little time I have had has been focused on that and some very quick to put together stuff in Studio. I'm still painfully slow in getting around in Carrara although its getting better, and I just haven't had a long enough period of time in a given day to do it. I am hopeful that maybe Friday I can at least get started and put SOMETHING together lol.
Just wanted to pop in and say these renders are wonderful! Quite a variety, and had a laugh at the squirrels. The lighting variety throughout the images is impressive. I love the legs on the Lady of the Evening with the background coming through. Thanks so much for sharing, these are quite fun.
Thanks for the nice words, Novica!
I basically grew up with Daz Studio, and I truly enjoyed it for a long time. But I am of an age where I remembered when Carrara was advertised here daily as a more advanced package. So when I got the chance to get Carrara, I decided to go cold turkey on DS and find out if "old man" Carrara would still be able to meet my expectations. So far, it has exceeded them.
Here is an update to my poster that UB linked to above.
.
It's interresting to see the evolution of your thinking. Nice improvements!
Originally posted by 3DAGE. He claims this is not an official entry, but we shall see.
"Creepy things that come out at night."
Lol the last one made me giggle