virtual penny 4 yor carrara thoughts ?
Mistara
Posts: 38,675
was thinkin, i been thinking of vertex modelling is synonomous with .obj modelling.
prolly why i get tripped up so often. need to remember is not the same thing.
i mean, thats why need to export to obj, eh?
and what is the primitives made of?
primitives need converting to vertex, eh?
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Here's my virtual penny's worth of thought on this stuff:
Not so sure about primitives. I have a feeling that it's a lot like being a mathematical representation of simple shapes, so that no actual polygons are needed or even used unless converted to another modeler. That's why they're only available in certain shapes without any options for much change aside from what you can get out of scaling evenly or along any axis and what we can get using modifiers. But then again, I could be very wrong.
".obj modeling" is likely a term used by some, though it's not a correct description. ".obj" is simply a file format which works well for 3D mesh objects amongst, perhaps, other things. So for the most part, if I heard somebody say ".obj modeling" I would likely assume that they actually meant vertex modeling, but that can be a completely incorrect assumption since Spline models may also be exported as .obj files.
We can see in Carrara that a good many things can be exported as an OBJ, even things that are not actually vertex objects. So the OBJ file is just a transfer method to enable an artist to get a creation from one software to another in a predictable manner, which is why most OBJ exporters have varying options depending on that software's client's most popular demands. This is why Carrara and DS have options relating to each other. This makes it easier for us to maintain scale and shape from one application to the next, and then back again. Get the correct calculation in the difference in what the intended software's "unit" represents and we can use our OBJ export to a great degree of precision, even if a preset for that particular software is absent. For software with constant, active development the exporter may receive new presets due to a demand by the consumers using the software.
The common term of modeling that translates directly to "Vertex Modeling" (as it's called by many Carraraists due to the name of the modeler) is a process known as "Box" or "Cube" modeling, even though the same process can be used with shapes that greatly differ from a cube or a box, like triangles, for example.
Not sure if it's still like this, but some render engines used to produce less-than-optimal lighting results unless all of the polygons were triangles. I believe that this is why Carrara was given a "Convert to Triangles" command in the Model menu within the Vertex modeler. Carrara, DAZ Studio and Bryce are not among them, and work beautifully with quads. As a matter of fact, DAZ 3D Premier Artists are not allowed to use any other type of polygon except for quads (polygon made up of 4 vertices or points). I'm not a professional modeler, so I don't really know the exact reasons for most of this stuff, but I pick up tid-bits here and there as I study. Modeling with only quads is very popular among the top artists in 3D, yet I know that many also use trigons as well. I've heard that quads can make up a cleaner topology, but I'm not sure if that's truth or opinion. I do know that modeling in quads forms a bit of a challenge. To be considered "good topology" we need to keep each polygon (quad) flat. Move just one vertice perpendicular to the plane of the others and you've just created a problem in your model. This might be acceptable to do on your own to your own models, say... as a morph, but you'll never want such things in a product to be sold. Carrara's Vertex modeler also has a function called "Convert non-planer to triangles", which finds quads (or n-gons*) which are not perfectly flat - not a perfect plane. This triangulation now corrects the problem, giving each change in angle and edge.
*n-gon is a polygon with more than four vertices and is taboo in most circles, but work fine in Carrara.
Hi
Vertex modeller creates Vertices, Edges and Polygons,. which makes a 3D model, which can be exported in a range of 3D model formats, including OBJ.
The Spline modeller creates adjustable line shapes (Splines) which are then combined mathematically to produce the surface of a 3D shape.
Primitive objects are premade simple objects which are built into the program.
You can convert any model into a Vertex model,. you can then export any editable model as an OBJ or other model format.
So, to avoid getting non-planer polygons in your mesh, whenever you go pushing and pulling on the shape, make sure you select the polygon or, perhaps, an edge rather than just selecting a single point and moving that. For my own uses, I've accidentally found myself making non-planer polygons a lot as I created morphs for my characters and their clothing and hair. If it's not done to massive extremes, Carrara seems to do a great job of NOT showing you these issues in your render. Some other render engines might instead point it out as a glaring ill-placed shadow or other problematic issue.
when i read obj my mind associates wavefront format. prolly read it on wiki
i remember old maya5 needed a plugin to export to obj remember unwelded tessellated messes. >.<
Yeah... that's it. Wavefront OBJ file ;)
Dart, you have it mainly right :) The generally accepted term is "polygonal modelling" - as opposed to spline, metaball and NURBS. The term "box modelling" is usually refers to a method of starting off with a cube and continuing from there, as opposed to, say point-to-point or poly-by-poly or strip modelling.
There is nothing wrong with tri's, as long as they are correctly placed on flat surfaces, are not long and thin and don't cause excessive poles. After all, all renderers triangulate the mesh unseen. The problem comes in when tri's are smoothed and give bad results. I suppose it is easier for Daz to insist on all quads, which is good modelling practice, because it would be too lengthy to describe where and under what circumstances non-quads would be acceptable :)
It impossible to avoid non-planar - take a look at this pic of V4 - all the blue highlighting is non-planar polys - I show a back view fo modesty's sake - there are just as many on the front!
thinkin vicki has a blue backside. ;)
my carrara thoughts are muddled today, didn't stop for a latte this morning.
was thinkin how easy it is to forget stuff, will have to use carrara atleast 4 days a week to keep it all in my head.
After a few years, it becomes easier to ride that a bicycle! ;)
Thanks for that awesome explanation, Roygee!
I gave evilproducer a book that describes modeling the human form two ways: Polygonal and NURB. Are NURBs the same thing as Spline modeling? That's certainly what it feels like to me, though I've never (yet) actually tried it.
NURBS - Non-Unform Rational B-Splne is another whole different method of modelling, mainly used in CAD applications like Rhino, MOI. Great for designing flowing shapes like cars, which are a mix of hard-body and organic. Pretty much ingnored by the hobbiest polygonal modelling folk since the improvement of subdivision surfaces. Impossible not to get a smooth surface. Blender has some very basic NURBS tools.
Take a look at some of these to get a good idea of what they are about http://gryllus.net/Blender/Lessons/Lesson13.html
The closest Carrara and Hexagon gets are the surfaces tools - Ruled, Doube-sweep, Coons and Gordon. These seem to be the most underutilised tools in these two applications, which is a great pity, because you can get really good, smooth surfaces with very little effort.
random thought. are new people going to buy carrara that doesn't support the new g3 models
I think new people would have to find Carrara first..Where would they look?
The Wiz said,, "You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk".......
The Wiz was harsh, eh? sending them after the witch's broom.
was thinkin bout the soft physics to make grass and tree leaves move in a breeze
No need for the trees. There are parameters to animate them in plant editor. Also, if you use hair for grass, you could use scene forces.
thanks. plant editor a big mystery yet. :) still practicing resizing in terrains editor.
had a dream about drop to floor.
just have to look at the z-number for selected, divide by 2, type it in z-trans ... voila!
haven't booted rig yet to try it. only on 1st cup of tea
thinking if i make my characters telepathic, wont have to show lip visemes.
or telekinetic, wont have to animate individual fingers lol
If they can teleport too, you don't even have to worry about how they move!
apparate ! diagonilly! tee hee.
was thinkin on how wide and far should establishing shot be for a sff movie,
outside the galaxy zoomig around the milkyway?
dont wanna lose the audience in 1st 4 seconds.
Dune started with narration. ... LOTR did also - Cate Blanchette. Eragon - Jeremy Irons. Star Wars with a wall of text.
does it take less than 4 seconds to interest or disinterest an audience?
The captivating words used to be.."Once upon a time"
Dickens, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"
Lucas added, " A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away"
The times are right for a new timely approach.
Msteaka
"What makes the elephant charge his tusk
in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk ?
What makes the muskrat guard his musk ? Courage.....
Depending on the nature of the shot, and what you are trying to establish, the length can vary greatly. Take a look at Lawrence of Arabia some time. There is a long, yet compelling establishing shot of one of the characters.
Mis- understood the question- which I b elieve is... How to keep an audience watching past 4 seconds..... Assuming you have a good story and some decent visuals, then...
I think the sound is even more important than the visuals for the beginning of a movie. I hate to overuse the Star Wars example, but the most important part of the beginning in my mind was the music ..It started off with almost a crash and totally engages the audience - with that music commanding your attention I think you would be happy scanning over the pages of a telephone book for you knew that great thiings were coming.
Evil mentions Lawrence of Arabia....again great music and sound..... The music swept you away to the mysteries of the desert.
Of course every movie does not have to be an epic... but that does not lessen the importance of music. Hollywood pays a lot of attention to music for good reason..I think we working on a much diminutive scale should also. Matching the right music to the visuals, I think is the best way to lure the audience to keep watching whatever it is your presenting... If it is a stinker, you will still lose them..but the music will keep them watching far longer than otherwise.
eeks. >.<
for now is only going to be ambient sounds. every thunderstorm this year, been sticking my mic out the window, some good thunder claps and rain hitting cement and windows. scifi sounding lawn sprinklers.
recorded some osprey kiys, thought would be nice for dragons,
am buying a new quad core pc soon.
i'm wondering how much render time i'd save networking with my current dual core pc for network rendering? Is the rendering time saving worth buying a high speed 3com switch and kvm?
thanks for your advice. i truly appreciate it.
was thinking of kewl stuff deformers could do to text,
Agreed. Another good example is "Jaws". A group of us watched the opening credits (just the first minute or so, the underwater travelling shot), replacing the original music with some light classical music like "The Blue Danube" (and the title to something like "The Magic Ocean"). It looked like the beginning of a Cousteau special:
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/192948/Jaws-Movie-Clip-Opening-Credits.html
Here's another "Jaws" first scene example, also with "The Blue Danube":
I have to say, I just bought a quad core laptop and I love it. But my eight-core PC seems more that twice the speed. Granted, it has eight times the RAM (16GB vs 2GB) and the eight-cores are each clocking over 3GHz vs the 1.5GHz of my Quad, and the fact that I built my Eight-core myself from parts at Newegg... that (to me) will always beat somebody else's idea of the perfect box, since I know what 'my' software wants most. Plus I get full run of the design, like how much I invest on the actual box. My brother (genius engineer) told me not to waste my money on a box full of frills - just get a cheapo $20 box. I ignored that advice and bought a box with filtered intakes and plenty of room for air-flow. You see, my brother doesn't use his computers to crank the cpu core(s) wide open and leave them like that for hours on end. Rendering animations does that.
My initial intention was to eventually build a second and third eight-core box and use render nodes to tie them together for rendering. So far I don't feel the slightest urge to go that route. But then again, I still use my efficiency methods for rendering fast.
I also agree with evil and msteaka on their attention-grasping thoughts. on a different note altogether, I learned a lot on how to use Howler by watching Phillip Staiger's tutorial videos and he has all of this crazy music going on in them. I used that idea in my own, but I didn't use good practices and it actually ruined the experience for countless would-be-otherwise viewers. Since those videos already reached the people I made them for, who were far less critical, I didn't really care. They're free anyways. But I've learned a lot from those comments. When I watched them myself, I wasn't listening to the content of the tutorial. I was listening for that horrible hum in the background (foreground?) of my voice track. My house is still wired with the old paper-wrapped wire cloth-braided together without modern (as of 1970s?) grounding. So it has been determined that the hum comes from the electricity in the house itself. Tries all manner of ways to abolish it to no avail. So the music and sound FX was to try and mask that horrific hum! Now when I watch those, I too find them entirely unwatchable.
Studying cinematography practices is awesome for helping to understand where to go with these projects. How editors cut the final film is invaluable in understanding what to make in the first place. Some famous editors say: "Some directors have the cut in mind as they shoot, others shoot everything they can think of leaving it up to the editor(s) to build the movie" and have gone on to say that they prefer the former, since the latter is actually asking the editor to also become a director without pay! ;)
So I use my Carrara browser as a sort of storyboard. Instead of sketching a portion of the action as a storyboard frame, I open the stage and add the characters for that sketch, give them optimization in lighting and some preliminary anaimations and save it to the browser using their place in the storyboard as the name of the file, within the folder which is named for where it all takes place. These stages are the first things I started working on in Carrara, coming up with an overall scheme for lighting, atmospheres, rendering techniques settings, etc., and characters without scenery are built along side this production at the same time - again, optimizing shaders and giving them dramatic light enhancement rigs as I save them to the browser.
If I work on a particular animation of a character and like the outcome (many time I'm just practicing animating), I save the animated character in a special folder under that actor. Now I can drag that into any of my many stages. It all helps me to 'see' where I'm going with production.
I've been using Star Wars a lot, as well, as inspiration. After all, they've certainly made a global bang.
It has been my understanding that the music is written around the movie. How could that be? I ask myself, since I know that they've been using music to help pace the sequences. I've finally caught a clue about that. The music that they were using was not the movie soundtrack! In the case of Star Wars, at least some of the stuff, they use other inspiring music from classic composers - music that they already know which provides the right 'feel' for the sequence they're working on. Now this gives inspiration to the movie score composer as well. That's how the classic three note strike from Psycho ended up in Star Wars, when they're hiding under the floor of the Millennium Falcon after being tractor-beamed onto the Death Star.