AnyFX is illustrated a small bit in the Dogwaffle videos. But when you start to dig into what else it does is where you start to find the magic. It is a digital grading filter pack with many types of grading from colors and their hues to blurs and sharpens, various ways to change where in the picture the effects do what… hard to explain but much easier to see and get used to once you start playing with it.
I saw an Adobe Elements combo pack - PS and Premier. It was really cheap - what exactly is “Elements”?
snip....
Thanks, I'll check it out.!
PS elements is the super cut down version of Photoshop.
Not ever having the "real" PS I don't know what I am missing of course. In fact the only people I "know" of that have PS have a pirated copy or have an academic copy. In OZ it costs around 800 bucks.
PS elements does what I want. It's advantage is that you don't get lost in having so many choices. The only thing I would like is a distortion mesh/lattice which it doesn't have. Also it's mask layers are unwieldy so I tend to just make a copy of a layer and work on that and avoid mask layers. I Have PS elements 7 and 10, I can't really see much great improvement in 10, it might be slightly quicker but I doubt it.
Obj is what I'll export as into Poser in most cases.
My copy Poser Pro 2010 & Poser Pro 2012 both do one thing that Carrara doesn't do and I'm very glad that Carrara doesn't do and that is crash very often. I got sick of using 2010 and almost never use it and my 2012 I think I've only used about 6 times because of the crashing.
I also don't like working with Poser's lights. I can light a scene 10 times quicker in Daz Studio and about 5-8 times quicker in Carrara.
Poser does have some things built into it that you need to have a separate plugin for Carrara to do, that I would like to see Carrara be able to do.
Smith Micro I think tends to sell Poser as more of a plugin for other 3D apps. Smith Micro actually was giving Poser Pro 2012 away with Lightwave last year for example.
I'll most likely end up buying Poser just because Smith Micro is making the program integrate even more closely with the other software they make and it will be easier to bring something into Poser first before bringing it into one of the other program. Poser has for me just become a plugin for other programs I use.
The next big release Smith Micro has planned this year is Manga Studio 5 EX. They totally rewrote all the code I understand and I think they are planning release to go with the Comic Con in California.
I've used Hex and found it to not like my computer that much. A few things like the ability to create 3D text doesn't work right on my system.
For NPR with Carrara the Parchment plugin is another good plugin to use I've found.
The free sand plugin might be worth checking out too.
One thing I have noticed is that very little exists in the way of English tutorials on doing NPR renders in Carrara, most of the sites I saw that had any info on doing this were in Japanese. The few English tutorials just covered very basic explanation of doing a NPR. So maybe what is needed is some good tutorials on NPR and more tutorials on using plugins like Parchment, YAToon,
(Right now I'm trying to translate and go through a Tooning tutorial I found for Carrara on a Japanese site that covered a lot of stuff.)
ManStan,
YAToon is at the Carrara Cafe all the version of it that were made of it can be downloaded. I definitely agree with your post on Carrara & Poser.
Thanks Jay-Nola. I was looking at trying to export the whole scene - without lights and cameras.
Yes, it's a good point about the NPR renderer. It's pretty miss and hit for me .
I'll check out the parchment plugin - I hadn't really given it a second thought.
Poser doesn't crash at all for me. Windows 7. I just use it for clothing room or fixing up sphere fall off zones after using X dresser.
The transfer rigging feature hasn't been my favourite yet ;) mainly cause x dresser does everything I want.
Poser causing the demise of carrara is like the Edsel causing the demise of the Corvette.
Poser is for figures, carrara is for everything.
For cell shaded toon style it's hard to beat YAtoon. If you can find it. Not sure where it is being hosted right now.
In order for Poser to be competition for carrara you would have to add Vue and wings3d to it. Maybe even iclone.
Head wax. Spend some time using the plant generator. Also check DAZ's realistic leaves for the plant generator. Howie can't do any more with it then you can, he just knows how to. ;)
None the less, for the cost, I'd spend the money on animate 2 and the clothing control plugin for Studio before I spent it on Poser. I'd rather expand the tools I have then add another to learn to use.
thanks I have played with yatoon previously. I was under the impression there was no Carrara 8 version? Maybe one has been released that I missed?
you can always stick your image in the backdrop to set up and render your scene,
then render with alpha so you can add it as a crisp sharp layer afterwards (in Gimp in my case) or in Photo$hop.
Hi Wendy :) So you would do this for what reason? To get reflections happening?
It's not entirely the presets fault. You have to have an idea of what you want to do, and the patience to do it. I wanted to make a weeping willow tree. I looked at the willow preset and fiddled with it and could get close to what I wanted, but not quite. So I tried the Burr Oak preset (which looks great BTW, if you swap in a better texture of the trunk) and was able to get the shape I wanted. It was then fairly simple to swap the oak leaves for willow leaves.
great render evil, you've done a grande job on those trees.
time for a tutorial eh ;)
Even experienced users have posted nonsense in some posts I dug through recently. I just shake my head
snip
Yes, I've been shaking my head as well. It's a terrible thing to have to put up with. ;)
It's good to know that Carrara has such a wonderful plant editor.
I hadn't realised it was so good.
The hard part for me is understanding where everyone hides their renders of the plants they make in it.
I see Dart doing some amazing stuff, Evill too, and obviously Howie's work via Wedny often, but where are all the other renders that people do of the plants they make???
Are they shy? Or am I missing a secret thread somewhere that holds all these wonderful plants?
I'm really keen to see them and I am not being sarcastic.
For example:
What I am interested in as gnarly roots. Now so far the most successful way I have seen this is to turn one tree over and use it as the roots for another. I'd be interested in other methods for doing this with the plant editor.
I'm also interested in simulating trees like those illustrated by Arthur Rackham
Even experienced users have posted nonsense in some posts I dug through recently. I just shake my head
snip
Yes, I've been shaking my head as well. It's a terrible thing to have to put up with. ;)
It's good to know that Carrara has such a wonderful plant editor.
I hadn't realised it was so good.
The hard part for me is understanding where everyone hides their renders of the plants they make in it.
I see Dart doing some amazing stuff, Evill too, and obviously Howie's work via Wedny often, but where are all the other renders that people do of the plants they make???
Are they shy? Or am I missing a secret thread somewhere that holds all these wonderful plants?
I'm really keen to see them and I am not being sarcastic.
For example:
What I am interested in as gnarly roots. Now so far the most successful way I have seen this is to turn one tree over and use it as the roots for another. I'd be interested in other methods for doing this with the plant editor.
I'm also interested in simulating trees like those illustrated by Arthur Rackham
If you can advise me how to do this Kevin, Man Stan (or anyone) I would appreciate it.
Stan has played with the plant editor more than I ever have, but this was done after 25 minutes of experimenting... I used Ramified and shuffle to finally get here. Needs more work and I need to look at the manual again but I gotta go back to bed.
I do not think I will buy Poser 2014 - the only reason why I still have Poser 2012 is only because of the Cloth Room so I can make nice wing poses for my Swidhelm Dragons (they use dynamic cloth membranes...)
And I really have used Poser a very long time, until Carrara came along and solved many many problems I had with Poser.
Like daz Studio, Poser has some nice features and surely do some nice shader effects I would love to see in Carrara, too - but the over all GUI and handling just sucks eggs (sorry) and the whole window library setup is one clunky pain in the backside of my eyes. Not to mention the inflexible posing.
Nope. I will stick to Carrara
Vertex room allows me to manipulate meshes - take stuff away or adding stuff (try doing that in Poser ^^)
Vertex room allows me to create completely new shading domains to add more detail and dynamic to my figures/props (Try doing that in Poser...)
Shader room - far better organized and easier to use than this material room of Poser, which reminds me more of Filter-Forge - just not as good
Hair generator - far better and flexible than the hair room in Poser (I tried and felt as if I had my fingers broken afterwards)
Grouping, Posing & Moving in the Assembly Room is far more flexible and easier to do - Poser lacks accuracy and that whole wheel thing gets on my nerves. And you
can't move single limbs in Poser as good and easy as in Carrara. And I love being able to remove restraints - Poser doesn't really have that!
Plant Generator - I dunno if Poser has something like that. I doubt it or I would have seen it...
Terrain Generator that can use normal and height maps - not in Poser :D
Render Options far more advanced and detailed (the whole Light stuff, GI and so on) than in Poser and you can do render passes - in Poser you cannot really do much and you need to buy advanced render options from RDNA to do render passes.
And the over all organized GUI of Carrara is so nice and tidy. I like the tree structure of my scene content
I love to have seperate rooms for everything without having the feeling that my screen gets crammed with tons of GUI menu I am not needing
And importing various file formats (just wish I could import CD4 stuff) to create new Carrara Objects is also very sweet.
I tried that with poser - much more work, much more annoying because of texturing and shading.
Nope Nope.. I stay with Carrara. It's by far the best software for my needs because it allows me far more than just "using a doll-house and the ready-made content as it comes"
AnyFX is illustrated a small bit in the Dogwaffle videos. But when you start to dig into what else it does is where you start to find the magic. It is a digital grading filter pack with many types of grading from colors and their hues to blurs and sharpens, various ways to change where in the picture the effects do what… hard to explain but much easier to see and get used to once you start playing with it.
I saw an Adobe Elements combo pack - PS and Premier. It was really cheap - what exactly is “Elements”?
snip....
Thanks, I'll check it out.!
PS elements is the super cut down version of Photoshop.
Not ever having the "real" PS I don't know what I am missing of course. In fact the only people I "know" of that have PS have a pirated copy or have an academic copy. In OZ it costs around 800 bucks.
PS elements does what I want. It's advantage is that you don't get lost in having so many choices. The only thing I would like is a distortion mesh/lattice which it doesn't have. Also it's mask layers are unwieldy so I tend to just make a copy of a layer and work on that and avoid mask layers. I Have PS elements 7 and 10, I can't really see much great improvement in 10, it might be slightly quicker but I doubt it.
Most plugins seem to work in Elements.
cheers from 'ere :)
Cool, So...
You already own what can cure your Photoshop woes. And that is Dogwaffle!
We are both still new to it. So we still have a lot to learn. But I know that it can be used to create a lattice selection, and from there, once you have made a selection in Dogwaffle, the sky is no longer even a limit to what you can do with a Dogwaffle selection. Once you get better at using blue screen, green screen, magic pink, and drop magenta layer techniques, your masking woes with certainly disappear. What I've figured out so far, is that you add a new layer, and then right click in the layer's icon in the layers list and select Fill layer with Magic Pink. Now right click on the layer icon in the top of the tools palette, and select Set Mode for this Layer > Magic Pink (or whichever fill you've used)
Now you have a fully transparent layer - and anything you put into that layer that doesn't resemble magic pink, will be opaque. It's like... the only way I know of to go completely opaque in Dogwaffle - which is really, really cool, once you get used to doing it this way - because Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide, etc., are all really cool options for your masks as well.
Man... I just bought a pair of Sony earbuds that are rocking my world. The bass response and just overall sound is enormously cool! I which I could e-mail you some that you could stash into your MyDocs folder! lol
Maybe, since Dan Ritchie was so successful at allowing us to paint and sculpt on our computers with such a robust system, maybe he could find a way to make digital ear bud file really work! lol
We must find a way for you to view and enjoy those video tuts... we really do.
In the meantime, keep asking for specifics... somebody's got to know, right? ;-)
Poser causing the demise of carrara is like the Edsel causing the demise of the Corvette.
Poser is for figures, carrara is for everything.
For cell shaded toon style it's hard to beat YAtoon. If you can find it. Not sure where it is being hosted right now.
In order for Poser to be competition for carrara you would have to add Vue and wings3d to it. Maybe even iclone.
Head wax. Spend some time using the plant generator. Also check DAZ's realistic leaves for the plant generator. Howie can't do any more with it then you can, he just knows how to. ;)
None the less, for the cost, I'd spend the money on animate 2 and the clothing control plugin for Studio before I spent it on Poser. I'd rather expand the tools I have then add another to learn to use.
thanks I have played with yatoon previously. I was under the impression there was no Carrara 8 version? Maybe one has been released that I missed?Yes. It's at Carrara Cafe ;-)
you can always stick your image in the backdrop to set up and render your scene,
then render with alpha so you can add it as a crisp sharp layer afterwards (in Gimp in my case) or in Photo$hop.
Hi Wendy :) So you would do this for what reason? To get reflections happening?No. The alpha render would omit the backdrop or background, I think. Leaving you with a crisp render of your scene objects to perform solid post work to. Very much like what movie houses do with green screen, blue screen, magic pink and drop magenta.
I also believe that such results would be a better outcome, and easier on your nerves, than to try to get your scenes from Carrara into Poser for some sort of better render. But my opinion there is entirely biased and might be best ignored! lol
Don't get me wrong. I loved Poser. But its shortcomings are what drove me to find Carrara - but we're talking Poser 5. A lot has happened since then!
Even experienced users have posted nonsense in some posts I dug through recently. I just shake my head
snip
I see Dart doing some amazing stuff, Evill too, and obviously Howie's work via Wedny often, but where are all the other renders that people do of the plants they make???
Are they shy? Or am I missing a secret thread somewhere that holds all these wonderful plants?
I'm really keen to see them and I am not being sarcastic.
Darn. I love it when you get sarcastic!
The same day that I was experimenting with using the plant editor to create gnarly root systems to be then turned upside-down and matched up with the trunk of a specific tree, someone else did so and posted his results in the Post Your renders - A New Hope(now replaced with a new thread - but can be found a few pages down), and since, I believe EvilProducer has been experimenting with that as well.
In my kit, I include trees/shrubs that are leafless, that can dub as dead or not leaved out yet, and deadwood. I've also made some berry clusters and included a blue version for you to play with. In my personal collection, I've made a wild blueberry - which uses those exact berries that I include.
In the small sampling below, I took these shots by request. But I feel that you loose a lot by individualizing the plants. Especially as I've intended for a "Woodlands" product, where nature has been doing its own thing. Here's a few of them :
that is the idea though Dart
replace the slightly inferior pixilated rendered BG with the original in post
but keep the lighting, reflections whatever or even just use it as a reference setting up your scene.
thanks Kevin, looks like a good start!
interesting to see where it goes.
cheers ;)
Agreed!
Kevin that is one cool. gnarly ol' tree you've got going on there!
For those who don't know this:
The plant editor view that Kevin's shot displays, is not showing what he may, or may not have for leaves or the fine branches - nor does it show the shader's results. Like the terrain shaders, Plant shaders are incredibly fun to tweak. But I have to hand it to the Daz3d devs for the additions they've come up with for this plant editor. Fantastic!
on this subject http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/21860/
someone PLEEEEEEEASE help me here!
I am at the moment after many different attempts in the NPR settings and alpha settings rendering TWO image series for my animation
a NPR one and a photorealistic one with alpha, alpha only to marry together on a plane in the diffuse and alpha texture channels in front of my BG!!!
I do not think I will buy Poser 2014 - the only reason why I still have Poser 2012 is only because of the Cloth Room so I can make nice wing poses for my Swidhelm Dragons (they use dynamic cloth membranes...)
And I really have used Poser a very long time, until Carrara came along and solved many many problems I had with Poser.
Like daz Studio, Poser has some nice features and surely do some nice shader effects I would love to see in Carrara, too - but the over all GUI and handling just sucks eggs (sorry) and the whole window library setup is one clunky pain in the backside of my eyes. Not to mention the inflexible posing.
Nope. I will stick to Carrara
Vertex room allows me to manipulate meshes - take stuff away or adding stuff (try doing that in Poser ^^)
Vertex room allows me to create completely new shading domains to add more detail and dynamic to my figures/props (Try doing that in Poser...)
Shader room - far better organized and easier to use than this material room of Poser, which reminds me more of Filter-Forge - just not as good
Hair generator - far better and flexible than the hair room in Poser (I tried and felt as if I had my fingers broken afterwards)
Grouping, Posing & Moving in the Assembly Room is far more flexible and easier to do - Poser lacks accuracy and that whole wheel thing gets on my nerves. And you
can't move single limbs in Poser as good and easy as in Carrara. And I love being able to remove restraints - Poser doesn't really have that!
Plant Generator - I dunno if Poser has something like that. I doubt it or I would have seen it...
Terrain Generator that can use normal and height maps - not in Poser :D
Render Options far more advanced and detailed (the whole Light stuff, GI and so on) than in Poser and you can do render passes - in Poser you cannot really do much and you need to buy advanced render options from RDNA to do render passes.
And the over all organized GUI of Carrara is so nice and tidy. I like the tree structure of my scene content
I love to have seperate rooms for everything without having the feeling that my screen gets crammed with tons of GUI menu I am not needing
And importing various file formats (just wish I could import CD4 stuff) to create new Carrara Objects is also very sweet.
I tried that with poser - much more work, much more annoying because of texturing and shading.
Nope Nope.. I stay with Carrara. It's by far the best software for my needs because it allows me far more than just "using a doll-house and the ready-made content as it comes"
I'm totally with Rhiana on this. I've looked at the features list, and the much cheaper version of Poser includes everything I'd want - cloth room and walk designer. Plus I like the versatility of saving poses and animated poses into PZ2 format. Fenric's PZ2 exporter works perfectly in conjunction with Poser. But Poser allows me to save a pose for just the hand, just the head, just the torso parts, etc.,
But I find that the really cheap version of Poser 7 is just fine for this! :)
on this subject http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/21860/
someone PLEEEEEEEASE help me here!
I am at the moment after many different attempts in the NPR settings and alpha settings rendering TWO image series for my animation
a NPR one and a photorealistic one with alpha, alpha only to marry together on a plane in the diffuse and alpha texture channels in front of my BG!!!
Tried what little I could think of ATM :blank:
Wish I had more...
I do not think I will buy Poser 2014 - the only reason why I still have Poser 2012 is only because of the Cloth Room so I can make nice wing poses for my Swidhelm Dragons (they use dynamic cloth membranes...)
Nope Nope.. I stay with Carrara. It's by far the best software for my needs because it allows me far more than just "using a doll-house and the ready-made content as it comes"
I'm totally with Rhiana on this. I've looked at the features list, and the much cheaper version of Poser includes everything I'd want - cloth room and walk designer. Plus I like the versatility of saving poses and animated poses into PZ2 format. Fenric's PZ2 exporter works perfectly in conjunction with Poser. But Poser allows me to save a pose for just the hand, just the head, just the torso parts, etc.,
But I find that the really cheap version of Poser 7 is just fine for this! :)It seems that the only reason to go Pro with Poser is if you want to create products - even if only for your own use. But if you just want to use products that you buy, I believe that the cheaper version does it all - please correct me if this is not true. But there is a huge price difference. At a glance, all of the features I wanted were checked in the cheaper column. :)
For me, Carrara lighting just makes sense, with the exception of shape lights - that I've just not played with much. I'll have to look deeper into those because I'm definitely not seeing the word: "Shape" the same way as the light seems to.
But in Carrara, I can grab the light and do what I want with it - and it's totally simple for me to estimate the outcome from my real-world experiences and the settings I apply, and direction, etc.,
This image (that I show far too much - but I really like it) uses no post... not even the fade off around the edges of the background. It's all spot lights with and without cone effects.
It just looks very Toon-like to me. And this is just what "I" have done. You could refine this all the more to your liking.
Instead of real world here... I played and shot a render... over and over for nearly a whole day. I was on a kick from watching Cripeman's Dedication to Frank Frazetta and wanted to do something around that sort of style - as I've always been a Frazetta fan. Even the fog like effects come from the cone lighting FX. No fog was used either. But placing a super strong series of lights with heavy cones way the heck up in the air, and applying a lot of falloff on the cone's FX, as with the angle and distance of the light... I have since been playing around a lot with falloffs. I have before - but this image started a whole new concept for me - as it works better than NPR for me - and having eight rendering cores - Photorealistic is the fastest choice of engines. Can't wait to build my new workstation and make this one into a node! :) Until then, heck... Carrara renders pretty fast on just two or four cores! So I'm a happy camper. FYI - eight cores is a huge, noticeable difference in everything. Windows itself is just overcome with glee - but Carrara is still thanking me - to this day! :)
Even experienced users have posted nonsense in some posts I dug through recently. I just shake my head
snip
I see Dart doing some amazing stuff, Evill too, and obviously Howie's work via Wedny often, but where are all the other renders that people do of the plants they make???
Are they shy? Or am I missing a secret thread somewhere that holds all these wonderful plants?
I'm really keen to see them and I am not being sarcastic.
Darn. I love it when you get sarcastic!
The same day that I was experimenting with using the plant editor to create gnarly root systems to be then turned upside-down and matched up with the trunk of a specific tree, someone else did so and posted his results in the Post Your renders - A New Hope(now replaced with a new thread - but can be found a few pages down), and since, I believe EvilProducer has been experimenting with that as well.
In my kit, I include trees/shrubs that are leafless, that can dub as dead or not leaved out yet, and deadwood. I've also made some berry clusters and included a blue version for you to play with. In my personal collection, I've made a wild blueberry - which uses those exact berries that I include.
In the small sampling below, I took these shots by request. But I feel that you loose a lot by individualizing the plants. Especially as I've intended for a "Woodlands" product, where nature has been doing its own thing. Here's a few of them :
Great work, really like the one with the red fruits. Looking forward to seeing this in action :)
Thanks for explaining the other stuff too :)
I do not think I will buy Poser 2014 - the only reason why I still have Poser 2012 is only because of the Cloth Room so I can make nice wing poses for my Swidhelm Dragons (they use dynamic cloth membranes...)
Nope Nope.. I stay with Carrara. It's by far the best software for my needs because it allows me far more than just "using a doll-house and the ready-made content as it comes"
I'm totally with Rhiana on this. I've looked at the features list, and the much cheaper version of Poser includes everything I'd want - cloth room and walk designer. Plus I like the versatility of saving poses and animated poses into PZ2 format. Fenric's PZ2 exporter works perfectly in conjunction with Poser. But Poser allows me to save a pose for just the hand, just the head, just the torso parts, etc.,
But I find that the really cheap version of Poser 7 is just fine for this! :)
It seems that the only reason to go Pro with Poser is if you want to create products - even if only for your own use. But if you just want to use products that you buy, I believe that the cheaper version does it all - please correct me if this is not true. But there is a huge price difference. At a glance, all of the features I wanted were checked in the cheaper column. :)
For me, Carrara lighting just makes sense, with the exception of shape lights - that I've just not played with much. I'll have to look deeper into those because I'm definitely not seeing the word: "Shape" the same way as the light seems to.
But in Carrara, I can grab the light and do what I want with it - and it's totally simple for me to estimate the outcome from my real-world experiences and the settings I apply, and direction, etc.,
This image (that I show far too much - but I really like it) uses no post... not even the fade off around the edges of the background. It's all spot lights with and without cone effects.
Hey that's a great render :)
Now let's see Poser 2014 for me has moph injection.
It has a clothing conformer which if it works better than 2012 will be very good.
If it works like the one in 2012 it willbe a pita.
It has a shrink fit room. Bothing you can't do in Carrara, it also has sag etc for clothes - also nothing you can't do In carrara.
It also has the new renderers which I find interesting for my work. (so does Poser 10 I guess).
The new physics engine interets me only how I can utilise it for making stills.
Of coure there are forces atc for making curtains flap. I think they are in Poser 7? They are quite easy to use.
I think it's because Poser comes with an up to date manual. Maybe the Carrara 7 manual tells us how to use the new bullet phyisics?
I;m not sure that I have been able to find that chapter though. :)
Heh, in short, if you use Content then Poser 2014 offers/promises a new "improved" way of taking it from one figure to another.
I'm pretty devout towards making this my career (illustrator) so I am prepared to spend the upgrade price, no worries :)
sorry be back Monday, I promised someone I would have a few different styles of illustration to show them by yesterday which Is why I have been frantically trying to get up to scratch in some of this software....
cheers from ere :)
PS- I'm not saying you can't get other software to do what 2014 is promising. X dresser is good and they have a product which will transfer mophs. You need a license for each figure you want to fir clothes too. But you need poser to adjust the falloff zones. You can't do it in Carrara, only hide the way ward polys.
Wow... cool. I'm going to look a lot further into it (Poser - up and coming version)
Thanks for highlighting what you like - or might like. Sounds like a tool I might want to add to my growing collection - as with Adobe Elements. Geeze HW, you sure have a knack for opening my eyes to new things! Thanks, man!
I doubt anything will put Carrara out of work for me... but I'm enthused about Carrara because it's what works for me. That doesn't mean that I'll remain vigilant to it no matter what happens. I certainly love what I know about the cool people that are working on it. But if Carrara were to become a dead horse because of bad business decisions, or whatever, and something else, like a new version of Poser, would rise above to become the better tool for me... there's really nothing stopping me from switching.
But I truly think that I'll still like Carrara better for my animation rendering - as I've now become one with how I like to work with Carrara - and it just talks so sweet to me right back. I was just making a point - is all. I'm still going to look really hard at the new Poser - and will be considering purchasing it. If so, it will likely be because I know a way that I can use it to benefit my animation renders - which it sounds like it would - just with what you were talking about. CR2 clothing works in Carrara, so does the PZ2 animated pose file (or static) - which can be powerfully used if the other features you've mentioned could be somehow made into either a CR2, PZ2, or some other file that will work within Carrara.
Perhaps our super-cool developers will talk with Smith-Micro and adopt a new Poser bridge for Carrara - now that would be sweet!
Holy cow - by doing something like that - you could automatically give many people nearly everything they've ever wanted out of Carrara - I did say nearly...
Could you imagine a Carrara Poser bridge? Yeah... I can! Wow. I might have to look hard at some code and see if I can rearrange enough of it to make something like that work!
One point which is of some importance, at least to me, is that the Transposer function which was very useful fo transferring animations (including dynamis clothes) from Poser to Carrara 8 is no more available, unless I missed something. As on the other hand animations between Daz Studio and Bryce do seem to have quite a lot of limitation... do we need to wait until DAZ buy Poser and solve the issues?
Head Wax, check this out!
If you get bored reading, be sure to scroll down to the demo videos and stuff. All they need is a content implementation system and they'll have the world!
Carrara doesn't need transposer to load poser figures, clothing, animations or poses.
As for Poser dynamic cloth, there's a free Python script called "Dyn2morph" (or something like that) which will convert the dynamic cloth simulation, into a series of morphs which allow you to load that scene into carrara to render.
Daz Studio's "optitex" clothing simulation can also be "baked" as animation,. and opened in Carrara 8.5 beta.
For anyone struggling with the basics of using Bullet Physics in Carrara,. here's my basic starter (PDF)
I own Poser 6, 7, 8, 9, and 2012, and I'll probably buy 2014,. but not because it's the death of Carrara. or even making carrara feel slightly poorly.
because it's a useful addition to all the other 3D software I use.
Thanks for your answer,
With what I have... including the documentation, Transposer is required for dynamic clothing transfer, but does not exist fot Carrara 8. However where can I find the Dyn2morph you suggested? I did not tried with Daz Dynamic, as it takes too long to drape, Poser is faster.
Thanks for your answer,
With what I have... including the documentation, Transposer is required for dynamic clothing transfer, but does not exist fot Carrara 8. However where can I find the Dyn2morph you suggested? I did not tried with Daz Dynamic, as it takes too long to drape, Poser is faster.
Even if you had Transposer- which as 3Dage said is no longer needed- it wouldn't transfer Dynamic clothing into Carrara as Dynaimic clothing. It would probably convert the animation of the dynamic cloth in Poser to animated morphs, which is what the plugin 3Dage suggests you use, does. Sorry I don't have link for it. Try Google maybe?
Thanks for your answer,
With what I have... including the documentation, Transposer is required for dynamic clothing transfer, but does not exist fot Carrara 8. However where can I find the Dyn2morph you suggested? I did not tried with Daz Dynamic, as it takes too long to drape, Poser is faster.
Even if you had Transposer- which as 3Dage said is no longer needed- it wouldn't transfer Dynamic clothing into Carrara as Dynaimic clothing. It would probably convert the animation of the dynamic cloth in Poser to animated morphs, which is what the plugin 3Dage suggests you use, does. Sorry I don't have link for it. Try Google maybe?
Head Wax, check this out!
If you get bored reading, be sure to scroll down to the demo videos and stuff. All they need is a content implementation system and they'll have the world!
Comments
Dartanbeck wroteth
Thanks, I'll check it out.!
PS elements is the super cut down version of Photoshop.
Not ever having the "real" PS I don't know what I am missing of course. In fact the only people I "know" of that have PS have a pirated copy or have an academic copy. In OZ it costs around 800 bucks.
PS elements does what I want. It's advantage is that you don't get lost in having so many choices. The only thing I would like is a distortion mesh/lattice which it doesn't have. Also it's mask layers are unwieldy so I tend to just make a copy of a layer and work on that and avoid mask layers. I Have PS elements 7 and 10, I can't really see much great improvement in 10, it might be slightly quicker but I doubt it.
Most plugins seem to work in Elements.
cheers from 'ere :)
Thanks Jay-Nola. I was looking at trying to export the whole scene - without lights and cameras.
Yes, it's a good point about the NPR renderer. It's pretty miss and hit for me .
I'll check out the parchment plugin - I hadn't really given it a second thought.
Poser doesn't crash at all for me. Windows 7. I just use it for clothing room or fixing up sphere fall off zones after using X dresser.
The transfer rigging feature hasn't been my favourite yet ;) mainly cause x dresser does everything I want.
thanks I have played with yatoon previously. I was under the impression there was no Carrara 8 version? Maybe one has been released that I missed?
Hi Wendy :) So you would do this for what reason? To get reflections happening?
great render evil, you've done a grande job on those trees.
time for a tutorial eh ;)
Kevin wrote
Yes, I've been shaking my head as well. It's a terrible thing to have to put up with. ;)
It's good to know that Carrara has such a wonderful plant editor.
I hadn't realised it was so good.
The hard part for me is understanding where everyone hides their renders of the plants they make in it.
I see Dart doing some amazing stuff, Evill too, and obviously Howie's work via Wedny often, but where are all the other renders that people do of the plants they make???
Are they shy? Or am I missing a secret thread somewhere that holds all these wonderful plants?
I'm really keen to see them and I am not being sarcastic.
For example:
What I am interested in as gnarly roots. Now so far the most successful way I have seen this is to turn one tree over and use it as the roots for another. I'd be interested in other methods for doing this with the plant editor.
I'm also interested in simulating trees like those illustrated by Arthur Rackham
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=rackham+trees&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=KEWMUYWoMu2SiAeq-oHYAQ&ved=0CC4QsAQ&biw=1318&bih=624
If you can advise me how to do this Kevin, Man Stan (or anyone) I would appreciate it.
Yes, I've been shaking my head as well. It's a terrible thing to have to put up with. ;)
It's good to know that Carrara has such a wonderful plant editor.
I hadn't realised it was so good.
The hard part for me is understanding where everyone hides their renders of the plants they make in it.
I see Dart doing some amazing stuff, Evill too, and obviously Howie's work via Wedny often, but where are all the other renders that people do of the plants they make???
Are they shy? Or am I missing a secret thread somewhere that holds all these wonderful plants?
I'm really keen to see them and I am not being sarcastic.
For example:
What I am interested in as gnarly roots. Now so far the most successful way I have seen this is to turn one tree over and use it as the roots for another. I'd be interested in other methods for doing this with the plant editor.
I'm also interested in simulating trees like those illustrated by Arthur Rackham
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=rackham+trees&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=KEWMUYWoMu2SiAeq-oHYAQ&ved=0CC4QsAQ&biw=1318&bih=624
If you can advise me how to do this Kevin, Man Stan (or anyone) I would appreciate it.
Stan has played with the plant editor more than I ever have, but this was done after 25 minutes of experimenting... I used Ramified and shuffle to finally get here. Needs more work and I need to look at the manual again but I gotta go back to bed.
thanks Kevin, looks like a good start!
interesting to see where it goes.
cheers ;)
I do not think I will buy Poser 2014 - the only reason why I still have Poser 2012 is only because of the Cloth Room so I can make nice wing poses for my Swidhelm Dragons (they use dynamic cloth membranes...)
And I really have used Poser a very long time, until Carrara came along and solved many many problems I had with Poser.
Like daz Studio, Poser has some nice features and surely do some nice shader effects I would love to see in Carrara, too - but the over all GUI and handling just sucks eggs (sorry) and the whole window library setup is one clunky pain in the backside of my eyes. Not to mention the inflexible posing.
Nope. I will stick to Carrara
Vertex room allows me to manipulate meshes - take stuff away or adding stuff (try doing that in Poser ^^)
Vertex room allows me to create completely new shading domains to add more detail and dynamic to my figures/props (Try doing that in Poser...)
Shader room - far better organized and easier to use than this material room of Poser, which reminds me more of Filter-Forge - just not as good
Hair generator - far better and flexible than the hair room in Poser (I tried and felt as if I had my fingers broken afterwards)
Grouping, Posing & Moving in the Assembly Room is far more flexible and easier to do - Poser lacks accuracy and that whole wheel thing gets on my nerves. And you
can't move single limbs in Poser as good and easy as in Carrara. And I love being able to remove restraints - Poser doesn't really have that!
Plant Generator - I dunno if Poser has something like that. I doubt it or I would have seen it...
Terrain Generator that can use normal and height maps - not in Poser :D
Render Options far more advanced and detailed (the whole Light stuff, GI and so on) than in Poser and you can do render passes - in Poser you cannot really do much and you need to buy advanced render options from RDNA to do render passes.
And the over all organized GUI of Carrara is so nice and tidy. I like the tree structure of my scene content
I love to have seperate rooms for everything without having the feeling that my screen gets crammed with tons of GUI menu I am not needing
And importing various file formats (just wish I could import CD4 stuff) to create new Carrara Objects is also very sweet.
I tried that with poser - much more work, much more annoying because of texturing and shading.
Nope Nope.. I stay with Carrara. It's by far the best software for my needs because it allows me far more than just "using a doll-house and the ready-made content as it comes"
Thanks, I'll check it out.!
PS elements is the super cut down version of Photoshop.
Not ever having the "real" PS I don't know what I am missing of course. In fact the only people I "know" of that have PS have a pirated copy or have an academic copy. In OZ it costs around 800 bucks.
PS elements does what I want. It's advantage is that you don't get lost in having so many choices. The only thing I would like is a distortion mesh/lattice which it doesn't have. Also it's mask layers are unwieldy so I tend to just make a copy of a layer and work on that and avoid mask layers. I Have PS elements 7 and 10, I can't really see much great improvement in 10, it might be slightly quicker but I doubt it.
Most plugins seem to work in Elements.
cheers from 'ere :)
Cool, So...
You already own what can cure your Photoshop woes. And that is Dogwaffle!
We are both still new to it. So we still have a lot to learn. But I know that it can be used to create a lattice selection, and from there, once you have made a selection in Dogwaffle, the sky is no longer even a limit to what you can do with a Dogwaffle selection. Once you get better at using blue screen, green screen, magic pink, and drop magenta layer techniques, your masking woes with certainly disappear. What I've figured out so far, is that you add a new layer, and then right click in the layer's icon in the layers list and select Fill layer with Magic Pink. Now right click on the layer icon in the top of the tools palette, and select Set Mode for this Layer > Magic Pink (or whichever fill you've used)
Now you have a fully transparent layer - and anything you put into that layer that doesn't resemble magic pink, will be opaque. It's like... the only way I know of to go completely opaque in Dogwaffle - which is really, really cool, once you get used to doing it this way - because Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide, etc., are all really cool options for your masks as well.
Man... I just bought a pair of Sony earbuds that are rocking my world. The bass response and just overall sound is enormously cool! I which I could e-mail you some that you could stash into your MyDocs folder! lol
Maybe, since Dan Ritchie was so successful at allowing us to paint and sculpt on our computers with such a robust system, maybe he could find a way to make digital ear bud file really work! lol
We must find a way for you to view and enjoy those video tuts... we really do.
In the meantime, keep asking for specifics... somebody's got to know, right? ;-)
thanks I have played with yatoon previously. I was under the impression there was no Carrara 8 version? Maybe one has been released that I missed?Yes. It's at Carrara Cafe ;-)
Hi Wendy :) So you would do this for what reason? To get reflections happening?No. The alpha render would omit the backdrop or background, I think. Leaving you with a crisp render of your scene objects to perform solid post work to. Very much like what movie houses do with green screen, blue screen, magic pink and drop magenta.
I also believe that such results would be a better outcome, and easier on your nerves, than to try to get your scenes from Carrara into Poser for some sort of better render. But my opinion there is entirely biased and might be best ignored! lol
Don't get me wrong. I loved Poser. But its shortcomings are what drove me to find Carrara - but we're talking Poser 5. A lot has happened since then!
I see Dart doing some amazing stuff, Evill too, and obviously Howie's work via Wedny often, but where are all the other renders that people do of the plants they make???
Are they shy? Or am I missing a secret thread somewhere that holds all these wonderful plants?
I'm really keen to see them and I am not being sarcastic.
Darn. I love it when you get sarcastic!
The same day that I was experimenting with using the plant editor to create gnarly root systems to be then turned upside-down and matched up with the trunk of a specific tree, someone else did so and posted his results in the Post Your renders - A New Hope(now replaced with a new thread - but can be found a few pages down), and since, I believe EvilProducer has been experimenting with that as well.
In my kit, I include trees/shrubs that are leafless, that can dub as dead or not leaved out yet, and deadwood. I've also made some berry clusters and included a blue version for you to play with. In my personal collection, I've made a wild blueberry - which uses those exact berries that I include.
In the small sampling below, I took these shots by request. But I feel that you loose a lot by individualizing the plants. Especially as I've intended for a "Woodlands" product, where nature has been doing its own thing. Here's a few of them :
that is the idea though Dart
replace the slightly inferior pixilated rendered BG with the original in post
but keep the lighting, reflections whatever or even just use it as a reference setting up your scene.
Kevin that is one cool. gnarly ol' tree you've got going on there!
For those who don't know this:
The plant editor view that Kevin's shot displays, is not showing what he may, or may not have for leaves or the fine branches - nor does it show the shader's results. Like the terrain shaders, Plant shaders are incredibly fun to tweak. But I have to hand it to the Daz3d devs for the additions they've come up with for this plant editor. Fantastic!
on this subject
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/21860/
someone PLEEEEEEEASE help me here!
I am at the moment after many different attempts in the NPR settings and alpha settings rendering TWO image series for my animation
a NPR one and a photorealistic one with alpha, alpha only to marry together on a plane in the diffuse and alpha texture channels in front of my BG!!!
But I find that the really cheap version of Poser 7 is just fine for this! :)
Wish I had more...
But I find that the really cheap version of Poser 7 is just fine for this! :)It seems that the only reason to go Pro with Poser is if you want to create products - even if only for your own use. But if you just want to use products that you buy, I believe that the cheaper version does it all - please correct me if this is not true. But there is a huge price difference. At a glance, all of the features I wanted were checked in the cheaper column. :)
For me, Carrara lighting just makes sense, with the exception of shape lights - that I've just not played with much. I'll have to look deeper into those because I'm definitely not seeing the word: "Shape" the same way as the light seems to.
But in Carrara, I can grab the light and do what I want with it - and it's totally simple for me to estimate the outcome from my real-world experiences and the settings I apply, and direction, etc.,
This image (that I show far too much - but I really like it) uses no post... not even the fade off around the edges of the background. It's all spot lights with and without cone effects.
It just looks very Toon-like to me. And this is just what "I" have done. You could refine this all the more to your liking.
Instead of real world here... I played and shot a render... over and over for nearly a whole day. I was on a kick from watching Cripeman's Dedication to Frank Frazetta and wanted to do something around that sort of style - as I've always been a Frazetta fan. Even the fog like effects come from the cone lighting FX. No fog was used either. But placing a super strong series of lights with heavy cones way the heck up in the air, and applying a lot of falloff on the cone's FX, as with the angle and distance of the light... I have since been playing around a lot with falloffs. I have before - but this image started a whole new concept for me - as it works better than NPR for me - and having eight rendering cores - Photorealistic is the fastest choice of engines. Can't wait to build my new workstation and make this one into a node! :) Until then, heck... Carrara renders pretty fast on just two or four cores! So I'm a happy camper. FYI - eight cores is a huge, noticeable difference in everything. Windows itself is just overcome with glee - but Carrara is still thanking me - to this day! :)
The same day that I was experimenting with using the plant editor to create gnarly root systems to be then turned upside-down and matched up with the trunk of a specific tree, someone else did so and posted his results in the Post Your renders - A New Hope(now replaced with a new thread - but can be found a few pages down), and since, I believe EvilProducer has been experimenting with that as well.
In my kit, I include trees/shrubs that are leafless, that can dub as dead or not leaved out yet, and deadwood. I've also made some berry clusters and included a blue version for you to play with. In my personal collection, I've made a wild blueberry - which uses those exact berries that I include.
In the small sampling below, I took these shots by request. But I feel that you loose a lot by individualizing the plants. Especially as I've intended for a "Woodlands" product, where nature has been doing its own thing. Here's a few of them :
Great work, really like the one with the red fruits. Looking forward to seeing this in action :)
Thanks for explaining the other stuff too :)
For me, Carrara lighting just makes sense, with the exception of shape lights - that I've just not played with much. I'll have to look deeper into those because I'm definitely not seeing the word: "Shape" the same way as the light seems to.
But in Carrara, I can grab the light and do what I want with it - and it's totally simple for me to estimate the outcome from my real-world experiences and the settings I apply, and direction, etc.,
This image (that I show far too much - but I really like it) uses no post... not even the fade off around the edges of the background. It's all spot lights with and without cone effects.
Hey that's a great render :)
Now let's see Poser 2014 for me has moph injection.
It has a clothing conformer which if it works better than 2012 will be very good.
If it works like the one in 2012 it willbe a pita.
It has a shrink fit room. Bothing you can't do in Carrara, it also has sag etc for clothes - also nothing you can't do In carrara.
It also has the new renderers which I find interesting for my work. (so does Poser 10 I guess).
The new physics engine interets me only how I can utilise it for making stills.
Of coure there are forces atc for making curtains flap. I think they are in Poser 7? They are quite easy to use.
I think it's because Poser comes with an up to date manual. Maybe the Carrara 7 manual tells us how to use the new bullet phyisics?
I;m not sure that I have been able to find that chapter though. :)
Heh, in short, if you use Content then Poser 2014 offers/promises a new "improved" way of taking it from one figure to another.
I'm pretty devout towards making this my career (illustrator) so I am prepared to spend the upgrade price, no worries :)
sorry be back Monday, I promised someone I would have a few different styles of illustration to show them by yesterday which Is why I have been frantically trying to get up to scratch in some of this software....
cheers from ere :)
PS- I'm not saying you can't get other software to do what 2014 is promising. X dresser is good and they have a product which will transfer mophs. You need a license for each figure you want to fir clothes too. But you need poser to adjust the falloff zones. You can't do it in Carrara, only hide the way ward polys.
Wow... cool. I'm going to look a lot further into it (Poser - up and coming version)
Thanks for highlighting what you like - or might like. Sounds like a tool I might want to add to my growing collection - as with Adobe Elements. Geeze HW, you sure have a knack for opening my eyes to new things! Thanks, man!
I doubt anything will put Carrara out of work for me... but I'm enthused about Carrara because it's what works for me. That doesn't mean that I'll remain vigilant to it no matter what happens. I certainly love what I know about the cool people that are working on it. But if Carrara were to become a dead horse because of bad business decisions, or whatever, and something else, like a new version of Poser, would rise above to become the better tool for me... there's really nothing stopping me from switching.
But I truly think that I'll still like Carrara better for my animation rendering - as I've now become one with how I like to work with Carrara - and it just talks so sweet to me right back. I was just making a point - is all. I'm still going to look really hard at the new Poser - and will be considering purchasing it. If so, it will likely be because I know a way that I can use it to benefit my animation renders - which it sounds like it would - just with what you were talking about. CR2 clothing works in Carrara, so does the PZ2 animated pose file (or static) - which can be powerfully used if the other features you've mentioned could be somehow made into either a CR2, PZ2, or some other file that will work within Carrara.
Perhaps our super-cool developers will talk with Smith-Micro and adopt a new Poser bridge for Carrara - now that would be sweet!
Holy cow - by doing something like that - you could automatically give many people nearly everything they've ever wanted out of Carrara - I did say nearly...
Could you imagine a Carrara Poser bridge? Yeah... I can! Wow. I might have to look hard at some code and see if I can rearrange enough of it to make something like that work!
Fenric?
One point which is of some importance, at least to me, is that the Transposer function which was very useful fo transferring animations (including dynamis clothes) from Poser to Carrara 8 is no more available, unless I missed something. As on the other hand animations between Daz Studio and Bryce do seem to have quite a lot of limitation... do we need to wait until DAZ buy Poser and solve the issues?
Head Wax, check this out!
If you get bored reading, be sure to scroll down to the demo videos and stuff. All they need is a content implementation system and they'll have the world!
HI Mouron :)
Carrara doesn't need transposer to load poser figures, clothing, animations or poses.
As for Poser dynamic cloth, there's a free Python script called "Dyn2morph" (or something like that) which will convert the dynamic cloth simulation, into a series of morphs which allow you to load that scene into carrara to render.
Daz Studio's "optitex" clothing simulation can also be "baked" as animation,. and opened in Carrara 8.5 beta.
For anyone struggling with the basics of using Bullet Physics in Carrara,. here's my basic starter (PDF)
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7907045/First_step_Physics_C8.pdf
Getting back to the subject of this thread...
I own Poser 6, 7, 8, 9, and 2012, and I'll probably buy 2014,. but not because it's the death of Carrara. or even making carrara feel slightly poorly.
because it's a useful addition to all the other 3D software I use.
Thanks for your answer,
With what I have... including the documentation, Transposer is required for dynamic clothing transfer, but does not exist fot Carrara 8. However where can I find the Dyn2morph you suggested? I did not tried with Daz Dynamic, as it takes too long to drape, Poser is faster.
Even if you had Transposer- which as 3Dage said is no longer needed- it wouldn't transfer Dynamic clothing into Carrara as Dynaimic clothing. It would probably convert the animation of the dynamic cloth in Poser to animated morphs, which is what the plugin 3Dage suggests you use, does. Sorry I don't have link for it. Try Google maybe?
Even if you had Transposer- which as 3Dage said is no longer needed- it wouldn't transfer Dynamic clothing into Carrara as Dynaimic clothing. It would probably convert the animation of the dynamic cloth in Poser to animated morphs, which is what the plugin 3Dage suggests you use, does. Sorry I don't have link for it. Try Google maybe?
Over at Carrara Cafe links and info:
http://carraracafe.com/import-poser-dynamic-cloth-into-carrara/
thanks :)
looks handy!
great vid tooo!