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still workin on a room. i can visualize a room from a cube, lol.
Very sorry to see a talented user go, I encourage you to keep it as part of your toolkit. That said, I have to admit I'm surprised at the opinion that Carrara's renderer is lacking. I'm finding quite the opposite:
I have access to many unbiased renderers; Cycles, Iray, Luxus (via the Carrara luxcore plugin), Octane (via the Carrara Octane plugin) and I even spent more than $300 to buy Thea. I really like unbiased renderers..... but...
I'm actually finding the more time goes on and I learn the ins and outs of Carrara's native biased renderer, I actually think that biased render engines are the superior choice. And Carrara is the best biased renderer I have access to (maybe the one in Modo or C4D or 3DSmax is better, but I don't own any of those so I can't compare).
When I bought the Octane plugin, it was for two reasons: realistic lighting would make scenes easy to set up, and also the speed of the renderer itself. I still very much like using unbiased renderers. It's like having an 'easy button'. But it has artificial limits to what it can do, while biased renderers do not. I'm finding more and more I can get better renders out of Carrara as I learn how to use it better.
I'll give a second vote to what therixx said: PhilW's realism rendering course is an excellent tool that can greatly enhance the understanding of Carrara's render engine. It's invaluable.
The past little while I've been working on refining a realistic procedural skin for Genesis, as well as a method for realistic skin using texture maps, and also a 'realistic' anime style. I'm mostly pretty pleased with my results, enough that I'm just about feeling confident enough to share a tutorial on each, along with some tutorials on how to achieve good realistic shaders for Carrara hair when rendering in gamma 2.2, and how to make eyelashes and eyebrows too (not that I think either eyebrows or eyelashes are a good choice for Carrara hair, but just in case someone wants to...)
Those are beautiful renders!
Jonstark just amazing that's a score of 20 out of 10 for those - hope to see more of you here
Thanks Headwax! I'm very sorry I've been in lurker mode for so long, going to try to come out of it and be more active in future, promise. I got bogged down with a little of real life problems, namely cancer on my tongue. By the way, if anyone tries to sell you on visiting cancer-ville, don't go; it's nowhere near as nice or fun as they portray it to be on the travel brochures. ;) I won't say it was the worst vacation of my life, but it's up there. If I could have, I would have given it a zero star review :) But now that things are a bit better, hopefully I'll have more time to play with my favorite toy, Carrara, and post more on the forums here with all my closest friends (who I've never met, but I still consider you all great friends) :)
Glad to hear that you are in remission and beating it, sometimes it's good to live in 2021 with all the whizz bang stuff.
It doesn't sound like the best vacation to have...
You (like a few others) have been sorely missed -! you've done a lot for carrara with your exploring, it will be good to have your input again.
It would be very nice contest!
Thanks mschack! Those were some test renders from about a week and half ago as I was fiddling with and refining my newest approach to texturing. I bounce back and forth between working on the realistic skin using professional shaders (which that one above is V4 elite Amy texture btw, which I always thought was the ugliest of the elite textures, but after figuring out how to highlight its strengths I find I quite like it), then I work on the procedural skin shaders I've been trying to refine (which I blatantly ripped off from evilproducers ingenious V4 procedural skin as my baseline) and then I bounce over to working on the 'realistic' anime shader (where I'm trying to mimic that style that Age of Armour's subsurface anime shader product has for Studio). All 3 approaches have similarities, but are also different from each other, and when working on one, suddenly it sparks an idea to try on another, so I've spent quite a while jumping back and forth between each project, doing my best to do better on each type. I'm finally at a place where I'm pretty pleased with all 3, so I plan on making the procedural and anime shaders available as freebies on sharecg once I've worked out the very last kinks. I can't release the realistic texture shader as a freebie obviously, as that approach uses texture maps that are owned by Daz PAs, but I'll be putting together a comprehensive tutorial for them.
Here's a few recent test renders for my prodecural shader, to give an idea where I'm at on that one:
(the eyebrows and lashes are carrara hair made for V5; I also made some beard stubble and a couple of different beard/goatees to add if needed, though I don't think that would fit as well on a female morph, so I left them invisible in these shots :)
Agreed. I prefer not to get too heavy into that unless it was something incredibly important to me.
I really like the newer shapes of the newer Genesis figures, but tend to like Genesis 2 and 3 female over Genesis 8 female. I think it has something to do with strange proportions coming out when vastly morphed into different shapes - like the wrists not getting smaller as the rest of the shape decreases in scale - sort of thing... same with the top of the neck. This might very well be due to my not owning a whole lot of Genesis 8 morphs yet.
So for me, using GenX2 to bring any shaping or posing morphs to Genesis 1 or 2 (or 3, but that's not what this is about) from any generation between 3 and 7 (and some 8) breathes beautiful life into Genesis 1 and 2 for me - and in my case, Genesis 1 especially, since I have clones that can also fit support items (cloth, hair, etc.,) from generation 3 (V3, M3, Kids 3, Freak, Girl, etc.,) all the way through Genesis 8.
Again, this was a Huge game-changer for me when it comes to alleviating compatibility issues for Carrara.
Genesis 1 Rocks - Info article on how I get the most out of my favorite generation of Daz Figures
Content Generation Conversion - How I convert clothing and hair from one generation to the next
As for Daz Studio format environments and props, it can be a coin toss as to whether or not a new purchase will be efficient in Carrara - if it even works at all.
Many of the Daz Originals scene kits I've been grabbing work beautifully in Carrara, while others don't seem to want to work in Carrara at all.
Sometimes if it just doesn't want to work right away, I just drop it and keep it as a Daz Studio-Only sort of thing - meaning that it may never get rendered at all. I generally only return things if I'm dissatisfied - and many times I don't consider Carrara compatibility part of that criteria... other times I might.
Carrara is truly magic for 'me', but I can also see how many folks will want to have the simplicity of relatively effortless HRDI lighting solutions for renders using beautiful enhancements built into the products - like Iray compatible products and shaders - I can totally see that.
I have my quick and simple methods for Carrara that might not return the ultra-quality images as Iray or Octane, but it's actually something that I truly like the look of, and enjoy working with. I'm very grateful for that because I truly enjoy the lack of headaches I get when I'm working in Carrara compared to other software.
Not that Carrara is headache-free, mind you... but it really is easy and fun to be working in! ;)
havent lost any of the fascination with the pbr and hdri plugins
need more practice with fluidos and converting hd morphs. yeesh encrypted morphs
Whoa, Jonstark!!!
Those renders are Amazing! You mentioned tutorials? ;)
I've been on a kick using Linday's Classic Long Curly Hair with dForce, meaning that I've had to use Daz Studio, dForce, and render in a DS option. I've been opting for Octane.
Just the past two days, I've been watching over my older, but fairly recent Rosie 5 videos using Carrara's dynamic hair, and think I like that better.
When watching those, we see all manner of imperfections in the hair, but when we see it flicker, that's actually a simple fix that I didn't exacty know about when I made those videos. It's actually one or more of the layers of dynamic hair failing to render for a single frame - making it flicker.
Simply render that frame again and it always seems to render all layers properly, fixing the broken animation. Fast, simple, completely excusable in my eyes.
I would absolutely love to see more tutorials from you!
Love your renders, Jonstark! I would also love to see tuts from you. I still use your Carrara Hair methods and tricks! I hope you are soon back to full health and and see you here more often.
Thanks Silene! :)
@JonStark - blessings and good health to you. Reminder of what is really important.Great to see you posting again. Beautiful images.
Jonstark, happy to see you back!
I also liked the renders. My own experience is that the V4 Elite shaders are actually terrific for realism (or enhanced realism) if that is the goal. Victoria 1 skin shaders are scarce and not particularly good. I don't own V2. V3 shaders are also scarce, but there are some good ones out there. V4 Elite through Genesis 3 are mostly excellent. It is possible to really get the skin differentiation to pop in Carrara. I haven't yet tried Genesis 8.
And although I applaud your efforts on the procedural skin shaders, to me they will never be realistic. For toons and other NPR they can be useful, of course.
An early experiment entered in the 50th Challenge, using V3, V5, and V4 (left to right).
Great renders, Jonstark. As I've mentioned, about 95% of my animations are done in Carrara. About the only area I use something else is VUE for landscapes, and I even signed up for my first subscription software, ~$100/year on sale.
Thanks UB! Happy to be back and seen/posting again. :) Nice render! I'm particularly impressed by V3, because I always thought finding good texture sets for V3 was vanishingly elusive. The only AAA texture set I can even think of offhand is Danae's 'Milan' over at Rendo. That one is so good I wish I had a way to put it on my Genesis, but as far as I know there are no available UV sets for Genesis1 that would allow for use of V3/M3 textures. I think there was an app way back when called Texture Converter that would allow conversion of V3/M3 to V4/M4, but I don't think that's available anymore, sadly...
I agree about procedural skin too; I realized early on that no way would any procedural skin ever come close to an actual texture map version. Just adding random noise to give skin flaws doesn't address the real issue, which is that human skin is not the same all over. The skin on the tip of the nose, for example is radically different in roughness and texture than the skin just beneath the eyes, which is different than the skin over the cheekbones, which is different than the skin over the chin... etc, etc.
The only way to even come close would require someone with a master's artist's eyes/observation powers (far beyond me) to draw on tons of layers for each separate area of the body, each one using a Anything Goos shader to blend into the next area over so there doesn't appear to be seams... honestly it would take a herculean effort and require someone who has an incredible eye for detail to even come halfway close.
So I regard the procedural skin as mostly not successful. Its one benefit would be getting rid of all the texture maps which would reduce scene size considerably for animators who needed background crowds of people in renders. So it may still be useful in that way to someone, and it's an interesting thing to tinker with. :)
Thanks Steve. :) Actually you touch on a subject I'm a bit interested in. What the heck ever happened to Vue?
Vue was this mega huge 3d software (and I always wanted to buy it but could never justify the expense) that had a huge community, then suddenly it seemed to drop off the face of the earth, for no particular reason. In the early days when I started this hobby, if anyone had told me either of these 2 things would one day be true I would have thought they were crazy: 1) Daz Studio will one day in the future eclipse Poser (c'mon, that could never happen, Studio is the worst software on earth!) and 2) One day the Bryce forum will be more active and busy with users than any forum you can find for Vue users. Seriously I don't understand what happened; Vue was a mega software used by hollywood filmakers like Disney's Pirates of the Carribbean. I guess the company behind Vue had some problems? Cornocopia vanished or something?
I checked recently and I saw the main site selling Vue is up, but I didn't see an official place for the actual users to congregate and post. Nearest thing I could find was the Vue forums on Rendo, but even that forum seemed a bit dead on comments when I checked. My impression is still that Vue is the most impressive landscape creator available to use for regular people (although maybe Terragen or World Creator has surpassed it in that way).
I'm considering a subscription to Vue myself, just because I've always loved the landscapes it can produce. Since you've got a toe in that world already along with a ton of experience (well, at least a lot more experience than me), can I ask if you recommend it? How well does it fit in with your Carrara workflow? Can I export from Vue and import into Carrara if needed? Also is there still an active Vue forum somewhere where I can ask current users for advice, tips, and generally learn how to use it? I also wonder if it's possible to buy an older version of Vue rather than just 'rent' the newest version...
Dforce hair is truly beautiful stuff. I mean, at least judging from renders and animations I've seen. I have no idea how difficult it is to work with or animate with, nor do I have a clue what tools someone would need to buy in order to create his own hairstyle from scratch, but I freely admit that Dforce hair looks photo-realistic to me.
Carrara hair is still one of my first loves, but it can get 'twitchy' in animations. Sounds like you've figured out the culprit in that respect though, the flickering being caused by a frame of hair not rendering, so it sounds very solvable. I do really love both versions of Rosie's hair that you've created. It's a shame that dForce apparently takes so long to sim though, because it is really beautiful stuff.
For the longest time I was bummed about my large collection of Carrara hairstyles I bought from Daz by Naomi, 3dCelebrity, PhilW and others. Because I love how they look, but I was resolved to using Genesis1 for various other reasons, and I felt like I had to sideline some of my best hair assets and either create my own or rely on the old-style clunky prop hairs instead, since nearly all the old Carrara hairs are built on V4/M4 mesh, and even the ones built on an independant haircap don't come with any fits to Genesis.
It was only a couple of weeks ago that a lightbulb went off and I realized I'm an idiot, I can use all those Carrara hairs on my Genesis1 just fine. All I have to do is turn the mesh that the hairstyles fit on into a conforming clothing object for Genesis1 in Studio, turn the mesh invisible, fit it to Genesis1 and add on the hair, and voila, all my old favorites that I mentally thought of as locked off from any use except on V4/M4 are back in play, yeah baby! :)
E-on software's official line is that their VUE content sales site - Cornucopia3D - got hacked. So for a LONG time they were pretty much gone. They finally came back with subscription only versions of the program, but the content site is still dead AFAIK. Sadly, one of my favorite content vendors, Luigi Marini who sold amazing huge VUE landscapes for $12, seems to have fallen off the face of the earth. Happily, I have a number of his wonderful products. Also, VUE comes with a lot of very nice samples. I don't know about the other questions, like forums, etc. But the software is still stunning, as always. And is actually usable for animations with a high end AMD CPU (12 core/24 thread). You have to buy the very expensive subscription version to export, but I've gone the other way, importing to VUE. Here is a short animation example, you can guess the VUE stuff :-)
Ha! the fortune teller *was* and alien! I knew there was something odd about her the first time I saw her. Cool vid, made me chuckle. Never let anyone under the age of 12 serve as your chief mechanic, is one of the morals of the story, heh heh. That was a very detailed luxury yacht, does the model really have that many interior decks and layout (including an elevator), or was that something you kitbashed together out of many different scenes/models?
well Strandbased Dforce hair unlike Carrara hair is PA only for making dynamic ones so I don't give diddly squat how good it looks still, it is useless to me in most cases.
Unless a PA makes a specific one you want, I have a few but the whole Dforce engine so demanding as Dart pointed out anyway.
dForce is really quite fast when it comes to the few clothing items I have that use it.
But as Linday says, dForce wasn't meant to handle the complexity of mesh hair, which is what I'm using.
The only strand-based hair I have for dForce is that for the Dire Wolf and Snow Beast. Linday's Classic Long Curly Hair with dForce is a design involving clumpy tubes of mesh instead of flat planes of hair. Like my Carrara Rosie hair, Linday's also uses four layers.
The instructions are really good, and also include videos. Easy to use, but takes quite a long time to simulate. So I set up everything with the hair hidden, then run my VWD simulations, finalize facial and other animations, then save and run dForce and go do something else for a couple hours.
Absolutely! And with VWD in my arsenal of tools, I often convert things (not strand-based hair, mind you) to prop and run VWD to stick it to the character. Well I'll also bring these props into DS and turn them into a conforming item for Genesis as well. Modify the mesh and import that as morphs.
It's amazing how easy DS makes all of this.
Content Creation Tools
...and it's also amazing how easy Carrara makes it on us to do things like this - because instead of having to import a base-mesh obj of the figure, we can just load the actual figure and model stuff around it.
If I want to 'fit' something to another figure, I'll resize and reshape a non-conformed version of the item in Carrara around the target figure, then export that as an OBJ.
i tried a dforce hair in carrara, but it had no geometry. money down the drain. i waited too long to try it and couldnt return it.
As newbie Brycer, i adore people who remain loyal to their favorite oldschool software, and feel sad when they decide to leave them for modern tools.
But i can understand if it's not a hobby, but for professional use - in that case workflow often needs to be "cutting edge".
Yes, the yacht model had all that detail, and was pretty much my inspiration for the animation. And in fact has more areas that I didn't use. Got it on sale for $20, retail is $45. Not being a modeller myself and only a weak kit basher, I am eternally grateful for the great vendors who sell Poser format (or Carrara or VUE) items like this for very affordable prices. Product description:
QUOTE
The Luxury Yacht offers the option of a full-scale living space but in the open sea! From lounges to bedrooms and everything in between , this product has it all- even down to the engine!
Item includes:
4x indoor lounges
3x dining areas
7x bedrooms (2 ensuite)
2x bathrooms
gym
bridge (AKA control room)
Jacuzzi area
pool area
boat garage (if you have smaller boats/jet skis that need storage)
kitchen
cinema
engine room
top floor seating area
helipad
There are 7 levels in total and an elevator passes through all of them- starting at the engine room and ending at the helipad. There are stairways in addition as alternatives in case of digital elevator failure :P
END QUOTE
Very well said!
Newbie to Bryce, eh? I've owned Bryce for years now and am still not a newbie. I keep telling myself that: "One day, I'm going to install and play with Bryce", but I keep getting too busy with what I'm doing in Carrara.
Very recently, I began to expand into Daz Studio.
I've been using Daz Studio for many things already, like using the Content Creation Tools and aniMate 2, but never really used it for rendering.
I took a bunch of time to get to know DS better, and was still pushing forward with my Carrara work at the same time - getting some of it done in Daz Studio, once I got far enough along.
Learning OctaneRender for Daz Studio (Free) was probably the biggest game changer.
I did this one entirely in Iray, which was not easy. It kept crashing and crashing, and then it crashed some more. I wanted to do it in Octane, but DS's Strand-Based Hair (on the beast) doesn't render in Octane. In fact, it only shows in Iray in a final render - not preview.
So hopefully I can do the same for Bryce - take a little time, learn Bryce, add it to my workflow