Stezza said:

not another car from a Carrara cube!  

two days to get this far.... 

seen a post somewhere in these forums and thought.... hmmmm

Top work !!! Inspires me to get back into 3D modelling - lost my mojo with all the hot weather I had ......

not another car from a Carrara cube!  

two days to get this far.... 

seen a post somewhere in these forums and thought.... hmmmm

 

Those sound like 12 or 16k files. I did a quick blender test with some 4k hdr exr up to 12k. Saw no lighting diff. The files opened  in Gimp show 16bit floating point encoding. I believe this is the default in Blender. I don't know if it was updated to allow 32. I think it is just a default. Anyway, check the encoding to be sure it  IS 32. Don't know what Carrara's limit is. Doubt you are going to notice a difference. However, different surfaces can show differences.

This is Blender more current manual. I had read about 16bit a long time ago. Talking about reading not writing, but this is what it says on both formats. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/4.0/files/media/image_formats.html
Quote: Internally Blender’s image system supports either: 8 bits per channel (4 × 8 bits). 32 bits float per channel (4 × 32 bits) – using 4 times as much memory. Images higher than 8 bits per channel will be converted into a float on loading into Blender... Radiance .hdr files store colors still in 8 bits per component, but with an additional (shared) 8-bit exponent value, making it 32 bits per pixel.

I may have to create EXRs and compare their performance Vs HDRs in something that can read both. Perhaps in Studio if it can handle both. The other option could be Blender.

Carrara seems to handle my HDRs fine. They're in the 150-200 MB range. I should say it handles them fine when saving locally, not sure how well it would handle if I saved all internally.

If it's just for scene lighting I don't know that it will do much. Not sure how well Carrara handles large hdrs either.

I think I can use EXR in the Octane Render plugin in the material node editor (not the Carrara shader room)

been a long time since I looked as hate that interface (bricks and cords)

it does render them and I convert them to HDR with Gimp which I do for EXR anyway to use in Carrara hence not checked that option in Octane

anyway this leads me to think someone could possibly create a plugin to read exr for Carrara  (not me obviously)

WINNERS!

As usual, thank you for everyone who attended this years festivities. Once a year we have the backing of Daz's vast fortune, to put on an elaborate gladiatorial games with the promise of riches, rather than our monthly fight in an alleyway over a left-over sandwich. Whether it's the riches or the sandwich you covet, it's nice to see faces, old and new. I have taken a double dose of arthritis medication, put on several pairs of spectacles, and leafed through the entries with my fellow council of elders. We have concluded our discourse, and it's time to announce the winners of the 2025 April Fools Competition. It's a travesty that i cannot award a prize to every single one of you, you all deserve recognition for your wonderful submissions. The problem is, it would be really expensive, and i don't want to. I will, however, add another three tiers to the prize list, to give some extra recognition to a few entrants that both myself, and my council, enjoyed very much. Here are the renewed april tiers...

 

Prizes (Provided by Daz3D):

 

1st Place - $100 Gift Card

2nd Place - $50 Gift Card

3rd Place - $25 Gift Card
Prizes by moi
HM - $10 Gift Card or a choice of set from my library.
THE WINNERS:

1st Place - Finding that calm perspective (SapphireBlue) - We loved this entry, but Saph generally did a great job showering us with lovely comics. Frankly, i find Saph's diligence and commitment to the theme a tangible threat, and i may have to ban them from future competitions.

2nd Place - Tiny Arms (PXF) - PXFs historical accounts of the LBC will be studied for many years to come. Who knew it had such rich history and lore.

3rd Place - Calming the Boogeymen (Payat Parin) - Excellent spread of entries from Parin, we just liked this one the most.

HM - Analysis in carrara (Stezza) - Stezza has been backbone of our annual gladiatorial games for over 400 years. This particular entry was liked by the council of elders.

HM - This ball seems to calm him down (Aki3D) - Aki had a wonderful spread of submissions. We liked this the most.

HM - It's just water (ACB) - Again, great spread from ACB, and it was hard to pick a best of the bunch. Nicely done.

 

That's it chums. We had to bite the bullet, make some tough decisions and many of my fellow judges perished during the process. Do you feel cheated? Do you feel as if YOU, were the true april fool? Perhaps you are right. No time to think about that now though, i need to get to work, diligently crafting a poorly produced and questionably marketed item for the next competition. Be sure to check the monthly freebie competition where both myself, and my glamorous co-hosts work our little fingers to the bone, keeping the spirit of competition alive. If you're still thinking about that half-sandwich, you'll be right at home.

See you next time 

To the Winners: Please send me a PM with your email address so i can forward them to daz. Also, if you've won an HM tier, please let me know if you want something from my catalogue, or if you're going to hurt my feelings and ask for a $10 gift card. Cheers!

 

evilproducer said:

One of the issues I'm having is that when Skylight is enabled in Carrara and my HDRI is loaded in the Scene Effects tab, I have to crank the Skylight brightness to 150% for better results than if it is set at the default 100%. I do have to add a keylight for highlights, which is something I have to do for HDRIs from other people as well, so I assume it is standard practice in other software. Is that a correct assumption?

AFAIK your assumption is correct. 

This was also as such described in Philemo's HDRI Light Dome plug-in thread back in 2019. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/331301/new-plugin-hdr-light-domes/p1

Nice images.

I recently bought an Insta360 X4 camera. One of the things I want to do is create 360 degree HDRIs for use in Carrara and other programs for realistic lighting. The camera itself has a fixed F-Stop of 1.9. I can shoot 72 mega pixels.
I know the basic principles of HDRIs, but one of the things I am unclaer about is how many exposures is best, and how many is overkill? I know tone mapping is needed to properly display HDRIs on non-HDRI compliant monitors and such, but does doing that affect how 3D software interprets the HDRI radiance? Would I have better results if I load non-tone-mapped HDRI images in Carrara or other 3D software?
Carrara can't handle EXR files, but I know other software does. Do they work better than HDRIs? Both are 32 bit. The file sizes I'm getting at 72 MP are stupid-huge compared to the file sizes for the HDRIs, which also seem large to me.

One of the issues I'm having is that when Skylight is enabled in Carrara and my HDRI is loaded in the Scene Effects tab, I have to crank the Skylight brightness to 150% for better results than if it is set at the default 100%. I do have to add a keylight for highlights, which is something I have to do for HDRIs from other people as well, so I assume it is standard practice in other software. Is that a correct assumption? I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and DL Studio again...

Here are a couple images I rendered with an alpha channel and added my own background and used a depth map to add a DOF in post prductions. I did not adjust levels. Both used an HDRI, the Skylight set to 150% and a key light (and in the case of A4 wearing the denim shorts, a rim light for the hair). I alsom used a low intensity elipse shape light to get the specular highlights for the eyes in the A4 shorts image. I also used full Indirect lighting set at the default 100%.

Click for full size

Click for Full Size

 

that is strange, I have uploaded obj files made of multiple parts to Mixamo with no issues

mostly from Carrara, maybe it's an obj export setting

I learnt a hard lesson about DAZ studio today

other programs once the geometry is loaded in the scene it is all there and can be saved as it's own unique file

I imported an Unreal Asset as an FBX and spent hours adding every texture map manually

saved it as a duf scene

well I decided to modify it and converted to instances (maybe that was the mistake)

I did not want all those bloated DATA files sooooooooooooooooo

I deleted them

I can do this in Poser, Carrara, iClone, Blender, Twinmotion

because

hey the geometry is loaded into the scene, it will just rewrite them

NO

am left with rounded edged grey cubes. missing files message and enormous sorrow 

oh no... what's happening in Canada?

when you end up losing a Carrara sphere 

 

Carrara awesomeness 

never in doubt.... 

therixx said:
@Diomede, I don't think it is something you did. My Carrara just stopped working and I am pretty sure I did not change anything in my setup.
 

Thank you so much for the help!

I bet you are correct.  My memory of exactly what happened prior to the crash is hazy because I have had to be away from home so much this year.  But a few things are clear - I did not do any projects which would have had me messing with the ERC Modifier, which is why I jumped to the conclusion that it must have been something else. I had done a project with PhilW's city set, which uses the shader instance randomizer, which is why I guessed it might be that.  Unfair to Sparrowhawk - so apologies.

Really happy this worked for you as well, guys :-D
I still feel a newbie when confronted wit most of you Carrara veterans, so I feel better when I can give back something in return for what I learn around here! :-)
@Diomede, I don't think it is something you did. My Carrara just stopped working and I am pretty sure I did not change anything in my setup.
@RuudL, I tried putting the ERC module into the extension folder again and carrara crashed. Strangely enough, putting in other builds of the ERC modifier, Carrara complained with the same message but did not crash.
I also tried to reinstall all the visual C runtimes Fenric mentioned, no luck. I believe something changed in Windows itself. I'll wait for the next update and try to add the ERC again...

Great news! Carrara is working again.

I am curious what will happen when you reinstall the ERCModifier. Did you even tried that?

Do you mean the InstanceRandomizer by Sparrowhawke referring as the plugin to randomize shaders?

I am trying to figure out what is causing the problem by reconstucting you setup. I've already gone thru some of the ERCModifiers source code. Could not find a problem so far.

Yay!  Up and Running Again.  Deleting ERC Modifier did the trick.  Thank You!

Back home in Arkansas and able to use my main computer (desktop).

Note - I definitely did NOT recently add the ERC Modifier extension.  I must have added something else which conflicted with the ERC modifier, which I am guessing was the plugin to randomize shaders for replicated objects.  It seems to me that was the most recent plugin I installed, and that was several months ago.  Not sure about that, though.  In any case, I have a working version of Carrara on my main computer again.  Yay.

we have been down this road before

same arguments different tool

and the irony, oh the irony

I too put far more work into stuff I do using Ai tools than I do my 3D renders using assets

and lets not even get started on the 3D mesh outputs from Meshy3D,  Hunyuan, trellis etc

I spent more time in Zbrush, UltimateUnwrap3D snd Carrara fixing those blighters than I would have sculpting them from scratch  

but

I never would have sculpted them in the first place as I would have never thought of creating what the Ai did myself 

also the one made from a photo of me for example 

I have morphed, face transfered and dressed the F out of countless generations of DAZ people to look like me

but that lowpoly badly UV mapped Ai generated prop looked more realistic in a scene than anything I could have done in D|S from a distance 

of course I had to make it more detailed using Spotlight snd polypaint and it breaks up sundiviiding so remeshing was needed too

and you know what

3D modellers do exactly this using a device called a 3D scanner or a camera array and don't call that cheating

Steve K said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

thanks everyone 

I am just happy the VWD bridge worked 

I had to search on that ... "In von Willebrand disease (VWD), von Willebrand factor (VWF) acts like a bridge, connecting platelets to the damaged blood vessel wall (subendothelial matrix) to stop bleeding."  Sounds like you should be really happy that worked ...  

I miss Philemo, he would likely know why it won't work on my Win10 PC as he created it, Virtual World Dynamics itself works but Carrara won't load with the plugin added on Win10, it throws up an error in French (he is French) 

anything that will run Photoshop will handle Carrara easily.

My laptop from 2011 still runs Carrara

min specs I would imagine would be something like

R7 or R9

32 gig+ RAM

Nvidia card 4000 or 5000 series ( I don't use DazStudio ) 

My ACER Nitro tower handles all and is a i7 with 32gig RAM 1660 video card and is plenty of storage for me.

but I'm also thinking of updating as Windows takes up more and more.

I've been looking at an R9 with 64gig RAM and 5080 I think it was video card. Saying that my 2nd computer is a mini R9 with 64gig RAM with intel graphics and it does it all for me as well.