Loading...
> >

Carrara 8.5 Documentation

24

Comments

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Personally, I like to read it, and if there's something obtuse in the written version, then I like looking at a reference video. I learned how to use the bone tool in C5 that way. I looked at the manual and then the included video tutorial (no audio, purely visual).

  • his xhis x Posts: 866
    edited December 2013

    I like graphics in a manual when they're appropriate. I like videos when they're appropriate. However, print manuals are getting hard to find, as are good writers.

    Post edited by his x on
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,227
    edited December 1969

    Along these lines, I'd like to, once again, congratulate DAZ_jared for doing such a splendid job on the materials he has created for DAZ 3D so far. I really hope that they have him continue to do so. I wish that we could have him for Carrara - but he's too important to be chained only to our whims and wants. His writing style combined with the wonderful illustrations are very welcome to my way of thinking and learning - very easy to read and understand.

    That said, I'd have to also commend the authors of the Carrara User Guide as well, for those same reasons.

    JAY_NOLA always has a few books to offer up as "Must Haves" and I am somewhat embarrassed that I still don't own any of them. In my defense, Amazon wouldn't take PayPal, my way of commerce on the internet, and I have looked at some really cool book stores for the ones he's mentioned to me - unfortunately for me, to no avail.

    I believe that Jack Whitney (Carrara 5 Essential Training at Lynda.com) and Ringo Monfort (DAZ 3D Published Artist) used to work for Eovia when they owned Carrara, so did Dogwaffle's Philip Staiger. Jack's exploration into Carrara 5 is incredibly relevant to modern Carrara, besides the missing new features. He also had his hand in on the Carrara 5 Pro User Guide available most times at Amazon. Ringo's shaders have always been a treat. Someone whom truly understands what makes Carrara's incredible render engine tick!

    Anyways, I have a huge admiration for Phil Wilkes training style. I still have yet to purchase his beginner course - I just missed a great opportunity to get it for half off, too! Argh! Which now contains a new chapter on Carrara 8.5's new features. His video lessons are very good and the working files that are included actually make the price of the Advanced course a real steal! He is most gracious and gives you a lot of training which makes for a lot of new content.

    PhilW, Mark Bremmer, and Jack Whitney (I've never seen the other guy's videos) are all very good at teaching Carrara. It's good entertaining TV for me. So I need to break down and buy Phil's beginner course and Mark Bremmer's entire course. The cost seems high, true. But the value is all there and I look forward to spending those two hundies!

  • rk66rk66 Posts: 433
    edited December 1969

    Hi,

    here you find some Carrara training lessons:

    http://www.sharecg.com/pf/full_uploads.php?pf_user_name=gkdantas&division_id=0&s=dd&pn=5

    rk.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,227
    edited December 1969

    Right you are rk! Thanks again!
    Marcelo Teixeira (GKDantas) is very busy at helping us to get the most out of Carrara. His Store, here at DAZ 3D can attest to that, as his products are all designed to help further your endeavors in Carrara - and are great at that!

    Also, I haven't mentioned our Carrara Super Hero, Cripeman! He roots out evil in the form of 'lack of understanding' and thwarts it's every move! To help find the video you'd like to see, when you want to see it, I've created:
    ► Cripeman’s Carrara Video Tutorials Index

    You might have to create a free account, but there is also a large number of tutorials at the Carrara Cafe

  • his xhis x Posts: 866
    edited December 2013

    Call for Carrara Hair Room Docs

    The only doc I can find that deals with this is the Carrara 7 Manual PDF. I'm using this, but I'm having trouble getting Symmetrize to work. Is there something more available?

    Thanks.
    .....................

    Right after I wrote this I discovered cripeman's hair videos, and watched the first two. Great stuff, man. Now I know where I went wrong.

    Post edited by his x on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    I find the symmetry works best if I turn it on before I add guide hairs.

    As to tutorials, Holly Wetcircuit has an excellent tutorial on fur and hair:
    http://www.3d.wetcircuit.com/tag/tutorial/

    I think PhilW is the resident guru for animating it, and may have some low poly conforming proxy objects for simulating collisions.

  • his xhis x Posts: 866
    edited December 1969

    evilproducer said:
    I find the symmetry works best if I turn it on before I add guide hairs.

    As to tutorials, Holly Wetcircuit has an excellent tutorial on fur and hair:
    http://www.3d.wetcircuit.com/tag/tutorial/

    I think PhilW is the resident guru for animating it, and may have some low poly conforming proxy objects for simulating collisions.


    Thanks.

    My big problem was with the Plane Select control. I learned that, in order to mirror from -X to +X (right to left, Poser style), I had to select a plane with Y and Z axes. I used a chin cap I made in Poser, as cripeman suggested. It worked great. It even moves with the mouth. I still need to get my arms around all the Hair Room tools, and I need to make a better cap, but I got the basics today. I can already see it's going to be easy to put a point on this goatee. I like these Carrara Hair Room tools. They compare favorably to what I was using before. I like them so well, I may lose the prop hair I now have, and make Carrara dynamic hair.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Just a warning though, it can be a devil to animate. Pun intended! ;-)

  • his xhis x Posts: 866
    edited December 2013

    evilproducer said:
    Just a warning though, it can be a devil to animate. Pun intended! ;-)

    I'm sure that when I finish recreating this character in Carrara and begin to animate it, I will see problems I've never seen before.

    When the beard is done, I'll road test it with Mimic.

    Post edited by his x on
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,227
    edited December 1969

    I have a short write up in the Carrara Information Manual, which also has a link to This Thread that I started in the hopes of fixing my Carrara Dynamic Hair for my main hero. Although I am still unsuccessful, I'm glad that I tracked down this thread again. 3DLust chimes in with some great values for gravity and such, which actually got me fairly close when I turned off the part of the shader that was providing the tight curls - either friz or kink. It seems that those shader options (or is it just one of them?) isn't friendly at all to animated dynamic hair. I do recall that one of my tests, I removed the curls from the shader and the animation came out beautiful - even as long as that hair is. I still hope to find a solution to it, one day.

    I'm sure that, somehow, there will be a special formula for getting just the right set up for great animations. When shot in a single image, Carrara hair is simply gorgeous.

  • Jay_NOLAJay_NOLA Posts: 1,145
    edited December 1969

    Carrara 5 Pro Handbook by Mike de la Flor is good to learn how to model and the info in it still applies to 8 & 8.5. it even has 2 Hexagon modeling chapters in it. It also has some chapters written by other authors covering using Vector style, working with After Effects & Carrara, DCG did some tutorials in it

    Pearchpit has some 3D books that cover specific topics. Many of them are written to be non-software specific or cover many types of 3D programs.

    Would love to see a C8.5 book like the Bryce 4 book they did come out.

    They are connected to Infinite Skills I believe too.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,227
    edited December 1969

    Very cool. Iam planning on getting that Carrara 5 Handbook. I see that Jack Whitney wrote one of the modeling chapters. I really like Jack!
    I also saw that there are those tutorials for DCG, which I definitely want to read. It looks like everyone who owns it is more than happy with the purchase.

    As always, Thanks for the info, Jay!

  • magaremotomagaremoto Posts: 1,226
    edited December 1969

    I don't figure out if this can be the right place to embed this link but I find this draft very useful to better understand how carrara render engine works; hope it may help
    http://www.yafaray.org/node/598

  • Zig ZagZig Zag Posts: 96
    edited December 1969

    Spaceland said:
    It is a wiki,

    What i like about wiki is usually every one can update and correct the wiki, but it seem here the wiki is only done by Daz. Would be cool if you can let peoples who use Carrara to update the wiki themselves too.

    I for one, would do it.

    I totally agree. If DAZ hasn't the resources to give us extensive documentation, at least give us users editorial access to the wiki. I think plenty of users in the forums have shown that they can produce great tutorials.

    And please bring the pictures of the old Artzone images back online. Even on a different URL. I would be happy to fix the URLs in the Old Artzone Wiki every time I stumble upon an article in it. I hope those pictures haven't been lost, because this would be very sad.

    Currently the old Artzone articles are available but the pictures are not, which is incredibly frustrating.

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675
    edited December 1969

    was trying to find a handy list of the keyb shortcuts,

    found only a 404 page.

    is there one out there?

    thanks !

    ca-kyb.jpg
    550 x 504 - 100K
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,083
    edited December 1969

    This contains a list that might be helpful.

    http://carraracafe.com/wp-content/wps-content/forum/625/1_carrara_8_shortcuts___1.2.pdf

    Starting on page 6.

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675
    edited December 1969

    thanks!

    you stop me from giving up at it :)

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675
    edited December 1969

    pictures aren't showing. does daz know?


    this was interesting, about the uvswapping:

    Dynamic Hair - The typical ways that Dynamic Hair can be used in Carrara is to either use a skull cap, or to apply the hair directly to a figure, which uses the UV Map of the figure. With Genesis and Genesis 2, the second method is impractical as UV sets can be swapped, sometimes without the Customer realizing it is happening. Dynamic hair should be applied to a skullcap which is included with the Genesis content.

    Geografting - Geografting a mesh to an existing figure uses the UV set of the figure to which the graft is being applied. However the graft may not necessarily show up on the same place of the UV map as the replaced geometry.

    nopics.jpg
    1024 x 600 - 142K
  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675
    edited December 1969

    i followed the link to the carrara docu, typed 'wind' in the search box, it jumped me out of the carrara subtopic.

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675
    edited December 1969

    too bad the rotoscoping illus are missing

    rotoscope.jpg
    858 x 528 - 57K
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Try looking under help in Carrara.

    The C7 manual should have come with Carrara. Aside from some minor interface changes, bullet physics, IES lights, Genesis and changes to the keyframe graph editor (most of which should be covered in the stuff you're been linking to) the manual should still be around 90- 95% relevant.

  • JedilawJedilaw Posts: 17
    edited January 2015

    Every time I try to go to the links for the Daz 8.5 documentation it tells me I don't have enough rights to continue.

    This happens on all of the following links:

    http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/carrara/8_5/userguide/start

    http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/carrara/8_5/userguide/installing_software_plugins_and_content/start

    http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/carrara/8_5/userguide/finding_loading_and_organizing_content/start

    http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/carrara/8_5/userguide/animating/start

    http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/carrara/8_5/userguide/modeling/start

    Which effectively means no tutorials for the new features of versions 8 or 8.5. (the old Wiki goes back to version 7 for the user guide) :(

    Incidentally, I tried this on all three of the major Windows browsers: Chrome, IE, and Firefox. No dice on any of them.

    It also happens in Safari on my iPhone.

    Post edited by Jedilaw on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Jedilaw said:
    Every time I try to go to the links for the Daz 8.5 documentation it tells me I don't have enough rights to continue.

    This happens on all of the following links:

    http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/carrara/8_5/userguide/start

    http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/carrara/8_5/userguide/installing_software_plugins_and_content/start

    http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/carrara/8_5/userguide/finding_loading_and_organizing_content/start

    http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/carrara/8_5/userguide/animating/start

    http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/carrara/8_5/userguide/modeling/start

    Which effectively means no tutorials for the new features of versions 8 or 8.5. (the old Wiki goes back to version 7 for the user guide) :(

    Incidentally, I tried this on all three of the major Windows browsers: Chrome, IE, and Firefox. No dice on any of them.

    It also happens in Safari on my iPhone.

    I get that to. Weird. Anybody else?

  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    I get that as well - maybe the old abandoned attempt to get selected Carrara users involved in writing the new manual. Access only for the chosen few?

  • fixmypcmikefixmypcmike Posts: 19,565
    edited December 1969

    They've been working on the Documentation Center for the past couple of days and sections have been unavailable on and off.

  • JedilawJedilaw Posts: 17
    edited December 1969

    Do we know if they're improving the docs at all? I have to say, Daz has a superior setup for getting new users acclimated to the program. There are no interactive tutorial files with Carrara, at least not that I've seen.

  • rk66rk66 Posts: 433
    edited December 1969

    Hi,

    the Quick Tour for Carrara 6 only:
    http://docs.daz3d.com/lib/exe/fetch.php/artzone/azproduct/trismegistus/quick_tour_english.zip

    and look here:
    http://www.sharecg.com/pf/full_uploads.php?pf_user_name=gkdantas&division_id=0&s=dd&pn=4

    rk.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,083
    edited December 1969

    The links worked for me today around 10am Daz local time. I'd like to think that means I have more rights than the rest of you, but I suspect that it just means that the documentation is not available when they work on certain aspects of it.

    Here is a random page.

    rights.JPG
    1006 x 950 - 162K
  • JedilawJedilaw Posts: 17
    edited December 1969

    Good, hopefully it will all be online soon.

    I'm not complaining about Carrara. For the price I paid, just the included content that Daz3D can use was a bargain. Getting what looks to be a reasonably powerful 3D app in addition to the content is great. Now I just have to learn it. Deja vu from Max 7 and PS 7 circa 2004....

Sign In or Register to comment.