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I've felt the same way for a couple years. :blank:
Hence:
► Carrara & Computers
► How to Build Your Own Carrara Workstation
► Buying a Workstation
Well it's going to be a while before I can do anything. I tend to help other people a lot so am a little over extended at the moment.
My machine isn't bad per se. It's an i7 machine with 16 gig of ram and an older GTX graphics card. It's just a lot slower than what I would like. No matter how fast of a machine I get it always seems like a doorstop. I do run a ton of different apps on it though and if I stripped it down to the bare bones it'd probably be faster. I do have a i7 desktop that is stripped down. Not sure how good the graphics card is in it though. The way my setup is at home it's more of a hassle to use that machine.
Sweet machine. Carrara doesn't need a super graphics card except for the working displays in OpenGL. I've been noticing that whenever I hit render, all eight cores jump to 100%, as they darn well better! lol but my 16 Gigs of RAM never comes close to getting pegged. I must be optimizing my scenes, eh?
Yeah on ram, I'm in good shape. Wish it didn't take 100% to all cores for hours though lol. Then I could play a game or something while I'm waiting. I did a render overnight I know probably went 3-5 hours and it's too dark and totally worthless lol. So it's a throw away at some point. This was in Daz and not Carrara though. I'm not sure I can duplicate in Carrara but may give it a try and see how it goes.
It uses Stone Mason's Cryo Environment, Six Genesis characters and the supersuit.
You rock Head Wax!
You can repostion the hot point easily also using the Caps Lock button. Which I found out by doing some text work. I left the Caps lock button on from entering text, then when I went to work. Suddenly the move manipulater was moving some little point, but not my objects. Took me a good 15 minutes to figure out what was going on by going through the manual on a key word. Would have been nice if there was a warning about that when working with text. But I did learn something new.
One thing that takes getting used to in Carrara, is that none of the glowing textures enter Carrara glowing. You have to set it up in the texture room. So for Sci Fi products especially, If I think that some of those panels and buttons are supposed to glow, I'll locate the textures folder for that product and look to se if they included separate maps for the glow channel. If not, then I just copy the color texture map into the glow channel and adjust the brightness of the image down if it's too bright. For objects that have glow channels in them, I go to the "Effects" tab of the 'model' and activate "Aura" and put a check in Distance Attenuation, says it's slower - but it's necessary. I usually set the radius pretty low. The biggest problem with Aura, is that it stays the same size no matter how close the camera gets. A few times messing with it and you'll just know what settings you want before you even open the window.
I can't count how many times I've ended up wasting a night on dark animations - especially before I got used to Carrara. The more you get used to the different lights and setting up the shaders - which has to be done with every scene, the easier everything gets.
Aside from the dark, wasted render... (sorry for your loss, my friend...) how do you like Stonemason's Cryo Environment? I haven't got mine yet :(
One thing that takes getting used to in Carrara, is that none of the glowing textures enter Carrara glowing. You have to set it up in the texture room. So for Sci Fi products especially, If I think that some of those panels and buttons are supposed to glow, I'll locate the textures folder for that product and look to se if they included separate maps for the glow channel. If not, then I just copy the color texture map into the glow channel and adjust the brightness of the image down if it's too bright. For objects that have glow channels in them, I go to the "Effects" tab of the 'model' and activate "Aura" and put a check in Distance Attenuation, says it's slower - but it's necessary. I usually set the radius pretty low. The biggest problem with Aura, is that it stays the same size no matter how close the camera gets. A few times messing with it and you'll just know what settings you want before you even open the window.
I can't count how many times I've ended up wasting a night on dark animations - especially before I got used to Carrara. The more you get used to the different lights and setting up the shaders - which has to be done with every scene, the easier everything gets.
Aside from the dark, wasted render... (sorry for your loss, my friend...) how do you like Stonemason's Cryo Environment? I haven't got mine yet :(
I absolutely love it actually and the cryo chamber as well even tho I'm using it for cloning lol. I'm a scifi nut at heart really altho I'm not sure why up until I've only done a few renders which were all lost. I wish I had some of those back. While not great I miss them. I could try and recreate them though. That would be fun.
I would recommend the environment and chamber hands down, altho i will say I am partial to buildings and environments as a whole and to stone masons products in particular.
Which reminds me my project for tonight. In daz I often put things together, group them, save as a scene and then merge later when I need it. I'm going to look to see what I can do Carrara wise on how to do that.
You have a few options. If it's a whole scene you want to save, you can open a new scene, choose Import from the File menu and import your other scene into the new scene. Be aware that it will also import any cameras and lights in that scene as well as any animations.
The other option would be if you just want to save a group of objects or figures you can select them, go to the Edit Menu and select Group. From there, you can open your Objects Browser, find an appropriate category or create your own directory (outside of Carrara, using your OS) and add it to the Browser and drag and drop the group into your chosen directory, a box will pop up asking you to name the file, then click OK to save.
Grouping is a great way to save a character that you've clothed. Select your figure and all the conforming clothes and use the steps above to group it. Then save the group to the Objects Browser. If you've made any changes to the shaders, or applied morphs, those will be saved as well.
I would disable any GI or caustics in the render room first, because Carrara will render a scene preview and will use your render settings. You can always re-enable them after the group is saved. You will find that Carrara will load Poser/DAZ Studio content much more quickly when it's saved to the browser in Carrara's native format.
Since glows were mentioned for textures you may find this helps.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/47436/browse/3/PDF-Tutorial/Carrara-Users-Glow-Bodysuit-Setup
Not sure if you have the exact product used in the PDF, but the basic technique can be applied to other products.
Also since lighting got mentioned in a couple of posts, if you don't have this book I both highly and strongly recommend you get a copy of Digital Lighting & Rendering, Second Edition, by Jeremy Birn. This is the single best thing you can get to learn lighting.
Jeremy Brin's web site is also worth checking out as he has an illustrated guide to 3D terms on it, and several other things
http://www.3drender.com/
The Lighting Challenges are still going on and you can download stuff from the newer ones that aren't on Brin's website and take part in the current one if you like. You can use an 3D program you like in the challenges and the files for the challenges are posted in several different formats.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/forumdisplay.php?f=185
You have a few options. If it's a whole scene you want to save, you can open a new scene, choose Import from the File menu and import your other scene into the new scene. Be aware that it will also import any cameras and lights in that scene as well as any animations.
The other option would be if you just want to save a group of objects or figures you can select them, go to the Edit Menu and select Group. From there, you can open your Objects Browser, find an appropriate category or create your own directory (outside of Carrara, using your OS) and add it to the Browser and drag and drop the group into your chosen directory, a box will pop up asking you to name the file, then click OK to save.
Grouping is a great way to save a character that you've clothed. Select your figure and all the conforming clothes and use the steps above to group it. Then save the group to the Objects Browser. If you've made any changes to the shaders, or applied morphs, those will be saved as well.
I would disable any GI or caustics in the render room first, because Carrara will render a scene preview and will use your render settings. You can always re-enable them after the group is saved. You will find that Carrara will load Poser/DAZ Studio content much more quickly when it's saved to the browser in Carrara's native format.
Thank you! Usually what I do or at least what I've done in Studio, is create characters with hair, clothes, shaders, the whole nine yards and then save as a scene rather than creating from scratch. Tonight I'm trying some of this stuff out and see how it goes.
Glad y'all mentioned glows because in the Cryo Environment and especially the Cryo Tubes there are lights that I stuck a point light on in Studio. It didn't turn out well. Tonight I"ll try and see if I can get the Environment into Carrara and see how it is there. I'm interested in the glow biz. Actually it sounds like it will be easier. Thanks for the recommendation on the book. I don't think I have heard of that one before.
Man, this thread Rocks!
Lot's of great advice flying around for all kinds of stuff - which is perfect for a "Welcome, whispers65, to the wonderful world inside of Carrara!" thread. Carrara is so unlimited in what you can do and the ways in which those things can be done! Evil Producer, an absolute rockin' Carraraist, sharing his expertise... great screens and awesome advice, as always. And Jay_Nola... Man I really have to get that lighting book. By the way, the books that Jay recommends are always highly rated tomes by very qualified authors, and I find them at Amazon for a song. I also want to free up some time and get into that lighting club. I love lighting stuff in Carrara.
AThorwald comes in with one, incredibly valuable yet amazingly elusive until you know it, function. I Caps Locks - change hot point location - Caps Lock all the time. It's so helpful and I remember well the days before I knew that fine trick. Everybody coming in and sharing links, screenshots and text of helpful stuff.
whispers65, the way you describe what you used to do in Daz Studio is right on the mark for how I operate in Carrara. Most content that you bring into Carrara requires at least some shader work to get it up to speed with the Carrara environment. A task that becomes second-nature to some, but it's such a powerful area of focus in Carrara, that you can always improve. Shaders can do a lot. Wait and see. Phil Wilkes is going to show you how to build an entire city scene using a single flat plane and displacement! Windows lit and everything!
Lights are amazing. Turn off the shadows of a distant light that is aimed upwards can create accent lighting with such a small amount of effort. It just requires the initial vision. SciFi and Fantasy are the realms in which I live - my poor wife is totally fine with it, too... even though sees more into thrilling mysteries with crime solving heroes solving their crimes with microscopes behind the scenes.
The Aura I've mentioned, along with using light cones from well placed spot lights are a great way to get great scifi interiors - debatable, of course. Sirius Labs and Radius, by 3DLust are built from the ground up using expert modeling techniques within Carrara. He makes full use of "Anything Glows" lights within those scenes. They take a bit of horsepower (which you seem to have) to render - because there's a lot of pro highlights going on there. Just check out those promo images.
...and then an image of mine below, which is a screenshot of one of my chase scene animations.
In the image above - the chase scene, see the lit windows and street text signs. That's 'Aura', which requires some glow in the shader to function. The visible light from headlights and such are light cones from spot lights.
Yes, this thread has helped me bunches and gives really great advice. I was chicken to start it but I'm glad I did.
I looked at the pictures. Now that is the kind of lighting I would love to do! I did get the Cryo Environment and Tube into Carrara. And since it doesn't have lighting at this point. It'll give me a great place to start.
I'm going to nose through a couple of videos tonight.
Oh yeah, a pic I saw last night. On Page 34 of the 2013 StoneMason Catalogue Contest, Redhorse had a picture called "In the Air Tonight" that was done in Carrara.
It included a lot of different light affects such as headlights, taillights, neon signs, streetlamps, lighted windows, etc.
What really impressed me though was the sheer amount of people. Must have been the low polys or something. I've never seen so many in a single scene.
Really nice scene. I liked it a lot.
Thanks again for the kind words, and thanks for mentioning this thread to me. Dartanbeck is right, it rocks. Lots of great tips here.
If you're interested, I'd be happy to share my techniques with you. I'm just a hobbyist so I don't have any secrets to protect. ;-) Plus, I'd love to see more artists make Carrara shine so more people will adopt it and help motivate DAZ to continue its development. Carrara is a real hidden gem in the 3D world.
I'm especially fond of how Carrara handles lighting, which seems easier and is more logical to me than any other app I've used, including high end apps like modo. In my image that you mentioned, Stonemason deserves a lot of credit for doing the heavy lifting and setting up his models to be very easily illuminated for night scenes - a feature I think many people miss by not looking at the shader tree and digging through his textures folder.
Um... wow. That is a cool render. Here it is for those who don't want to wade through this incredibly wrong forum setup. lol
Anyways, Man, 11 hours to render? You must have a decent rig, eh? I do animations for must less time than that, but usually accepting slightly less quality per frame.
Anyways, really like the image.
very nice redhorse,
I almost hear street noise, it reminds me Walter Hill's streets of fire and a couple of other movies
Glad to have recommended it. That book is the one if i could only have one book to help with 3D stuff i would chose. Getting that book saved me a lot of headaches. If you get the Brin book make sure it is the newer 2nd edition as he added and expanded the book greatly. Several things on his site are abbreviated things you'll find in the book,.
Jeremy Brin, the author, has some info on monitor calibration on his site that you'll want to look at too. He talk about calibration in the book and refers you to his site.
Glad y'all mentioned glows because in the Cryo Environment and especially the Cryo Tubes there are lights that I stuck a point light on in Studio. It didn't turn out well. Tonight I"ll try and see if I can get the Environment into Carrara and see how it is there. I'm interested in the glow biz. Actually it sounds like it will be easier. Thanks for the recommendation on the book. I don't think I have heard of that one before.
Thanks again for the kind words, and thanks for mentioning this thread to me. Dartanbeck is right, it rocks. Lots of great tips here.
If you're interested, I'd be happy to share my techniques with you. I'm just a hobbyist so I don't have any secrets to protect. ;-) Plus, I'd love to see more artists make Carrara shine so more people will adopt it and help motivate DAZ to continue its development. Carrara is a real hidden gem in the 3D world.
I'm especially fond of how Carrara handles lighting, which seems easier and is more logical to me than any other app I've used, including high end apps like modo. In my image that you mentioned, Stonemason deserves a lot of credit for doing the heavy lifting and setting up his models to be very easily illuminated for night scenes - a feature I think many people miss by not looking at the shader tree and digging through his textures folder.
My head is swimming lol. I do get overwhelmed easily. I would defintely be interested. I did buy the tutorial vidoes for Carrara and the book up above. I think it was called "Digital Lighting and Rendering" or something like that. I bought it today. It's taking me a while to assimilate everything.
I learn by doing so am planning on 4 basic scenes to start and I chose each scene for a specific learning purpose.
Actually I would love to take your city idea if you don't mind and do one of my own. It would be different of course, different angle, different way of seeing things. I like the lighting oppurtunities in your scene and they may all be similiar but in my mind lighting headlights is different than a tail light because a headlight shines out a distance where as a tail light doesn't.
Anyway, I have everything that you used basically. On my facebook page I have that same scene from a while back (before everything was stolen) except from a different angle and it was in Daz.
I just think your particular scene offers a lot of different oppurtunities and challenges.
I haven't had a chance to check out the site much. I may get off this Thursday and Friday so will have more time. However, I did get the book today and I did make sure it was the newer 2nd edition. :)
Hmmmm speaking of monitor calibration. I use a TV as a monitor and there is a lighting difference between that and my laptop. I wonder about that if there is anything I can do. The TV actually shows images as darker than the laptop. It's frustrating but I'm getting older and looking at a 37" TV sceen is way easier on the eyes than a 17" laptop. :)
Great render redhorse.
I can't wait to get into animation....ok baby steps...breathe....just breathe...lol.....did I say I get overwhelmed lol. Just got to take it one step at a time.
To learn Carrara I mentioned doing 4 basic scenes and each one contains different elements.
1) Howie's Country Lane 2 (premade outdoor scene, prelighted) - Pre everything scene with lighting already done, the whole nine yards. Just going to add hot air balloons, two cars, and two to four people. The angle I'm looking at seems a little hot/over exposed to me so will prob need to tone down. I would like to use Genesis figures but time is ticking. 20 days on the trail for 8.5 and don't know if there is another product code yet. Haven't checked.
2) Cryo Environment, Cryo Tube (premade indoor scene, no light) - Hey what can I say? I'm Sci Fi at heart. I love the setup. It will be a good oppurtunity to learn indoor lighting and mood, maybe some - fog, low level lighting, etc. Again I would like to use Genesis if possible with the super suit if possible.
3) City Scene (premade outdoor scene, no lights) - Great way to learn to light the great outdoors with a lots of people and props not to mention all kinds of light oppurtunities like neon signs, headlights etc.
4) Campsite (from scratch) - I don't have anything like this so this would be combing objects from what I have and/or make stuff of my own. I would like to put together a campsite structure like at a state park or something. There would be 2 to 3 campsites on each side of the road, maybe RV parking, restroom/shower facility, etc.
5) I would like to do a lot of different portraits. Just people standing there looking awesome and realistic like I see a lot. Not necessarily pin-ups but more like glamour or promo type pics.
*A note on Genesis. I really like Genesis but the reason I mention it mostly is because I had lost everything before when my apartment was broken into. I just didn't have the heart to try and download and install everyting all over again so I gave up the idea of learning 3d stuff. Then when I came back Young Teen 5 just came out and was on sale. I picked up a bundle and it gave me everything to start. I also bought V5 and M5. I just never went back to anything older and didn't have much of V4/M4 stuff at that time anyway. Now with DIM, I have all of my old stuff back. So in a pinch I can use V4/M4 if needed. I didn't care for K4 much. I like the Young Teens better. So if I need to use V4/M4 or something else until 8.5 is officially released then no problem. It's just not my first preference.
Thanks for the comments everyone. I really appreciate it.
My machine is a few years old, but still a decent 64-bit quad core. What it lacks in speed it more than makes up for in RAM (32GB). Part of what made the render take so long is:
* Around 100+ individual light sources, not including glow effects, all with angular and range falloffs (mostly spotlights)
* Original render size of 3840 x 2400
* Indirect light enabled
* Soft shadows enabled
* Aura enabled with distance attenuation
* Fairly high settings on lighting quality/accuracy and shadow accuracy
* Fairly high setting on object accuracy - 1 or 2 pixels if I recall correctly
* Liberal use of translucency (part of my lighting tricks)
* Lots of individual figures (mostly lo res) and textures, but it was all done in a single pass
I've only done one image bigger and more intense than this one, but it was done in Vue and required 25 separate layers that I composited in Photoshop.
That looks familiar. Wasn't there a pic or something "so you want a revolution" or something like that. Did you do that one also?
Yep. That one was mine too.
Here's the technique I use for headlights, tail lights, and street lights. The method is the same, only the colors and values of some parameters change.
1. Add a spotlight to the scene. Using the scale tool (double ended arrow on the left toolbar, second from top), shrink the spotlight so that it is small enough to fit inside the object that is supposed to emit light. Then move it inside the object with the big end nearest the glass/lens. It is important that the spotlight pyramid fits entirely within the object without intersecting the sides of the mesh. Adjust the spotlight to point slightly down towards the pavement and slightly away from the center of the vehicle.
2. With the spotlight selected, adjust its properties to give you the effect you want in your scene. I find that around 300% brightness works well. I also like to set both the angular and range falloffs to 100% to make it appear more realistic (no hard stop to the light - it fades to black so to speak). The range and half angle should be adjusted to your particular scene.
3. In the material room, select the object that is to be emitting light and open up the material for the light's glass/lens (assuming the model maker created a separate material zone for the glass - they usually do). Here there are two ways you can go: Alpha or Translucency. For my purposes, adjusting Alpha to 40% worked best, making the material somewhat transparent while still retaining its color and such.
4. Next, make the material glow. Set the glow channel to multiply and set the two nodes that creates to color and value (1-10000%). Make the color the same as your light. Make the value whatever looks good. For me, around 230% did the trick.
Sometimes you will want to enable aura for an object that is supposed to be glowing to give it that hazy glow around the glass. I have found that aura doesn't always work right and sometimes (as in this case) postwork was the better route to add that glow.
Also make sure you check "light through transparency" in the render settings.
I know I skipped some of the "small" steps in the directions above. If you want clarification on anything, just let me know.
Thanks! I'm going to try some stuff out tonight hopefully it today goes well. Last night I started reading the book on Lighting and watched about 2 hours of training videos. Now, I'm ready to try and put some of that stuff into practice.