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Have had a lot of trouble with the armadillo, but am making slow progress. The critters have ball-like bumps on the front and back of their shells and band-like strips across the middle. I tried to use 3D paint within Carrara to get the displacemnt, but I got frustrated. I finally decided try to use carrara to render a texture map that could be applied. I started a new scene and used the regular replicator (not surface) on a simple sphere. The sphere had a slope shader with a high blend. I used that to make the displacement maps for the front and rear of the shell. I feel like I am getting closer on the front and rear of the shell. The bands in the middle of the shell and on the tail still have edges that are too harsh.
Anyway, the armadillo is fully posable, and ready for a stampede, if I can just get the shading worked out.
Great idea to do that with the Carrara actually rendering a displacement map for you.
The other thing you could try is using a replicator shader on the armidillo and sticking real bumpbuttons on him that way.
So you would turn your displcament map into just black and white with no greys and assuming the little beast is uveed, the bumps would only be replicated in certain places - on the black? if it turns out opposite just invert the replicator shader
edited for relevance!
It seems like I finished my entry.
Now, do I understand correctly that this challenge is judged by popular vote?
If so, then I might be violating my own rules by entering. I have decided a while ago that I will never again enter any popular-vote type events. I think it's likelier for me to win a mega-million lottery than a popular vote anything, and where is the fun in entering when there is no chance of winning?
But I only fully noticed that rule just now, and since I wasn't creating this image with the thought of the popular vote judging -- that thought usually depresses me to the point of draining any creative energy out of me, I was actually able to enjoy the process. I already spent my time on it, so I might as well post. And it might not qualify anyway.
But I will post my process notes too and will answer any questions about the process if people ask, in the hopes that this undertaking won't be a total waste, and will end up being at least informationally useful to somebody.
There is no content here. But I did use the leaf that is part of Carrara's native plant builder, but it isn't an object from the object tab. Does this count as my content?
The objects used:
Balloons from Home section (deformed using modifiers, and reshaded)
Butterfly, Iris and Magnolia from Nature (reshaded, and in case of Magnolia - butchered and put back together to be a poppy)
Noose from Misc (reshaped in the Spline modeller)
The tire from one of the Transport models, also slightly reshaped, so I no longer remember which one it was. I think Mbike65, but I'm not sure.
Moonface from Mesh Models (re-UV-mapped, reshaded, morphed)
Other elements:
The lake water is an ocean primitive.
The world-rock is a vertex object of my own making.
The grass is Carrara dynamic hair.
The sky is another vertex sphere with a sky map.
Glow from the moon is Carrara's native aura.
The rocks in the lake are a morphed and smoothed vertex cube.
The toy is my own object, modelled, UV-mapped and shaded from scratch. I offer it as a freebie if anyone is interested.
All shaders are my own. The textures either came with Carrara (butterfly, flowers), or are from NASA (Moonface) and modified by me, and finally, the sky photo is a modified texture from Flink's Sky package, which I own.
Some notes on the process:
I use both guides and shader option to diversify the way the hair looks when I need to do something less uniform or brushed than actual hair or fur.
When creating distribution maps I found Carrara paint tool to be most useful. In fact I think for the final effect I've only used it to paint distribution maps and shader mixer maps. I've tried it to paint actual maps, but Photohop or Gimp give me much more freedom and convenience there, so I just use Carrara paint tool to define areas where outside textures will later be applied.
There are 7 replicators in this image: 4 surface ones for flowers and rocks, one regular randomized replicator for the butterflies, and the other 2 are for the lights.
There are 16 directional lights here. 15 are used to simulate GI (through the replicators, so it's actually 1 light replicated 15 times: 3 on an arc, which is then replicated radially 5 times) and the 16th is "the sun". Incidentally, I discovered this GI faking light-replication trick in one of DimensionTheory's light packages and have been using this technique with various configurations and setting ever since. It's a very simple, easy and useful trick for creating fairly realistic environment lights.
The moon actually does not emit any light, there is just glow in the shader and the aura effect on the object.
The post is very simple: Some multi-layer compositing and strategic blurring in some layers. And that's pretty much it. I used Material Diffuse layer to fake some SSS in a few objects. Thus avoiding the render-time expense that I'd have to face if I wanted to use SSS in the shaders.
I hope someone will find this useful.
Category: QUIRKY
Title: "Small World"
Antara!!
Wow, that is absolutely superb. It's full of joy and whimsy, not to mention quirkiness. The butterflies and the balloons and the glow give it that air of innocent childhood lightheartedness.
I think you've stuck to the rules admirably and done a magnificent job.
As far as the voting, oh don't worry about winning or losing. The important thing is the quality of your work (see above) and sharing your knowledge. The voting is transparent and fluid - which means people can change their vote at any time uptil the closing of voting.
I will open a finished entry thread a week before end of time for WIP's if that's okay?
I hope there will be more entries that last month and that people are kind enough to post their WIPs as they go.
Thanks for your kindness and enthusiasm and the quality of your work!
cheers
PS if you win maybe you can offer your Toy as the centrepiece for renders for next month's challenge??
I have decided on the items I'll be using!
No WIP imagery, but I can tell you it involves the Outhouse, and the Conductor items from the included content >:)
?
I know.
But there wasn't a Cow included, so this was what happened.
It makes sense to me, but I am out of my tiny little mind.
Sorry to be so dumb, but I am confused again. I thought human figures were NOT allowed... isn't Victoria 6 a human figure?
Also: Isn't auto-fitted content still content and therefore cannot come in bunches?
ah yes, sorry Antara I will change the answer I am lost at the moment,
as far as content you cannot use a human or humanoid figure that appears in your render,
as far as autofitted, as far as I am aware you could still make your own mesh and autofit it??
gah, I was too busy asking myself whether Dartanbeck's was a trick question
my apologies, I am at work and doing work stuff, one of my eyeballs has decided to detach it's vitreous and so not in head space I was (is) a trick question! Silly! No freaking Humans! {Smiley}
Antara... Yeah!
Love the Diomede goings on! Sweet!
Wendy... I'm out of my realm too :( I am so used to animating my scenes - but still... we must be Still! {Smiley}
I love this whole "out of my usual element" idea - which is why I made that silly trick question earlier... Sorry about that! I'm always doing scantily clad people. That's my thing. Now I am happily perplexed as I break from my norm to come up with an idea. I will be participating - I'm just late in gathering my thoughts is all.
Thank you. :D
I didn't explain right. I don't worry about winning or loosing at all, it's more of a geis thing. The winning bit was a joke :). (I should remember to include smiles more often...)
On a more serious note, though, I feel like any art is a dialogue of the artist and the audience, and when I approach contests of any kind, I view them as a dialogue between my work and the judges. When the judges are too numerous (as in popular vote environments) I feel like I am shouting off of rooftops into a very crowded square. That thought makes me insanely uncomfortable, so I prefer to shut up and not enter.
I am confused about WIP's. Does the new thread in a couple of weeks mean that we are NOT to post entries here?
And do we HAVE to post WIP's?
For this image there wasn't anything interesting going on in the WIP department. I sat there thinking what I want to do with the given array of objects, came up with the idea and then just put them all together rather quickly and easily, because all the functions I used are insanely easy to do in Carrara. The rest was done by tweaking shaders and composition. None of this merits a WIP shot, as the differences are minute enough to be completely boring to look at.
The WIP thread gives us a nice chance to post fun images without necessarily being our official entries. But you can certainly (I think) post that same image (I would) as an entry when that thread opens! Friggin' cool image and a great way to shout your style from the rooftops! :)
also gives others ideas of what they are up against so if doing a similar thing can either up the ante or take a different direction.
The idea of the WIP thread is as above, but it's also meant as a learning experience for the readers of the thread and potentially for the artist submitting a WIP image. As far as I know, it's not required to post a WIP to enter.
I've posted a couple WIP images for the contest so far, but not as many as I had hoped due to real world time constraints.
socratease, you can use the Daz cow if you want - you can just use one item of content ,
gee, that's part of the reason I made that rule, so you could use a cow (smiley here)
blody moovalous aren't I?
ha ha glad it was a trick question (smiley here)
sure twicked me into giving a stupid answer!
Antara saideth
Hi oh Evil is write, no WIP's needed but it helps for others like me to learn by seeing how you did it. And as Wendy said I think it probably saves people treading on toes.
As far as the popular vote - ah yes, it's common knowledge amongst artists here in Oz that if no one likes your work it must be good, and the opposite is true, that if you sell a lot of work then it's only because the public has no taste and it follows your work must be not good .... in fact if we have artists who start to sell really well in our group we chucjk them out .... (smiley and wink here) Just kidding of course, there's a fine line between it all.
If people don't like my paintings it just means they have no taste :) more winks here. Mind you I am wracking my brains how to come last in this particular challenge so that I know my work is good! (more smileys and personal digs at myself here)
Above paragraph all in jest and poking fun at myself as an elitist.
Yeah... he IS freaking good. He doesn't even know how to make junk - that Head Wax. But I don't mind losing to anyone here. This whole community has got talent in what they want out of it. I love how Head Wax wants us to jump out of ourselves for this one - and, somehow, reading that strange post above got my mind into a click and I think I'll have a start on my entry image tomorrow - or at least a WIP.
Thanks guys!
Heh, thank you Dartanbeck, but that's undeserved praise. Mind you I have a misspent adulthood....
That said, great surf today - so I misspend it in other ways rather than splashing paint.
In fact I am a serial mispellerender
Decided I'd feel out a car race, used everybuilding I could find in the objects folder,
Before and after postwork ... (smiley here)
Awesome Postwork. :)
socratease, you can use the Daz cow if you want - you can just use one item of content ,
gee, that's part of the reason I made that rule, so you could use a cow (smiley here)
blody moovalous aren't I?
Fear not, there's a Bovine Render too. But like in the last challenge - I want to try one with and one without.
Otherwise it would be too easy and there would be no ... Challenge!
You are not serious, are you? Sorry, I have a very bad internet sarcasm-meter.
But seriously, that's not your final pre-postwork render, is it?
About elitist attitudes - see, I hadn't thought of it like that before at all. For me it has little to do with whether people like my work or not. More about being exposed. In normal situations I can dismiss views as passing glances, and those who look closely enough to comment are not that many. But if people have to cast votes, it means they'll really have to look. Eeek! (*runs away and hides under the table*)
And in the elitist vs populist argument I think both are right. Although instead of likeability I think of the deciding quality being accessibility. Art needs to speak to people. Whether an artwork speaks to a few people with strong impact, or to millions with weaker impact, the resulting effect might end up being the same. As long as the impact is positive (not in terms of like=+/dislike=-, but in terms of igniting some form of positive personal growth in the viewer) either approach is good.
Sorry, I am being way too serious here. Em. My most sincere apologies? Somehow that sounds like making it worse... Hm.
(Yes, the lack of emoticons is becoming a grave issue here...)
I hate being always right! Okay, Andrew. You win.... Again! lol
HEY! You added birds! Nice!
let's have a big hand for " Jerry Lee Mouse "
He going to rock the house !!
Go Jerry Lee!!!
Mine is using a Tim Payne Sky as content - if that is content. The rest is straight out of the browser, but with tweaks to the shaders and a pile of volumetric clouds at various settings to create the bomb explosion. I've always wanted to try that - finally got round to it. Oh... and after I brought in the mountain terrain from the browser, I monkeyed around with it's shape and size. Dogwaffled it a bit for color grading and applying motion blur. Crap! I was going to put Rosie in the pilot seat - just to break the rules without telling anyone! Poopies... I forgot!
Nice job Dart! I love volumetric clouds!
Thanks Man!
I've been dying to try that. I'm going to try and animate an explosion like this using the c-clouds. It'll really heat up my system for hours, just to get a few seconds... but if it works... then I have it for when I need it - which will be a lot! :)
There are two that are really bright yellow, two bright orange, two red and two black. I have found that black is essential. So are the other hues. The main glow in the center is the bulb that illuminates them - which has a lens flare that took some time to tweak... whew!
Without lights, the effect disappears into nothing but wisps. So between the clouds growing from nothing and changing in brightness and opacity, plus many other specs, perhaps, and the lights changing from nothing to a bright ignition flash to an after glow then back down, I bet we can make nice explosions. And, of course, it doesn't all have to be filmed in one shot :)