JoeMamma2000 said:

And on top of that, to be practical, DAZ ain't gonna make Carrara's modeller really, really good. Guaranteed. It just doesn't make enough money to be worth it.

Joe, you have made variations on this assertion quite a few times now in several threads. Usually there is an "I'm just stating the facts" not too far away.

Yet, if we take this to its logical - yet ridiculous - conclusion, virtually all software development would cease instantly. Not just 3D programs either. There would be only one of each app/utility ever created and that is it because "it is just too expensive to make things better."

This doesn't explain why there is Carrara, Hexagon, Sketchup, Modo, Maya, Lightwave, Wings, Blender...etc. etc. etc. There are many 3D modeler programs just as there are many word processors, spreadsheets, OSes, web-page author tools, image editors.

Clearly, expense is not the primary factor here.

@tdrd - you don't have to look specific for Bryce content. Bryce can import a lot of different models, you can also use SketchUp stuff from the Google Warehouse.

WOOOOOWWW! Yup...gotta have this one. You gotta a link Betsy?

I can hear Music now, “There are plenty of free ones out there! Why did you buy one?”....actually there are very few 57 Nomads. I have only gotten one from Sketchup and had to fix the mesh on it. Holes all around the windows and such, you could tell it was the 57 convertible with a top added. So this one, I will buy.

:-)

I use a plethora of modelers. When I need something fast and quick, it's Hexagon instantly, even though it's firing up WINE to do it. Hex is just so simple. I also like Carrara's vertex modeler, though it does take more effort to do things. Maya is just too $%^& to get anything done quickly, even though it is Linux Native. Maya is just so powerful that it always seems to get involved somewhere. SketchUP is OK, but something about it just rubs me wrong. 123D is still... well, Autodesk. Those who use Autodesk products will know what I mean, there's a certain UGH that goes with an Autodesk designed interface. Wings just never gives me enough reason to use it. Blender is Blender, and I'll leave it at that. Lightwave involves too much to get anything started. I'll stop there for now.

Hex does have some irritating issues. Many times I have to take the model into Carrara or Blender to clean up some weird "additions" to otherwise simple objects that Hex just seems determined to add. But the extra import, delete the anomalies, and re-export is still less time and effort than doing the model in other apps. I also hop from app to app where specific abilities allow for quicker work. It is not uncommon for me to have Hex, Carrara, Maya, Blender, and DS4 all up at the same time and popping OBJs in and out of each as necessary. Yes, DS4 actually has uses for working with modeling with OBJs.

Does Carrara need Hex's Modeler? It wouldn't hurt, but it isn't necessary. Truthfully, Carrara isn't what pops into mind first, or second, or sometimes even third, when I need to create a model from scratch. If I'm tweaking, cleaning, or otherwise messing with operations that revolve around vertices, then I'll use Carrara. But, I really don't model organics much either. The vast majority of what I'm doing starts in a CAD or structured drawing environment where I can control measurements very accurately.

A lot of the things I model are assemblies of many different, more basic, models. For instance, one model of an arena actually contained a fully realized cinder-block model (and associated mortar) for *each* brick necessary on the arena exterior, as well as fully modeled steel, aluminum, and fiberboard siding/roofing, composite and cast stone pieces, etc (there are reasons that I need full models and not just shell meshes). Hex helps create these smaller base pieces VERY quickly. Carrara... not so much a help on the base modeling, but excellent on helping assemble the composite pieces. But I have to admit that DS4 is very quickly displacing Carrara for the assembly process, especially with the help of some plugins.

Kendall

Well, I finally bought another of N7's older models, when I purchased the 57 Chevy convertable I was greatly disappointed, the model came in as a prop, didn't work well at all in DS, and it also didn't work well in Poser, though it was made for Poser.

So needless to say I was a little apprehensive about purchasing anymore of their cars, when they released their 34 and 32 Ford's, I couldn't resist, had to give them a try, and with trial and error, made them work well in DS4, and now DS4.5 Pro, so have been happy with their cars ever since.

So today, I decided to get another of their older releases, while I was still a little concerned, I also now know how to deal with certain things, like parenting just about everything to the mainbody, and that sort of thing, so today, I got me another 57 Chevy, this time, I got the Nomad.

I can hear Music now, "There are plenty of free ones out there! Why did you buy one?" The primary reason is because I wanted a better mesh than can be found at Sketchup, and so far, I'm not disappointed, the car loads just fine, (remember that with N7 models, you must not have anything else highlighted in the scene, better to load their cars into an empty scene), on this one, you need to parent the doors, the wheels, (all 4), both of the rear gates, the chrome and outside parts, and the inside parts, and the gold parts, everything should be parented to the Mainbody.

The shaders work fine on this car, I used Schurby's 65 GTO chrome for the chrome on the Mainbody, the doors, the rear gates, all the wheels, I used the Ultamate Shader Collection metals gold for the gold trim, and DZFire's shaders for the bodypaint, the car turned out pretty decents.

nitehawk_ltd said:

music2u4u said:

Nitehawk...in Sketchup, click the groups tab, then click "weld vertices", then when it does that, click "recalculate normals", when it is done, it will be very smooth. Then export it. Hope this helps you out.

:-)

Thanks but...
I'm using SU 7 and the groups tab is grayed out.
The only reason I got it was to access the warehouse. So I don't really know how to use it.
Can you give a walk thru?
Thanks.
Gerry

I'm sorry nitehawk...my bad....you export the model to a .obj or .3ds format, then import it into poseray (freebie). that is where you click the groups tab, then the rest as stated. It is poseray that smooths it out.

https://sites.google.com/site/poseray/

:-)

music2u4u said:

Nitehawk...in Sketchup, click the groups tab, then click "weld vertices", then when it does that, click "recalculate normals", when it is done, it will be very smooth. Then export it. Hope this helps you out.

:-)

nitehawk_ltd said:

Alexa Sears said:

Here's my first entry for the month. :)

RedTail -- can't count

Used DS4Pro on Linux/Wine. NO POSTWORK

TV Show: Cowboy Bebop

Title: Squashed Bounty Head

Faye: Aww... I just had my ship cleaned, and you go and smudge it. I hope your bounty covers this.

Alexa

A question Alexa..
.
How did you get the Red Tail so clean looking? I wasn't happy with what I got.
.
The .obj output of Sketchup 7 is loaded with ngons. Nice & smooth, but it looks like it is covered with webs of hair.
If I run it thru PoseRay, the mesh is clean, but it is blocky & not smooth. Plus it converts the mesh to triangles thereby doubling the size of the mesh.
How did you get it clean, is there a trick with Blender that I should use?
.
Anyways, like your render. Got the series & movie on DVD.
.
Gerry

Nitehawk...in Sketchup, click the groups tab, then click "weld vertices", then when it does that, click "recalculate normals", when it is done, it will be very smooth. Then export it. Hope this helps you out.

:-)

A few posts down from your own : http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/7516/

Some people here do use sketchup I believe, but you would be better posting that question in a seperate thread in The Commons.

you get nasty ngons in sketchup too using the extrude punch but you can fix them in Carrara by triangulating ngons.
I find punching holes using boolean objects very hit and miss, always the wrong bit deletes!
the sketchup extrude tool is pretty cool, Carrara needs one.
my sad solution is to stick an empty polygon shape in an emptied polygon, bridge it with two lines, fill the two polygons between and triangulate.

Hello everybody
Just found Cripeman's tutorial on making a facade. Seems like that method will work. So I am good.
But I did notice Carrara Cafe tutorials don't seem to work anymore. Found them on Youtube.
Thanks

I have a simple task. A faceplate for a piece of electronic gear. Picture a 1/4 in thick plate, about 4x10 inches.
This plate would have a few rectangular cut outs for meters, and about 10 small holes for adjustment screws to poke out.
Normally This would take me 5 minutes in Sketchup, then export, then Meshmaker, then it still needs to be messed with in Carrara for the holes to look right. I saw boolean operations in Carrara. This method ' Looked similar to what I did in sketchup , make the plate , draw a bunch of circles and rectangles and subtract. I tried that , and well It's just not sinking into my thick skull in carrara. I have read the section in the manual, but it suggests a menu should pop up asking if I want to subtract etc.
I have seen odd french video's that make it look like it can be done in Hexagon, but when I searched these forums for tips, all I see is
no mention of Boolean in Carrara, and lots of warnings of using this method in Hexagon.
Is there a different method in Carrara I'm missing ( just point me in the write direction I'll read the manual and find tutorials.
Does this work in Hex?
Thank you for any tips in advance!
Carrara pro 6
8068

Kendall Sears said:

nitehawk_ltd said:

Alexa Sears said:

Here's my first entry for the month. :)

Alexa

How did you get the Red Tail so clean looking? I wasn't happy with what I got.

Gerry

*Ping* Here is my chime in that Alexa alluded to...

The RedTail from sketchup is quite detailed, but is useless outside of SU. Sooooo, I had a need and decided to try to model one myself.

Kendall

nitehawk_ltd said:

Alexa Sears said:

Here's my first entry for the month. :)

RedTail -- can't count

Used DS4Pro on Linux/Wine. NO POSTWORK

TV Show: Cowboy Bebop

Title: Squashed Bounty Head

Faye: Aww... I just had my ship cleaned, and you go and smudge it. I hope your bounty covers this.

Alexa

A question Alexa..
.
How did you get the Red Tail so clean looking? I wasn't happy with what I got.
.
The .obj output of Sketchup 7 is loaded with ngons. Nice & smooth, but it looks like it is covered with webs of hair.
If I run it thru PoseRay, the mesh is clean, but it is blocky & not smooth. Plus it converts the mesh to triangles thereby doubling the size of the mesh.
How did you get it clean, is there a trick with Blender that I should use?
.
Anyways, like your render. Got the series & movie on DVD.
.
Gerry

*Ping* Here is my chime in that Alexa alluded to...

The RedTail from sketchup is quite detailed, but is useless outside of SU. Sooooo, I had a need and decided to try to model one myself. What I have done is modeled in Hexagon and Carrara and is quad based (mostly... DS4 has it's own ideas about that). I usually model using CAD software (it's the Engineering Education... what can I say?), but have been trying to use "modeling software" more. It is not near as detailed as the SU model (hence the reason Alexa only made a small part of it visible in the scene. Also, I have some scale issues to resolve -- there are conflicting scales for the RedTail provided in CB... references from "Ballad of the Fallen Angels", "Knockin on Heaven's Door", "Honky Tonk Women", and several others make the RedTail anywhere from the size of a compact car, up to a Delivery Truck. As an example, in most episodes the cockpit of the RT is barely big enough for Faye, yet she fits not only herself but an obese Whitney Hagas Matsumoto ("My Funny Valentine") into there. In any case, I based mine off of "Knockin on Heaven's Door".

There is also the fact that the RedTail is outfitted with varying armament along the way (which the purchase of was never explained).

As for modeling the RT... it is really a quite simple craft. Other than the harness suspending the cockpit sphere, the whole ship is easily constructed from smoothed primitives. In fact, some of the functionality of the ship relies on "invisible" structural pieces. I'm still undecided on whether I'm going to finish this thing much further. I've not bothered to UV map anything (I'm a shader guy) but I have a mat zone for just about every piece, so my surface list for this thing is extensive. The number of polys I used to do this thing are unreal. I tend to be a high poly modeler anyway, but this one is high -- just over 100000 polys. For example, the cylinder you see is modeled separately and then assembled to make the ship. I used a primitive cylinder, and then cut the holes with booleans. After adding edges to survive sub-d I exported the shape as an obj. I then created the "loads" from cylinders, and exported them to obj. Then I positioned the loads into the cylinder when assembling the final model. The ammunition chute is just cubes extruded/chamfered as necessary to fit the shape.

EDIT: The "corgi" I was working on... Well, I'm not so good with organics. It sorta resembles a play-doh dachshund/hound/corgi looking thing. Or maybe more like dough with appendages. However, it HAS the right dimensions for a corgi, just not the looks.

Kendall

One of the things that really always bothered me about using Schurby's cars, is the totally modern upto date license plates he always uses for his prop plates, I wanted something a little more appropriate to the age of the car, sure, a fully restored car would have todays latest license plates installed!

However, what if I wanted to render a scene from the past? So I set out to see how to change the license plates to reflect a more appropriate time period, something we model railroaders have dealt with for years, you have created a beautiful 1930's era scene, but the only vehicles you could find on the hobby shop shelves were cars from the 1960's and newer, that was until once company started making vintage car kits in HO scale in the 1960's, tis the same situation in 3D modeling.

What I did was simply download some license plates from the 3D Warehouse, (its amazing what you can find there), while some of the textures supplied there won't work well, the one advantage you do have is that you can use the model, and go to the ACME License Plate maker site, and make your own plates, those will work fine for this project.

Remember that in order for your license plates to even work in DS, you must convert the model into a .obj, so make sure your version of sketchup has the obj converter ruby.

Once you have the plate in DAZ Studio, you can use any of the .jpg pics of license plates you made at the ACME site, these lend themselves well to these sketchup license plates, you may need to resize your plates to fit your vehicles, but once you have it in place, then simply parent the plate to the vehicle.

They look pretty decent when you set them up right!

nitehawk_ltd said:

Alexa Sears said:

Here's my first entry for the month. :)

RedTail -- can't count

Used DS4Pro on Linux/Wine. NO POSTWORK

TV Show: Cowboy Bebop

Title: Squashed Bounty Head

Faye: Aww... I just had my ship cleaned, and you go and smudge it. I hope your bounty covers this.

Alexa

A question Alexa..
.
How did you get the Red Tail so clean looking? I wasn't happy with what I got.
.
The .obj output of Sketchup 7 is loaded with ngons. Nice & smooth, but it looks like it is covered with webs of hair.
If I run it thru PoseRay, the mesh is clean, but it is blocky & not smooth. Plus it converts the mesh to triangles thereby doubling the size of the mesh.
How did you get it clean, is there a trick with Blender that I should use?
.
Anyways, like your render. Got the series & movie on DVD.
.
Gerry

Dad did that modeling(that's why the scale is so far off), so he might chime in once he is finished with the Corgi he is working on.

While we are on that subject, here is what I have come up with by making Edward using Genesis.

Thoughts?

Thanks for all the comments everyone! ^_^

Alexa :)

Alexa Sears said:

Here's my first entry for the month. :)

RedTail -- can't count

Used DS4Pro on Linux/Wine. NO POSTWORK

TV Show: Cowboy Bebop

Title: Squashed Bounty Head

Faye: Aww... I just had my ship cleaned, and you go and smudge it. I hope your bounty covers this.

Alexa

Mattymanx said:

mdbruffy said:

I know this is way off-topic, but we all do projects away from 'Trek on occation and frankly, I had no idea where else to go to ask this, so...

This engine and the rest of the train- coal car, passenger, baggage freight and caboose, have been in my runtime for nearly five years now. I built them before I'd ever heard of Sketchup or any other modeling program- they're built entirely with primatives in Poser 5 if I remember right. The problem is, the .pp2 for the engine weighs in at 43.7 MBs- an obj file hits 69.7.
So the question is, is there a good, free program that can reduce the size of these files without messing with the quality of the models? I'm thinking they'd have to be reduced by half at least before anyone would be willing to use them.

Believe it or not, but DS has always been good at compressing obj. I dont know the exact setting BUT if you use the OBJ2PP2 exporter it will save out a brand new OBj thats nicely compressed. To give you an example, the Holodeck I am converting, the final OBJ from Carrara is 269MB with everything in it. The compressed OBJ from DS was 167MB.

Okay, downloaded Daz.. As soon as I get a free moment (Fingers crossed) I'll install it and see what I can do. Thanks Mattymanx.

mdbruffy said:

I know this is way off-topic, but we all do projects away from 'Trek on occation and frankly, I had no idea where else to go to ask this, so...

This engine and the rest of the train- coal car, passenger, baggage freight and caboose, have been in my runtime for nearly five years now. I built them before I'd ever heard of Sketchup or any other modeling program- they're built entirely with primatives in Poser 5 if I remember right. The problem is, the .pp2 for the engine weighs in at 43.7 MBs- an obj file hits 69.7.
So the question is, is there a good, free program that can reduce the size of these files without messing with the quality of the models? I'm thinking they'd have to be reduced by half at least before anyone would be willing to use them.

Believe it or not, but DS has always been good at compressing obj. I dont know the exact setting BUT if you use the OBJ2PP2 exporter it will save out a brand new OBj thats nicely compressed. To give you an example, the Holodeck I am converting, the final OBJ from Carrara is 269MB with everything in it. The compressed OBJ from DS was 167MB.

I know this is way off-topic, but we all do projects away from 'Trek on occation and frankly, I had no idea where else to go to ask this, so...

This engine and the rest of the train- coal car, passenger, baggage freight and caboose, have been in my runtime for nearly five years now. I built them before I'd ever heard of Sketchup or any other modeling program- they're built entirely with primatives in Poser 5 if I remember right. The problem is, the .pp2 for the engine weighs in at 43.7 MBs- an obj file hits 69.7.
So the question is, is there a good, free program that can reduce the size of these files without messing with the quality of the models? I'm thinking they'd have to be reduced by half at least before anyone would be willing to use them.

With very few exceptions- the straight support structure, the air duct and conduits and the red alert lights- everything was built in sketchup- which might explain the unexpected texturing since I was working with solid colors. Thing is, the more I look at this, the more I like this "Happy accident". So I think I'll leave it for Nova Trek and if enough folks are intrested to justify releasing the final package, they can map and retexture for their projects.