Shader Creating & Settings for Carrara - Q&A - Come One, Come All

Dartanbeck

Here's another little article I wrote before I was entirely used to using them:

Being mostly self-taught, learning by asking questions, reading what other's ask and say... it's really different to start taking occasional online courses on the subjects - learning that there are 'basics' that all animators/filmmakers know, that I had no clue about. I discovered "Iris Gleam" through my own observations, and was always planningon getting my characters fixed to be able to display such a thing without special lighting - at least not a LOT of special lighting. My solution fell in my lap - I didn't need to persue altering the original iris mesh shapes anymore! ;) Funny how that happens!

A forum pal bought and sent to me the latest edition of Jeremy Birn's Digital Lighting and Rendering book, which is a tremendous help. It was Jeremy who has illustrated the common ways that CGI professionals use to create this Iris Gleam, so I immediately went into my V4 Rosie character, saved as a CAR file, and did a quick edit to her Iris shape to make them concave instead of their default convex curve, which was kinda easy, but I did a very quick job of it - so to do a 'saved' version, I'd need to start over. 

It was just that time when Daz3d added Runtime DNA to the store! Arki, an artist for both RDNA and Daz3d, had this great RDNA product (now at Daz3d), EYEdeas 3+ for Victoria 4 and Michael 4, which is modeled just the way Jeremy recommends! What a time saver, I bought them immediately! 

Earlier on than the subject of Iris Gleam, Jeremy was talking about light-linking - the process where a light only affects certain (linked) things in the scene - and that it's common to adjust the mood of a scen by linking to the eyes alone. Well in Carrara, we cannot link to specific bones of a rigged figure. Not a real issue because we could just copy the mesh and paste it in separately - Carrara will let us link lights to items that are parented to specific bones!

Much better than that (in my opinion), Arki's EYEdeas don't need to parent (but the kit includes models meant for that as well), but actually can be loaded as a single, conforming item, which puts both eyes exactly where they need to be, with a plethora of useful adjustment morphs, which then turn perfectly along with the eyes pose dials on the figure! Parented ones would too... but this makes it super-simple to select for light linking... Handy!

As it turns out, with the special shaders I made and Arki's modeling, I don't need special light linking... they just work with whatever light is already available. Special tweaking of Highlight and Shininess was the real trick - well... along with this nice eye model!

I've just added this to my characters in early August of this year... so you see how I'm still tweaking even my main figures. But I suppose full production still won't change that either. The cool part is that, even though I now render with full refraction and reflection enabled, it hasn't changed my render times! ;)   Love that!

Dartanbeck

That last link above (I've just added this to my characters ) is what I wrote when I first bought them and was overjoyed that what I bought was exactly what I was looking for at that exact moment in time ;)

It's a Thank You thread to Arki, whom totally Rocks! :)

DUDU

Hi Darty!
It is in the depth of the glance that one feels the real emotions, it is what I miss in my film in progress but it is too late to start again with this parameter.
Thank you to propose this aspect of the sensuality, it will be the main concern of my next realization!

wgdjohn

Dartanbeck said:

Jonstark said:

Dartanbeck said:

Something I just grabbed that I wrote in another thread:

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I've really taken a liking to using my "Invisible" shader (set everything to invisible) on all eye parts except the lacrimals, then replacing the eyes using Arki's EYEdeas 3+ eyes. There is an enormous amount of really good eye maps made for M4 and V4, and EYEdeas 3+ includes remapped UV versions for both of those, plus the ones that use Arki's maps, which are also really cool.

This is one of Rosie's eyes. The shot on the right shows how the refraction of the cornea fills the cornea with colors from the iris (instead of seeing straight through the cornea), which might look a little strange here, but looks great when placed in the living figure.

(two quick renders of just one eye model)

I really like having the flexibility of using these eyes. For Genesis figures, I've been using the separate Right and Left individual eyes. After setting up the character's final shape, I bring in the eyes and copy over the actual scale from the Motion tab, then parent them each to their respective eye. But I can further tweak their size if I like, which is really valuable to have. 

As an added bonus, we can now link lights specifically to these eyes - we cannot do that on the actual figure's eyes because we cannot separate parts of a rigged figure for light linking in Carrara.

I never heard of Eyedeals before, but now I'm thinking it might just be a 'must have'.  Looks like the V4/M4 version is on sale at the moment, so it might be an 'ideal' time to pick it up :)

They've only been made for M4/V4. But  a really special product in many ways. 

[cut]

 Dart... I just grabbed Arki's EYEdeas 3+ for Victoria 4 and Michael 4  but also grabbed Arki's EYEdeas 3+ - Vol. 01 - Natural 1 also there is another, EYEdeas 3+ - Vol. 02 - Fantasy 1, note that both of the latter require the one you mention.  Since you mention using these in Genesis I suspect they will also work in G2.  I also noticed that Arki has a G3 and G8 version, EYEdeas 4 and 5... they have IRay material presets and a few other features.

Regarding  Jeremy Birn's Digital Lighting and Rendering book... I just received it, 3rd Edition, earlier this week...  started to give it a glance and then thought I'd better get going on Animation in Carrara Video Tutorials - by PhilW since I've had it TODO longer.

Dartanbeck

wgdjohn said:

Dartanbeck said:

Jonstark said:

Dartanbeck said:

Something I just grabbed that I wrote in another thread:

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I've really taken a liking to using my "Invisible" shader (set everything to invisible) on all eye parts except the lacrimals, then replacing the eyes using Arki's EYEdeas 3+ eyes. There is an enormous amount of really good eye maps made for M4 and V4, and EYEdeas 3+ includes remapped UV versions for both of those, plus the ones that use Arki's maps, which are also really cool.

This is one of Rosie's eyes. The shot on the right shows how the refraction of the cornea fills the cornea with colors from the iris (instead of seeing straight through the cornea), which might look a little strange here, but looks great when placed in the living figure.

(two quick renders of just one eye model)

I really like having the flexibility of using these eyes. For Genesis figures, I've been using the separate Right and Left individual eyes. After setting up the character's final shape, I bring in the eyes and copy over the actual scale from the Motion tab, then parent them each to their respective eye. But I can further tweak their size if I like, which is really valuable to have. 

As an added bonus, we can now link lights specifically to these eyes - we cannot do that on the actual figure's eyes because we cannot separate parts of a rigged figure for light linking in Carrara.

I never heard of Eyedeals before, but now I'm thinking it might just be a 'must have'.  Looks like the V4/M4 version is on sale at the moment, so it might be an 'ideal' time to pick it up :)

They've only been made for M4/V4. But  a really special product in many ways. 

[cut]

 Dart... I just grabbed Arki's EYEdeas 3+ for Victoria 4 and Michael 4  but also grabbed Arki's EYEdeas 3+ - Vol. 01 - Natural 1 also there is another, EYEdeas 3+ - Vol. 02 - Fantasy 1, note that both of the latter require the one you mention.  Since you mention using these in Genesis I suspect they will also work in G2.  I also noticed that Arki has a G3 and G8 version, EYEdeas 4 and 5... they have IRay material presets and a few other features.

Regarding  Jeremy Birn's Digital Lighting and Rendering book... I just received it, 3rd Edition, earlier this week...  started to give it a glance and then thought I'd better get going on Animation in Carrara Video Tutorials - by PhilW since I've had it TODO longer.

Yes. I have also bought Arki's EYEdeas 3+ - Vol. 01 - Natural 1 expansion, but I don't think I got the Fantasy one yet. I love Arki's maps, though for Rosie I'm back to using some V4 maps I have - and just bought a bunch more that were on sale. Dart's EYEdeas 3+ are using Indigone's Endless Eye Kit for V4 , now available at ShareCG (I got them when Daz3d's forum had a freebies section we could upload to), which are mostly procedural, like Indigone's V4 Skin Shader Kit and Lights., with the exception of a few mask maps for the various eye parts.

As for Genesis and Arki's EYEdeas, these eyes will actually work for anything that needs this anatomy of eye. Anything! That's the beauty of having separate eye figures!

They come as conforming pairs of eyes for V4 and M4, either UV Mapped for V4 or M4's eyes or using Arki's own custom mapping, of which she's included a huge selection of maps to mix and match.

Darn I always feel like I'm trying to sell these thngs! LOL I'm actually just very happy to own the is all :)

Dartanbeck

DUDU said:

Hi Darty!
It is in the depth of the glance that one feels the real emotions, it is what I miss in my film in progress but it is too late to start again with this parameter.
Thank you to propose this aspect of the sensuality, it will be the main concern of my next realization!

Nice! You're welcome! I love how you worded that... perfect!

Saying "sensuality" like that brought up some moments that really helped me to want to get this sort of effect in the eyes in the first place. So here are two examples of "eye" moments that

Shows what I mean by "especially noticeable in animations"

Were so touching that I couldn't help but cry (I was very invested in the characters at these moments - great storytelling!)

No need to watch the whole thing (they're only three-minute example clips), just watch the eyes and expressions on the characters. These folks certainly know how to do it right!

Here, the Jedi council is trying to erase their wrongful accusations to the amazing Ahsoka Tano - almost getting her executed

In this one... well I can't really tell you. But it helps to explain how Obi-Wan Kenobi was so willing to become a hermit, watching over the infant, Luke Skywalker

Headwax

as Digital Carvers is now available to evryone it seems we should have a look at this thread again

Bunyip02

Headwax_Carrara said:

as Digital Carvers is now available to evryone it seems we should have a look at this thread again

Definately - fill it up with plenty of examples !!!

Diomede

Recently, I've been spending a lot of time focusng on procedural shaders (and plants).  It is really amazing what can be done with nested mixers.  The following was used for a tree trunk with three simple colors combined by a few nested mixers.  Also included a render of the shader applied to a simple plane.

 

Bunyip02

Diomede_Carrara said:

Recently, I've been spending a lot of time focusng on procedural shaders (and plants).  It is really amazing what can be done with nested mixers.  The following was used for a tree trunk with three simple colors combined by a few nested mixers.  Also included a render of the shader applied to a simple plane.

 

Many thanks for sharing !!!

Diomede

Here is another example of relying on procedurals for unrealistic tree bark.  I really like using a mixture of two marble shaders (in the natural menu).  Choose one vertical marble and one horizontal marble and mix them to get an uneven grid-like pattern.  I mix in a few other things to get some more randomness and also to get the vertical flow of most trees.  I've attached a file with just a sphere with the procedural shader applied.  Open the file and drag the shader from the sphere to your shader browser.  Then in the future can apply to anything you want.  To apply to tree bark, drag and drop in the channel for the brown parametric shaders in the plant shader menu. Free for any use.

Bunyip02

Shader Resources - Carrara Challenge 46 - https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/319456/carrara-challenge-46-get-your-retro-on/p1

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/4483746/#Comment_4483746

Shader Tutorials/Forum Questions & Answers- https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/4483766/#Comment_4483766

Various tutorials and work-flows throughout the thread