A test I did rendering 4 keyframes in Carrara in 'toon' monochrome style then using AI to process the video 'tweeners.'  Not the greatest animation ever, but it was my first with this workflow.  The figure is Genesis 2 Female 'Lotus' character by Silver Countess.  The hair is 'Portia' hair by April YSH.  The desk, chair, etc were modeled by me.  I changed all the surface shaders of the figures and props to grayscale gradients.  I then used Carrara's native 'Toon' filter, with some adjustments to the default settings.  The four keyframes are the first and last frames of 3 video segments.  Each segment is 5 seconds long.  I used the Wan 2.2 model (first / last) node workflow.  I loaded the first two of my Carrara toon renders and used the AI to generate the first video segment between those keyframes.  Then I loaded the 2nd and 3rd to get the 2nd video segment.  Then I loaded the 3rd and 4th to get the 3rd video segment.  I then composited the 3 segments together for a 15 second video.  Not the greatest of all time, and SteveK is safe for his 48 hour film festival.  Still, I think it is promising.

https://youtube.com/shorts/jIqEW9H5KLk?feature=share

kpr said:

Great time-progression using the different planes - Your storytelling is good and on 5:08 you made me laugh. Great work in only 48 hours 

I did a little RT-rendering in Unity. It's great fun - characters movement around the sets and lighting/camera angles etc especially (but you still need animated characters)

Thanks.  Was it the music @ 5:08? I wasn't sure anybody would get the reference to an old movie (1968!).  Yes, four different planes but the same mocap (a Carrara clip) for each of the four "shooters" (the carrier deck launch officer), just different camera angles.  Without those clips (I have many dozens in my Carrara browser), I'd have very little character animation, setting key frames takes too long.  This clip is actually a "Spell Casting".  

I've never used Unity but I am impressed by the work of the other team I mentioned.  Beside the animation, he has a great sense of humor, always a plus in the 48HFP, regardless of the genre. Are "animated characters" in Unity similar to Carrara's clips, i.e. mocap files that can be applied to any character?

Carrara 20X - it's a Way of Life!!!

• New - Export Particle Simulation Results directly as DUF animated scene files that open Directly within Daz Studio
• New - Export Physics Simulation Results directly as DUF animated scene files that open Directly within Daz Studio
• New - Export Dynamic Hair Simulation Results directly as DUF animated scene files that open Directly within Daz Studio
• New - Automatically Add new Morph Shapes Directly from Carrara's Powerful Vertex Modeler into Daz Studio via MorphLoader Pro
• New - Send Custom Made Clothing, Hair, Props and Accessories Directly to Daz 3D Figures (Genesis lineup) as DUF Outfits, Styles, Smart Props, and More
• New - Filament and Iray Options Directly within Carrara
• New - New Texture Rooms Specifcally for Filament and Iray respectively - Save Material Presets Directly to your My Daz 3D Library as Presets
• New - High Density Sculpting Modeler - Sculpt from Scratch, or Sculpt New Morphs for Existing Items and Figures
• New - More Robust 3D Paint features that support a PBR workflow, with access to Thousands of Surface Material Presets
• New - The Sequencer and entire NLA (Non-Linear Animation) system now fluidly connect with Daz Studio's Timeline - think aniMate on Steroids!
• New - AI Assisted Auto-Posing with Surface Interaction for Objects and other Figures

Becoming a Daz 3D Published Artist has Never been Easier! With the New Carrara, Your Imagination is Your Only Limit!!!

Headwax said:

Happy birthday, 12 years old last month, how time flies

Absolutely!

For the record, I still pester Daz 3D to develop Carrara further! :)

Stezza said:

Uploaded a Carrara video for 2025 so far.. 

also I wrote some song lyrics and with Wendy's help got a tune up and going. 

Wild and wacky indeed! Great video. 

Uploaded a Carrara video for 2025 so far.. 

also I wrote some song lyrics and with Wendy's help got a tune up and going. 

I am finally getting serious about using DS, which is turning out to be a great tool for animation backgrounds.  My current best machine has an nVidia graphics card a couple of generations back, I think 2GB VRAM, so most large environment scenes use only the CPU, a fast Ryzen 12 core/24 thread.  Takes maybe 20 minutes +/- for an iRay render, but well worth it for the realism.  Then I can do the character animation in the foreground in Carrara (no camera movement), with an average frame render time (1280x720 - it's a 2 day contest) of under five seconds.  I will get a new computer in the near future, probably custom built by a friend with a fast Ryzen 9 CPU and an nVidia card with 32GB VRAM.  (Assuming I win the lottery >B-} ) Below is a 6 minute video I did recently for a contest, the DS background is at 1:56.  Any comments appreciated.

you also can create a curve in Carrara and extrude a circle along it

probably can Hexagon and Blender too

otherwise rig a subdivided cylinder primpitive in D|S 

honestly easier to buy a readymade one though, I rigged a cable but it wasn't great

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/234851/a-guitar-lead#latest

@cellulo! Happy to see you are still around these forums.
Thank you so much for you Forgotten Carrara tutorials.
I updated some non-working links here since it would be sad if they got lost:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/234011/forgotten-carrara-tutorials-and-videos#latest
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/336656/carrara-resources-files#latest
 

Yes but the idea for a beginner is not to just pick up a software at random with a barely proven track record of a few daz PAs ten years ago.

New users need to weigh up price, community support (tutorials), future proofing their skillset, access to latest technology etc.  Most beginners are naturally ending up in Blender just because there are more tutorials for it and a bigger community there.  E.g., everything that appears on my feed on Instagram are Blender creations from fairly young people. I barely even see Maya or 3DS Max in use, even though these are industry standard creation tools, and certainly never Carrara or Hexagon.

If you choose Carrara or Hexagon, there isnt going to be same level of cross pollination from other people using the same software, there isnt going to be future development, there isnt going to be a vast array of established pipelines/tutorials for creating environments that are readily accessible to you. 

I dont even like Blender and dont mean to proselytize anyone to it. It's just the fairly obvious answer to this question. 

DZFire uses Hexagon, there are a few others who have used it in the past but moved on to Max, Silo or Modo, some indeed Blender

TangoAlpha, Oso3D and I think maybe Maclean started with Carrara, FirstBastian Hexagon, 

a surprising number of PAs at least started with Hexagon, I don't have a list 

and others who are not DAZ PAs like MrSparky - Carrara, the late Chris Schell - Hexagon

Blender is popular but don't think of it as the only option

lilweep said:

markusmatern said:

Options from DAZ itself would be Hexagon (free), Carrara (paid) or Bryce (paid)

 

The fact we're mentioning any of these in the conversation to a new user is funny to me.  If they want to explore them as historical curiosities fine.

But there will be much more support and an active community for Blender and other more prominent tools.

There are some good comprehensive Blender tutorials on Udemy, made by the guy behind polyhaven.

there are DAZ PAs who use those programs so I fail to see what's funny

true some use Blender, others use 3D studio MAX, Modo, Terragen, Vue as I suggested as free now or other software

markusmatern said:

Options from DAZ itself would be Hexagon (free), Carrara (paid) or Bryce (paid)

 

The fact we're mentioning any of these in the conversation to a new user is funny to me.  If they want to explore them as historical curiosities fine.

But there will be much more support and an active community for Blender and other more prominent tools.

There are some good comprehensive Blender tutorials on Udemy, made by the guy behind polyhaven.

If you have @Predatron Masked Hero you can get a start with SpaceGhost 

Here's one I did in Carrara, just did some retexturing in PSE and modelled some simple cuffs

lilweep said:

Steve K said:

"Natasha Lyonne is making her feature-length directorial debut with an AI-powered film titled Uncanny Valley, a project from the AI-focused studio Asteria. The film, a sci-fi comedy written by Lyonne and Brit Marling, uses traditional filmmaking alongside cutting-edge AI tools to create an augmented reality video game world. The technology will be used for things like 'set extensions' and creating the immersive open-world game, rather than being an entirely AI-generated movie."

P.S. She is the star of the very good TV series' "Russian Doll" and "Poker Face" and a very intelligent, creative person.  Also, "uncanny valley" describes the eerie feeling or sense of revulsion people experience when encountering humanoid objects or robots that look almost, but not entirely, like real humans. 

So.  Can we adapt this to Carrara animations?  Is Wendy already doing this?

brit marling is the creative talent there, not natasha lyonne, but that aside...

i think intentionally using AI in full knowledge of its dystopian aspects and to elicit revulsion is the only justifiable means of using AI

The thread opener is a bit of a narrow topic so it is bound to go in other directions. The production mentioned makes it clear AI is being used. This example shows problems created with out this kind of clarity.

Thought I would update this. Apparently, this AI channel is not only violating YT TOS because it is undeclared, but the owner of said AI channel has had "his" AI music stolen, posted and registered on music sites for money by others. This is how this can spiral.

I have the DAZ product "Restaurant Crime Scene" which includes three Material/iRay presets: All in One, Emmisive Lights Off, and Emmisive Lights on.  The first one loads automatically with the the Environment product, I think.  But I could not understand how to load the other two, nothing seemed to work.  Then I stumbled on the "Select All Surfaces Using The Shader: iRay Uber" when right clicking on the preview screen.  Then the Lights Off turned off a bunch of lights, and the Lights On turned them back on.  But without selecting surfaces with this command, nada.  As an old school Carrara guy, this seems a little obscure, but it works.  Is this iRay Uber Shader a basic tool we should get more familiar with?

Diomede said:

This may upset a few people.

Consider using Carrara's vertex modeler to create a character in Carrara, rigged for movement and morphs for facial expressions.  Even I have done it.

Consider using Carrara's dynamic hair modeler and Philemo's dynamic hair to mesh plugin to model a unique MESH hair style with movement morphs. 

Consider using Carrara's native Toon filter tweaked with the GMIC render filters to create a non-photoreal look for the character (see that the dynamic hair to mesh plugin was necessary to render the hair with similar results as the renders of the character mesh).

Consider rendering roughly 20 images of your character in various poses and facial expressions, using your Toon/GMIC look.

Consider using the 20 Carrara renders in AI to train a LORA with your trigger word (Mychar?) which adds your character to the AI database.

Consider using the same Carrara Toon / GMIC combination to render a variety of your modeled props for a setting and objects.

Consider using the set/prop renders not to add those specific objects to the AI database (although you can), but to train a LORA for the render style so that the AI is trained for the 'look' you created in Carrara.

Consider using Carrara to render 6 key frames of a walk cycle of your character in your Toon/GMIC 'look', and with your depth maps from the multipass render list.  

Consider loading your character key frames in AI, with your LORAs, including loading your depth maps in a Controlnet AI processor, and directing the AI to calculate the full walk cycle?

Now, consider using your character LORA with your style LORA, along with the Carnegie Melon BVH file motion database, Mixamo motions, etc. to create a variety of short stock animations of your character moving about in your look.  

Consider combining the AI with your LORA's and your stock motions to create a 2-minute fake movie preview, or short happy birthday message for a friend, or short holiday greeting for family.

I reject the assertion that what I have described is theft.  I reject the assertion what I have described is not art or has no soul.  I reject the assertion that what I have described is any moralistic way worse for the world than using a 3D program to calculate the tweeners, or using Daz pre-built characters to create a 2-minute faux movie preview.

I am not 'there yet' in creating my non-photo-real movie preview with my characters in my look, but I am very close.  And because Daz3D stopped updating Carrara, I will probably end up finishing my 3D-combined-with-AI journey in Blender and Filter Forge, not Carrara.  In addition to everything else about Blender, the biggest issue for my dream project is updating the file format importer and exporters.  For example, many motions can easily be acquired and used openly from Mixamo.  Transferring from Mixamo to Blender is easy, but it is a bigger hassle to get the same motions from Mixamo to Carrara.  

This is essentially why I started focusing on Blender. Many options there. Blender is becoming very robust.

DDCreate said:

I've been using Daz for about 10yrs now and I think I'd like to take a stab at creating my own environments. I've never tried before and am not sure where to begin. What programs are used? Can anyone offer a good jumping off point?

When by creating environments you mean modeling them there are quite a few options out there.
Options from DAZ itself would be Hexagon (free), Carrara (paid) or Bryce (paid)

I myself work with another free option, Blender 
In case you mean landscape generation with environments there are also options as addons available like Ultrascenery2

Steve K said:

"Natasha Lyonne is making her feature-length directorial debut with an AI-powered film titled Uncanny Valley, a project from the AI-focused studio Asteria. The film, a sci-fi comedy written by Lyonne and Brit Marling, uses traditional filmmaking alongside cutting-edge AI tools to create an augmented reality video game world. The technology will be used for things like 'set extensions' and creating the immersive open-world game, rather than being an entirely AI-generated movie."

P.S. She is the star of the very good TV series' "Russian Doll" and "Poker Face" and a very intelligent, creative person.  Also, "uncanny valley" describes the eerie feeling or sense of revulsion people experience when encountering humanoid objects or robots that look almost, but not entirely, like real humans. 

So.  Can we adapt this to Carrara animations?  Is Wendy already doing this?

brit marling is the creative talent there, not natasha lyonne, but that aside...

i think intentionally using AI in full knowledge of its dystopian aspects and to elicit revulsion is the only justifiable means of using AI

lilweep said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

triplanar shader

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/8606366/#Comment_8606366

thanks to stem_athome

thats exactly what i was referring to, no idea why i called it tangent space in my post above. 

Triplanar is brilliant for things it's impossible to UV map like fractals, extremely high detalied scans etc

or applying seamless textures to anything 

I use the Carrara and Octane ones a lot, Twinmotion also has it

so was thrilled when it was made possible in DAZ