John - you may notice that all your edges have smoothing on, which in the preview at least is creating some slightly strange shading, you may want to crease the edges to give it a sharper look.
Here's an alternative way to make a frame, that can look like it was made from more complex mouldings. Start with a cube with one poly per side and flatten it - but keep the square face for now. Then use dynamic extrusion on just one face to move it in and down, but do it in multiple small steps, so maybe in a little, then down a little, etc. Once you have 2 or 3 steps it looks like a frame moulding, and by varying the steps you make, you can get different types. Once you are happy with the moulding effect, you could make the centre poly a different shading domain for the actual picture. Because you kept the face square, all the sides should be even - if you had used a rectangle, the shorter sides would be thicker than the longer sides. And to preserve this. rather than scaling the whole thing which again would stretch some of the sides, just select half of it and move it to get the aspect ratio on the picture that you require.
Sorry for the lack of pictures but I hope you get the idea. (P.S. I added just the one!)
John - you may notice that all your edges have smoothing on, which in the preview at least is creating some slightly strange shading, you may want to crease the edges to give it a sharper look.
Noticed the smoothing being off after the fact but figured it rendered good... must be my eyesight. :)
What I was looking to make is a frame that you might find in a thrift store. While modeling it I was thinking about making a better one similar to your example... hadn't thought about starting with a cube though.... thanks I'll give it a go. I'm also planning on making at least one with details on the back like a simple inset for a piece of cardboard... and some tabs to hold it in place... ohh... and a hanger of some sort... of course it would only be needed in special situations where the frame would fall off the wall and land on it's picture side. Hah... earthquake anim.
then switch to the left or front view,. and make a profile (polyline shape) .....See pic
Rotate the profile to 45 degrees. (hold shift to snap to 45 degree rotations)
with the profile still selected,...
select the Path sweep tool and then select the "second option" in the right hand panel (regular sweep)
click on the rectangle,. Carrara will sweep the profile around the path to create a 3d object from the two line shapes.
you can also Undo,. ...rotate the profile in the opposite direction and sweep the path again,.. if it's the wrong way round,. or click on a different edge of the path.
You can either delete the original rectangle,. or Fill that polygon and use that as the "Picture" surface.
The reason for my absence....well last wed I fell and broke my hip (trash can - 1, Me - 0) and am currently in rehab learning to walk again. ???????? Patiently waiting until I can return!
The reason for my absence....well last wed I fell and broke my hip (trash can - 1, Me - 0) and am currently in rehab learning to walk again. ???????? Patiently waiting until I can return!
The reason for my absence....well last wed I fell and broke my hip (trash can - 1, Me - 0) and am currently in rehab learning to walk again. ???????? Patiently waiting until I can return!
oh no.... sorry to hear this... best wishes for a safe recovery
a single object doesnt havve to be connected mesh, right?
like a ribbon wrapped around a gift box.
cant figure out how to handle the uvs
Nope, There's no need for all the pieces to be connected geometry. They can be disconnected meshes inside a single vertex object or two entirely separate objects if you want (one parented to the other, or both grouped so you can move them together).
The reason for my absence....well last wed I fell and broke my hip (trash can - 1, Me - 0) and am currently in rehab learning to walk again. ???????? Patiently waiting until I can return!
Ouch! Sorry to hear that man, hope the recovery is as pain-free and quick as possible.
Another way to do a picture frame: go to the spline modeler, design a frame profile on the front wall, import a sweep path you created (.ai format from Illustrator or the like) on the right wall, and that's it.
Using a sweep path gives you lots of possibilities for variations of the frame. When using rounded forms please keep in mind that you have to add additional points where the frame is rounded - Carrara needs a little help here to get it smooth.......even when you cranked up surface fidelity to 5000.
It is a bit like in the vertex modeler but with an interesting advantage: you can always change profile and form afterwards - which isn't so easy in the vertex modeler .
Another way to do a picture frame: go to the spline modeler, design a frame profile on the front wall, import a sweep path you created (.ai format from Illustrator or the like) on the right wall, and that's it.
Using a sweep path gives you lots of possibilities for variations of the frame. When using rounded forms please keep in mind that you have to add additional points where the frame is rounded - Carrara needs a little help here to get it smooth.......even when you cranked up surface fidelity to 5000.
It is a bit like in the vertex modeler but with an interesting advantage: you can always change profile and form afterwards - which isn't so easy in the vertex modeler .
Good idea - I am guilty of often overlooking the spline editor although it is very powerful for the right types of shapes.
Yet another way is the terrain modeler. Here is an ornate picture frame in 5 or 6 clicks. Could be made much better with some minor fiddling with a terrain smoothing filter, etc.
random picture frame from the web. With water marks, ugh.
you can also path sweep ones from a profile shape not sure how to join it up into a square or rectangle though it gets a gap I guess bridge then dissolve the join.
By total happenstance I ran into an excellent youtube vid on displacement modeling from this guy:
Holy cats, he has a bunch of Carrara videos, how come I never ran into him before? Great stuff, thought I would mention it here. Maybe this is one of the regular forum members that I'm familiar with but just using a different name? Anyway, I've enjoyed watching some of his vids so far, seems like he has a Carrara to Unity pipeline all figured out.
Sorry to hear that wgdjohn. I hope you are on your way to a quick and painless recovery.
Does 'trash can -1' mean you beat the crap out of it?
My Niece Tina typed that in when she stopped by to see me, she works for STL County PD and gets to test out all the weapons seized... shoots guns to get bullet marks made when shot, brings back serial numbers and checks knives etc. A fun job for her and most Forensic Anthropologists... she just got Bachelors degree last year. Her "-1" I had a problem figuring out... it must be a "dash" and not a minus sign... I would rate it as trash container + ground = 1 ... John < 0.:)
In the plant modeler room, check to see that it is set to show the tree snd that full detail mesh is checked - and show leaves.
It will have a bunch of tris, so you can make it more memory efficient by entering vertex modeler and untriangulate. I have a couple examples in screenshots to take to Studio so let me know if these simple checks are not what you want.
And not just limited to plants. If done without leaves and apply a creative shader and manipulate number of branches, can make some interesting branching objects, like lightning.
I created a few tube sponges using Lathe in in Vertex Model room show in the WIP above Here. Afterwards I used Scale and the Bend tool so that the tall ones would not look too alike. I also just used a sphere for a simple brain coral at right side in my entry, #1, and messed with a shader to give a brainlike look... the other brain coral, left side, is not mine... see the credits. :) I'd started modeling a diff coral but ran out of time. There are no examples in this thread... which didn't exist until months later.
Apart from a dalliance with XFrog in one set, all the trees in my DS environments were exported from Carrara.
Tick Full Detail Mesh and Show Leaves in the plant editor. (Untick Show Leaves for a Winter version) You may need to tweak the Mesh Smoothness setting as this will vastly affect the poly count.
Then do an Edit->Convert to Other Modeller and select Vertex Modeller from the list. Go make some coffee, cos this can take some time, depending on the size & complexity of your tree.
Be prepared for a massive polycount (I think my first tree was 2.5 million polys!). You are allowed to swear! Undo the convert action to return to the plant editor and adjust settings. Untriangulating the tree will reduce polys by about 30%. When you're happy, export the vertex model. I try and keep my trees to 300K polys or fewer.
BTW, the "leaves" can be any object, not just leaves (even other trees!), and you can mix them, have multiple sets and so on. It really is very versatile. But like many things in Carrara, it can be a bit crashy, so save often.
As an aside, I'm finding Sculptris a great companion to Carrara; they have somewhat complementary modeling approaches.
So I might make a spline, lathe, Boolean, or some other shape in Carrara, convert to vertex modeling, bring it into Sculptris and mold it, back to Carrara to do loops and maybe UV work, back to Sculptris to paint.
I really like Sculptris in concept but in practice it wasn't for me. I found parts of it kind of unintuitive and it was very prone to crashing.
That said, it's a great, feature-simple intro to 3D sculpting and I still have it on my computer and did use it a few times to quickly rough up things like rocks and old stone structures that I modeled in Carrara and it worked pretty well.
Comments
John - you may notice that all your edges have smoothing on, which in the preview at least is creating some slightly strange shading, you may want to crease the edges to give it a sharper look.
Here's an alternative way to make a frame, that can look like it was made from more complex mouldings. Start with a cube with one poly per side and flatten it - but keep the square face for now. Then use dynamic extrusion on just one face to move it in and down, but do it in multiple small steps, so maybe in a little, then down a little, etc. Once you have 2 or 3 steps it looks like a frame moulding, and by varying the steps you make, you can get different types. Once you are happy with the moulding effect, you could make the centre poly a different shading domain for the actual picture. Because you kept the face square, all the sides should be even - if you had used a rectangle, the shorter sides would be thicker than the longer sides. And to preserve this. rather than scaling the whole thing which again would stretch some of the sides, just select half of it and move it to get the aspect ratio on the picture that you require.
Sorry for the lack of pictures but I hope you get the idea. (P.S. I added just the one!)
Noticed the smoothing being off after the fact but figured it rendered good... must be my eyesight. :)
What I was looking to make is a frame that you might find in a thrift store. While modeling it I was thinking about making a better one similar to your example... hadn't thought about starting with a cube though.... thanks I'll give it a go. I'm also planning on making at least one with details on the back like a simple inset for a piece of cardboard... and some tabs to hold it in place... ohh... and a hanger of some sort... of course it would only be needed in special situations where the frame would fall off the wall and land on it's picture side. Hah... earthquake anim.
Here's another way to create a picture frame.
Path sweep.
make a rectangle/square thing,.
then switch to the left or front view,. and make a profile (polyline shape) .....See pic
Rotate the profile to 45 degrees. (hold shift to snap to 45 degree rotations)
with the profile still selected,...
select the Path sweep tool and then select the "second option" in the right hand panel (regular sweep)
click on the rectangle,. Carrara will sweep the profile around the path to create a 3d object from the two line shapes.
you can also Undo,. ...rotate the profile in the opposite direction and sweep the path again,.. if it's the wrong way round,. or click on a different edge of the path.
You can either delete the original rectangle,. or Fill that polygon and use that as the "Picture" surface.
I've fallen and can't get up! Ha
The reason for my absence....well last wed I fell and broke my hip (trash can - 1, Me - 0) and am currently in rehab learning to walk again. ???????? Patiently waiting until I can return!
oh mann. feel better soonest![](http://az705183.vo.msecnd.net/onlinesupportmedia/onlinesupport/media/skype/screenshots/fa12330/emoticons/hug_80_anim_gif.gif?width=40&height=40)
Sorry to hear that wgdjohn. I hope you are on your way to a quick and painless recovery.
Does 'trash can -1' mean you beat the crap out of it?![frown frown](https://www.daz3d.com/forums/plugins/ckeditor/js/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/confused_smile.png)
a single object doesnt havve to be connected mesh, right?
like a ribbon wrapped around a gift box.
cant figure out how to handle the uvs
oh no.... sorry to hear this... best wishes for a safe recovery![yes yes](https://www.daz3d.com/forums/plugins/ckeditor/js/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/thumbs_up.png)
Nope, There's no need for all the pieces to be connected geometry. They can be disconnected meshes inside a single vertex object or two entirely separate objects if you want (one parented to the other, or both grouped so you can move them together).
Ouch! Sorry to hear that man, hope the recovery is as pain-free and quick as possible.
Another way to do a picture frame: go to the spline modeler, design a frame profile on the front wall, import a sweep path you created (.ai format from Illustrator or the like) on the right wall, and that's it.
Using a sweep path gives you lots of possibilities for variations of the frame. When using rounded forms please keep in mind that you have to add additional points where the frame is rounded - Carrara needs a little help here to get it smooth.......even when you cranked up surface fidelity to 5000.
It is a bit like in the vertex modeler but with an interesting advantage: you can always change profile and form afterwards - which isn't so easy in the vertex modeler .
Good idea - I am guilty of often overlooking the spline editor although it is very powerful for the right types of shapes.
RE: Picture frames.
Yet another way is the terrain modeler. Here is an ornate picture frame in 5 or 6 clicks. Could be made much better with some minor fiddling with a terrain smoothing filter, etc.
random picture frame from the web. With water marks, ugh.
.
.
you can also path sweep ones from a profile shape not sure how to join it up into a square or rectangle though it gets a gap I guess bridge then dissolve the join.
oh see Andy did one already
I missed that post totally
By total happenstance I ran into an excellent youtube vid on displacement modeling from this guy:
Holy cats, he has a bunch of Carrara videos, how come I never ran into him before? Great stuff, thought I would mention it here. Maybe this is one of the regular forum members that I'm familiar with but just using a different name? Anyway, I've enjoyed watching some of his vids so far, seems like he has a Carrara to Unity pipeline all figured out.
He changed his name several months ago. But he currently has a lot of posts as I Samuel in the Carrara SDK Developer forum at the top of the page.
Oh, and he did start this rather interesting discussion on Carrara hair.
My Niece Tina typed that in when she stopped by to see me, she works for STL County PD and gets to test out all the weapons seized... shoots guns to get bullet marks made when shot, brings back serial numbers and checks knives etc. A fun job for her and most Forensic Anthropologists... she just got Bachelors degree last year. Her "-1" I had a problem figuring out... it must be a "dash" and not a minus sign... I would rate it as trash container + ground = 1 ... John < 0.:)
Cool... I feels warmz and cuddlie. :)
@Stezza,
@Jonstark
Tankz... wish it was simply and "ouch"... read full details and some fun I was able to manage at rehab center in WGD Crazy Artwerks.
did they give you scans of your hip and metal pins?
if so there is a program called fiji ImageJ that turns voxel images into 3D mesh
http://fiji.sc/
I have never gotten it to work though
No scans... I need to inquire as they did take an x-ray in rehab. Thanks for the link Wendy.
Is there a way to export plants as obj, leaves and all?
Yes.
In the plant modeler room, check to see that it is set to show the tree snd that full detail mesh is checked - and show leaves.
It will have a bunch of tris, so you can make it more memory efficient by entering vertex modeler and untriangulate. I have a couple examples in screenshots to take to Studio so let me know if these simple checks are not what you want.
.
Here is one example
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2450521/#Comment_2450521
Thank you! Making interesting plants would definitely expand the range of stuff I'm working on. Continuously surprised by what Carrara can do.
And not just limited to plants. If done without leaves and apply a creative shader and manipulate number of branches, can make some interesting branching objects, like lightning.
Or corals or other sea life or alien... intrigued!
Will, Check out the following in Learning tips and tricks from prior Carrara Challenge WIP threads where there are some kewl tips on Sea Plant life and more.
24 Carrara Challenge 24: Under the Sea or Out of the Box WIP thread http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/78481/carrara-challenge-24-under-the-sea-or-out-of-the-box-wip-thread/p1
24 Carrara Chalenge 24: Under the Sea or Out of the Box Entry thread http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/84046/voting-extended-carrara-challenge-24-under-the-sea-out-of-the-box/p1
I created a few tube sponges using Lathe in in Vertex Model room show in the WIP above Here. Afterwards I used Scale and the Bend tool so that the tall ones would not look too alike. I also just used a sphere for a simple brain coral at right side in my entry, #1, and messed with a shader to give a brainlike look... the other brain coral, left side, is not mine... see the credits. :) I'd started modeling a diff coral but ran out of time. There are no examples in this thread... which didn't exist until months later.
Apart from a dalliance with XFrog in one set, all the trees in my DS environments were exported from Carrara.
Tick Full Detail Mesh and Show Leaves in the plant editor. (Untick Show Leaves for a Winter version) You may need to tweak the Mesh Smoothness setting as this will vastly affect the poly count.
Then do an Edit->Convert to Other Modeller and select Vertex Modeller from the list. Go make some coffee, cos this can take some time, depending on the size & complexity of your tree.
Be prepared for a massive polycount (I think my first tree was 2.5 million polys!). You are allowed to swear! Undo the convert action to return to the plant editor and adjust settings. Untriangulating the tree will reduce polys by about 30%. When you're happy, export the vertex model. I try and keep my trees to 300K polys or fewer.
BTW, the "leaves" can be any object, not just leaves (even other trees!), and you can mix them, have multiple sets and so on. It really is very versatile. But like many things in Carrara, it can be a bit crashy, so save often.
Cool.
i did an alien plant in Carrara starting with a simple sphere. Poked, prodded, twisted.
Both the spiralweed and tree were modeled in Carrara, textured in substance Painter and then rendered in DS:
https://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Spiralweed-valley-702742682
As an aside, I'm finding Sculptris a great companion to Carrara; they have somewhat complementary modeling approaches.
So I might make a spline, lathe, Boolean, or some other shape in Carrara, convert to vertex modeling, bring it into Sculptris and mold it, back to Carrara to do loops and maybe UV work, back to Sculptris to paint.
I really like Sculptris in concept but in practice it wasn't for me. I found parts of it kind of unintuitive and it was very prone to crashing.
That said, it's a great, feature-simple intro to 3D sculpting and I still have it on my computer and did use it a few times to quickly rough up things like rocks and old stone structures that I modeled in Carrara and it worked pretty well.