hmmm

6 7 

using Carrara's text tool

A new years and a new round of RRRR.
The theme for this round is  It was a great idea, but... 
Just image all those great ideas with a less then great outcome, all those Hold by beer moments, or anything imaginable that someone imagines, does that clearly shows why everyone else dropped the idea before.
Check the entries only thread, first post, for an example on how to post an entry.

RRRR stands for Random Runtime Roulette Renders, and it's a contest that has been running for over twelve years now, on and off. We invite anyone to enter, specially all those new users who have shown up the past years. This is not the usual make a very nice render contest but more like tell a really great story, often fun, with your render!

How does it work?
Make your pull of 4 items, and if your any Lucky Bastards, you pull one extra item per LB.

Who can play?

Anyone can play!

How do you prepare yourself for play?

The rules are very simple, but first you need to have all your items in some kind of order in a text file, dumped from the itemized history into a text file or a spread sheet. Remove things like software, gift certs, and special plugins from the list and items that wil not work with the software you work with.
 For example if you have items for Poser, Bryce or Carrara, and want to use DAZ Studio, remove those other items from your list. If you have loads of older figures, M3, M4, a ton of non Iray stuff and you only want to use Studio with Iray, remove all the junk from you list. 

Then you use a randomizer to randomly pick items from your list (your Runtime/My Library) for your start pull . You can use items from any store. Now build a scene with those 4 items plus any other items you want to add to make a fun scene. For newcomers I heartly recommend looking at the previous contests below to get ideas how you can do this. 

Working randomizer:: https://www.random.org/integers

There are some situations where you allowed to redraw, these are:


- You pulled something that doesn’t work, broken thing, only works in a version / software not used etc etc, or you forgot to remove that item from you list even though you knew it wont work, or figure that out later.
- You pulled a software or add-on to a software or anything you should have filtered out from the list.
- You pulled only huge environment props and will not be able to render a scene without crashing.
- You pulled an item you already have been using in two RRRR renders in this content and that was picked randomly. Three is a curse - rule!

Lucky Bastard Rule!
I say this again: If you have Lucky Bastards, you pull one extra item for each LB you have, simple as that. 
Explaination of Lucky Bastards. 
Lucky Bastards, or LBs, are a form of handicap system which makes the contest a little more difficult for those who have won.

Current Lucky Bastards Standings

How to play?
You pull, you compose and you Render. You post your images and pulls in this thread (Don't miss that, entries without pulls and posts in this thread will be disqualified!!).
Then the entry should also be posted in the Entries only thread.

Bundles
If you pull a bundle, use two or three complete items from it, or more if you like, but you do not need to use all, but only picking a hairpin from Victoria 8 Pro Bundle is “too little”. Clarification: A bundle still counts as only one pulled item.

Poses, Expressions and textures/colors
If you pull a pose pack, an expression pack or a texture/color pack, you only need to use one of them, not all. For example if you pull 500 expressions for Genesis 8 Female, use one, if you pull 128 colors for Frappe Hair, use one.
Accidenty breaking the TOS
If your entry is removed by the forum mods because it accidentally, not deliberate, broke the TOS, you do not have to redo that entry but can move on and make a new pull. 

The rules of madness! 
Now you have successfully and randomly picked your items, make a scene, you can add other items as well but the one you picked should be prominent or cleverly used. Render it, post it and make us all laugh! Remember though that the renders must follow the TOS of the forum. As we have a theme on the contest, the render should in some way touch that theme. 

The contest categories! 
There are two categories Best and Funniest. Every image will compete in both categories.

Contest duration!
It starts now at Wednesday January 14 - 2026, and will go on until Sunday March 15, 2026 at 23:59:59 local DAZ time. 

This months sponsors so far:
Totte (Code 66) is sponsoring with two items from his store
Luci45 sponsors with a $40 Daz GC,
Elliandra is sponsoring with two items from her store
3Diva is sponsoring with two items from thier store
Dartanbeck is sponsoring with items from his store

We want more sponsors!

Do you want to sponsor the RRRR?
Please chip in a gift card sponsorship, sponsors can play, they should play, they are even extra encouraged to play, as sponsors always plays for keeps.

Maximum number of entries? 
For this round it will be a maximum of 12 entries per player.

So, good luck and start your render engines!

Wow. <tries to pick jaw back up off the floor>

Also, I just decided to have a look at what the heck Lumion is. Very cool. Not sure how it works or anything because it almost seems like folks should know that before approaching their site, but it looks awe-inspiring!
I guess you can tell by that comment that I'm nowhere near the architech type. But that's okay. There's a place for character animators in this world too, right?! :)

Drives me crazy looking at these nice, clean architectural designs and model builds that you're doing. It doesn't surprize me in the slightest that you can do this in Hexagon. I don't model very often other than just simple things like making my own morphs for existing content. Before Mesh Grabber and then now Geometry Sculptor in Daz Studio, I would either use the Hex bridge (after getting into Studio) or Carrara (before coming to Studio from Carrara) and I tend to like this sort of interface. Again... not modeling on a daily basis or anything.

I was starting to barely get into 3D modeling before knowing about Daz 3D, but only because a team leader wanted me to be able to unwrap UVs, since I loved creating their custom textures. I sculpted stone, so the idea of starting with a wireframe cube just never appealed to me. He bought me Poser 5 because I was taking our 3D assets, posing them, and rendering our promo imagery in (then Discreet) 3DS Max. That drove me nuts! All I wanted to do since then is to animate. I found Carrara about a year before Daz 3D acquired it and that's where I remained until the Daz 3D Vendor, Linday, created this amazing Long Curly Hair with dForce - which was perfect for my main (and often only) character. That was enough to get me to try animating in the software that we were all taught was the last thing to use for animating. 

Knowing the PA tools within Studio, I created my own system directly onto any Genesis base figure that took animation in Daz Studio from an impossibility to my favorite animation experience to date! So now I'm addicted!!!

Oh... oops. 
I meant to stop at the Carrara part and mention that I was having fun UV mapping in Carrara - as cludgy as it felt - and was wondering if you do UV Mapping in Hexagon and, if so... how do you like it?
I still haven't figured out how to access that side of Hexagon but, since Eovia was designing Hexagon after Carrara was already capable of Vertex modeling, and that it was meant to be an improvement, I just have a feeling that UV Mapping has been improved as well - if even just a little. 

It's been forever and a day already since I've done anything with that aside from a simple preset application done a few days ago for a friend. 

Still. I'm no modeler, but I can get by. But I absolutely Love good, clean geometry when I see it! You make good, clean (and beautiful) geometry! I bet it's a Blast to texture!!!

mmoir said:

WendyLuvsCatz,   interesting take on creating first and last frames in Carrara and then using Ai to interpolate between them. Do I have this correct?   Do you  have a link to a video where you did this?

the 3 in my post are examples 

some only use first frames, those are the weird ones 

I thought that was why you deleted your post 

not having seen it and Headwax asking if it used ai

it's a very controversial tool among artists understandably

which why now I don't really use it to just create art from prompt alone but rather modify my own 3D renders and my family photos  

an ai playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr2PZeo7X9g&list=PLdCZ-Zh9DvBD1Ckcnuurkh2w5NTbuhttD

WendyLuvsCatz,   interesting take on creating first and last frames in Carrara and then using Ai to interpolate between them. Do I have this correct?   Do you  have a link to a video where you did this?

I remember doing the Tesla
Drinking those moments when
The blackness would hit me
And the void would be calling

Let's do the Tesla again.... 

or something like that... from the charged up cube comes balls and all...

boned and morphed and added Carrara fur for an electrifying experience... 

Let's do the Tesla again....

It's just a push to the left
and an extruson to the right 

mmoir said:

 

 

 I hope using ai to animate between frames was not upsetting,

I do try to use it as a tool for editing, mostly video interpolation and tweening, not to prompt art from scratch with no effort 

(I didn't see your comment)

it was many Carrara sets I rendered into videos from images, not just yours

it would take me a week or more to actually render those transitions in Carrara and cook my CPU

I actually can no longer do it now because Wan2.2 stopped working on my 2080Ti

so I am back to 3D rendering only

these were the renders I used BTW, took me a couple days to just do those as only have a AMD Ryzen3

I do have Octane but procedural shaders won't work

baking them all with Inagoni is on my to do list

Steve K said:

Headwax said:

olde carrara renders  ...

"Olde" ... "in or relating to an old-fashioned style that is intended to be quaint and attractive.
'Ye Olde Tea Shoppe'  "  Yeah, it fits.  

Thanks ;) my spill chick is bracken! 

Today the Carrara Cubes transformed into the Ferryman's boat!

Headwax said:

olde carrara renders  ...

"Olde" ... "in or relating to an old-fashioned style that is intended to be quaint and attractive.
'Ye Olde Tea Shoppe'  "  Yeah, it fits.  

mmoir said:

It has been a while since I have been here..... I stopped using Carrara and moved to blender for my  3D stuff though I miss Carrara and it is still installed on my old computer.  Just wondering what was going on here..    It doesn't look super busy but busy, too bad Daz did a number on Carrara.   I tried starting up Blender groups to create animations with not much success.  I am doing animations and have a couple of youtube channels , one for young kids and one for older kids. 

Hope this place gets super busy again.

we hung on pretty well until the ai avalanche suffocated  us, some have adapted, others have quit in disgust, maybe we should have a mmoir render thread :)

Stezza said:

thankyou @Stonemason

minor adjustment to the textures for Carrara 

Bonza, bro!

@mrsparky 

Mr Sparky or is it really Mrs Parky?

you are the best and your products adorn a lot of my Carrara renders and will continue to do so into the future. 

You and your products will be missed 

Thankyou and best wishes for your future endevours.

thankyou @Stonemason

minor adjustment to the textures for Carrara 

WendyLuvsCatz said:

we missed you 

consider selling your Carrara content on Renderosity too 

are still a few of your sets I never picked up (though I do own quite a lot)

I don't even know where to look to find the files for those Products anymore.

as a Carrara user, I would bridge between 3 separate bottomless topless shapes too

don't ask me how to do it in Blender though  (which why I hadn't suggested it}

mmoir said:

.. Just wondering what was going on here ...

I am currently working on a still image for a contest, using Carrara with a DAZ Studio background.  I use the same approach for animations, those iRay renders can be pretty stunning.  But this particular contest is for still images only.  

we missed you 

consider selling your Carrara content on Renderosity too 

are still a few of your sets I never picked up (though I do own quite a lot)

Just checked I couldn't open Carrara on my computer....  my laptop may have it installed.  Would be nice to use it again.

It has been a while since I have been here..... I stopped using Carrara and moved to blender for my  3D stuff though I miss Carrara and it is still installed on my old computer.  Just wondering what was going on here..    It doesn't look super busy but busy, too bad Daz did a number on Carrara.   I tried starting up Blender groups to create animations with not much success.  I am doing animations and have a couple of youtube channels , one for young kids and one for older kids. 

Hope this place gets super busy again.