Carrara Challenge 41: The Super, Legendary, Epic Render Challenge!

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  • StezzaStezza Posts: 8,048
    Mistara said:

    so far in challenges did the hairy tomato, hairy cucumber, and the flowforce on charmed hair.

    enlightened hairy 

    maybe the return of the 'hairy cucumbers' is needed ... devil

     

     

    th3Digit said:

    moving around the metaball room is a PITA

    I always need to exit a few times to get the camera to go where I want to

    I did once resort to using the Octane render window live to see what was happening in the assembly room from other cameras but soon managed to crash my video driver doing that.

    I don't have any problems really.... only that it's hard to model something that resembles something worth while lol sad

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,983
    edited July 2018

    hey Evil, what exactly is dynamic hair ?

    here;s a video with metalls and physics - pretty cool ... jeffereson airoplanish

    Post edited by Headwax on
  • DesertDudeDesertDude Posts: 1,235

    Oh wow, that was fun head wax, thanks for posting

  • MarkIsSleepyMarkIsSleepy Posts: 1,496

    @Diomede: Awesome! I used to watch those as afternoon reruns as a kid. I think they were on WGN. Man, the dubbing was bad!

    Low camera angles looking up at the monster can sell the scale.

    Me too.

    Ultraman was awesome. I don't know if it was him or Spectreman (different show but same different concept) but one of them fought a space vampire and that episode scared the heck out of me as a kid.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    head wax said:

    hey Evil, what exactly is dynamic hair ?

    That would be the strand based hair system.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,158
    edited July 2018
    MDO2010 said:

    @Diomede: Awesome! I used to watch those as afternoon reruns as a kid. I think they were on WGN. Man, the dubbing was bad!

    Low camera angles looking up at the monster can sell the scale.

    Me too.

    Ultraman was awesome. I don't know if it was him or Spectreman (different show but same different concept) but one of them fought a space vampire and that episode scared the heck out of me as a kid.

     

    I'm glad I'm not the only person who remembers this genre of TV show and monster movie.  Ultraman, Spectreman, Godzilla 3 through 2,000...  Do you remember the Space Giants?  It was sort of a combination of Ultraman and Transformers.  Goldar, Silvar, and Gam protect the Earth from, you guessed it, dudes dressed in rubber monster suits.

    https://youtu.be/a9i4BXrh2s4

    I did a preliminary check of my runtime looking for appropriate sets.  I think PhilW's insta-buildings are too realistic to be the model buildings used in the Japanese monster movies and TV shows of that era.  While I am inspired by Ultraman and the like, I don't know that my final entry will be specific to Ultraman.  If you remember more examples of the same genre, please let me know.  I'm sure I am forgetting plenty.

     

    @HeadWax - thanks for the link to the cool particle metaball video.  yesyes

     

     

     

     

    Post edited by Diomede on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050

    Sorry again for not posting much in the way of examples. I've been trying to upload a 102 MB scene file to ShareCG via their large file uploader and it keeps stalling on me and sometimes giving me I/O errors. Sometimes the progress bar says it gets to the 50% range, other times the 60% range, once as low as 24% and another as high as 98%. angry

     

    The weird thing is, it always seems to list the zip file as a couple MB short of the file size. At first I thought is was due to different sized hard drives. I believe I read long aga the size of the harddrive can effect the individual sector sizes on the harddrive based on the capacity of the drive. But in this case I'm not so sure. I think it should only be a few KB in difference not a few MB.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,158
    edited July 2018

    No need to be apologetic, @Evilproducer.  You picked an inspiring theme and offered a choice of function, along with some great grassy terrain examples.  Off to an excellent start.  In addition to tech issues that you describe and that I went though recently, summer vacations (among us northern hemisphere folks) may intrude on general forum activity for everyone.  I'm sure the regulars will do their normal awesome job of contributing to advice and support in the thread as time allows.

     

    I took the liberty of making an announcement in the Art Studio forum.  I admit I emphasized the hair function and Naomi's sponsorship, and sort of downplayed that metaballs could also be used. devil

    The Art Forum thread can be found here.   https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/262426/carrara-challenge-41-super-legendary-epic-render-challenge

    I encourage anyone to add anything they want to that thread as part of a general Carrara visibility thing.  I will be happy to make any additions, deletions, or changes to the blurb that I wrote if desired.

    Post edited by Diomede on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    Diomede said:

    No need to be apologetic, @Evilproducer.  You picked an inspiring theme and offered a choice of function, along with some great grassy terrain examples.  Off to an excellent start.  In addition to tech issues that you describe and that I went though recently, summer vacations (among us northern hemisphere folks) may intrude on general forum activity for everyone.  I'm sure the regulars will do their normal awesome job of contributing to advice and support in the thread as time allows.

     

    I took the liberty of making an announcement in the Art Studio forum.  I admit I emphasized the hair function and Naomi's sponsorship, and sort of downplayed that metaballs could also be used. devil

    The Art Forum thread can be found here.   https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/262426/carrara-challenge-41-super-legendary-epic-render-challenge

    I encourage anyone to add anything they want to that thread as part of a general Carrara visibility thing.  I will be happy to make any additions, deletions, or changes to the blurb that I wrote if desired.

    No worries. I added a mention of the metaball option.

  • UnifiedBrainUnifiedBrain Posts: 3,588

    Rather than trying to model something recognizable with metaballs - a frustrating task - it seems more reasonable to use them as an abstract element or as a background in a scene - much as in the video provided by HW.  Lots of possibilites there.

     

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050

    I've used them for asteroids. I used spherical mapping on them and then applied a moon or planet image map from NASA or maybe I ripped one out of the space scene preset... I can't remember for sure.



  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,024

    For the Legendary category, a first and very early WIP render of the Cannon Spiker.
    Based on a Genesis2 freebie from Rendo with the same name, in turn based on Legendary game characters with energy attacks. So far I have added Carrara shaders from Ringo and the PBR shader for the floor using Philemos new plugin.
    -The first challenge is to use MeatBalls to get a decent yellow glowing energy attack blob. Now a very simple stretched meatball, while I am stuggling with the shader and Anything glows.
    -The second challege, most likely to be skipped to work on Super and Epic images, is to upgrade the hair to Carrara hair.

    spiker_wip1.png
    800 x 600 - 495K
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050

    Very nice so far!

  • StezzaStezza Posts: 8,048
    edited July 2018

    Well, I started on my super, epic, legendary project and then when I got to the finish point I saved it, rendered a test image and then crash.... can't load up the saved file either... nil point error... or in other words it's been bunyipped!

    was pretty cool to I thought... had a monster meatball, smoke and hairs and all sorts... oh well..

    I did check the Daz temp folder for my test render.. it's only a 600 x 450 so I did some post work on it.

    Monster Metaball.png
    800 x 600 - 878K
    Post edited by Stezza on
  • VIArtsVIArts Posts: 1,499

    I MAY enter for once. How long do i gots?

  • Bunyip02Bunyip02 Posts: 8,558
    Stezza said:

    Well, I started on my super, epic, legendary project and then when I got to the finish point I saved it, rendered a test image and then crash.... can't load up the saved file either... nil point error... or in other words it's been bunyipped!

    was pretty cool to I thought... had a monster meatball, smoke and hairs and all sorts... oh well..

    I did check the Daz temp folder for my test render.. it's only a 600 x 450 so I did some post work on it.

    Eeeek, it's contagious !!!!  Nice render.

  • Persona Non GrataPersona Non Grata Posts: 1,365
    edited March 2021

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  • Persona Non GrataPersona Non Grata Posts: 1,365
    edited March 2021

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    Post edited by Persona Non Grata on
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,158
    edited July 2018

    I MAY enter for once. How long do i gots?


    Sunday, July 29, 2018, at around 8:00 PM U.S. Mountain Time

     

    @Stezza - oh no, seems like there has been an increase in stuff not workig.  hope we find some way to recover your files.  Great scene.

     

    Does anyone know if Chickenman is up and running again?  has he been seen posting elsewhere?  (EDIT:  he had posted that his carrara version was not working since an OS update)

     

    Post edited by Diomede on
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,158
    edited July 2018

    Quick update on my setting.  Ultimately, I want the rubbersuited monster walking through skyscrapers and towering over trees with a nearby river and distant hills.  May or may not have a harbor close to the camera.

    I started in Photoshop with a 1024 by 1024 file and 144 resolution.  I blocked out a "stage" area in the foregound to guarantee flat ground along with sloping midground and hills in the background.  Will want a river but that comes later.  I duplicated the blocky layer so I could experiment with blurs.  I selected my "stage" then inverted the selection to get everything but the stage, and then used gaussian blur to get the general landscape.  I also selected the stage edges and blurred to make more smooth.  I saved out the base terrain heightmap.  I created a new layer, filled it white, painted in a gray river bank from the highlands through the foreground, and then painted a black narrower river within the gray.  I saved out this mostly white map as a second heightmap.

     

    In Carrara, I inserted a new terrain, set it to 512 by 512 size, and increased the resolution.  I deleted the default mountain and loaded my base blurred heightmap and adjusted height to taste.  I loaded the second river heightmap and set its height to low (10 feet in this case) to create a canyon.  I used the terrain flter for rain erosion (must set very low, in this case 1%) to convert the canyon to a smoother river bed.  Test view looks OK.

     

    I duplicated the terrain and created a new master.  For this second terrain, I removed the river heightmap and waited while the erosion filter was recalculated.  I colored this duplicate terrain blue.  I raised the second terrain anything less than 10 feet (the height chosen for the second map for the base terrain) to get a river in the river banks.

     

    I decided to do some basic model editing corrections for the river in the highlands.  I entered the terrain modeler for the duplicate and reduced its resolution to 256.  I returned to the assembly room and converted the second terrain to a vertex object.  I selected all and untrianglated.  I adjusted some parts of the river in the highlands where the river looked sloped sideways instead of downstream.

     

    I took a screenshot of a metaball monster in my terrain setting with a river running by and some distant hills.  Now I just need some buildings, trees, and similar details (maybe electric wire towers?).

     

    test render of background with no monster - all shaders are procedurals, the apparent trees in distance are actually a duplicate of a terrain with a noise filter applied.

    ff24 harbor filled in.JPG
    1919 x 1002 - 135K
    metaball heightmap city no river 1.jpg
    1024 x 1024 - 100K
    ff39 draw deeper river bed inide banks.JPG
    1915 x 910 - 113K
    ff48 import the river heightmap and i set to 10.JPG
    1881 x 969 - 150K
    ff51 much better after reduce rain to 1 and 25.JPG
    1905 x 966 - 164K
    ff56 use translate to move 2nd terrain up to get river in riverbed.JPG
    1884 x 1010 - 142K
    ff62 select where water too high on bank.JPG
    1794 x 853 - 132K
    ff65 metaball monster in stage.JPG
    1862 x 924 - 128K
    test render background 1a 1600 by 1200.jpg
    1600 x 1200 - 174K
    Post edited by Diomede on
  • Bunyip02Bunyip02 Posts: 8,558
    edited July 2018

    3drendero - Very nice action scene

    Stezza - Your render looks great, hope you get those bugs sorted

    LightofHeaven - Join in and have some fun

    Selina - Looking forward to what you come up with

    Diomede - Looking Epic already

    Me - "Catch those Critters" WIP1, early days yet - just setting up the scene. Showing a bit of love to Aiko 3 this time around. Used the DAZ Hair Cap with Fit to A3 for the Dynamic hair used.

    Catch Those Critters Carrara 1.png
    2272 x 1035 - 479K
    Post edited by Bunyip02 on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050

    @Stezza: Oh no! I'm so sorry to hear that. Hopefully you will be able to get something figured out. I know in the challenge where I made the Avatar inspired pulp magazine cover, I had a catastrophic crash and lost a really cool crashed space ship I had started.

    @3Lightofheaven: Come on in! We're looking forward to having you join us!

    @Selina: Thanks! I had a lot more ideas for that video. It was going to be a short prequel of the events when the Cygnus first encountered the black hole and then refused the summons home. I started to get back into community theatre around that time, and it took a back seat to that. Then my old computer died, and the scenes I had started were never finished. I did all the tricks with that one. Each of the majopr elements in there was rendered separately and then composited.

    @Diomede: Thank you for the detailed explanation of your terrain generation. There is a lot of great information there!

    @Bunyip02: It looks like you are off to a great start!

  • UnifiedBrainUnifiedBrain Posts: 3,588
    edited July 2018

    Mentallis - super hero...or super villian?

     

     

    Background - the lightning/energy burst in the background was frame captured by me over 10 years ago from a free sample program connected to Particle Illusion (I think).  It was tiny, and degraded significantly when I loaded it into a background plane in Carrara.  So, I ran it through Dream Smoothing in GMIC.  Looked much better.  Then I reloaded it as another background plane.

    The black circular blobs are supposed to be "Kirby Crackle", a technique used by my favorate comic artist, Jack Kirby.  The blobs are metaballs.  I made about 6 or seven in a group, then surface replicated them, then created real instances of them all so I could place them where I wanted them to be.

    Foreground - The character is M3, with facial morphs selected from a set by Predatron, and with skin altered by the Sparrowhawke Edge Falloff plugin.  The suit is the M4 Elite bodysuit, with a shader texture from the Daz Supersuit.

    No postwork.

    Mentallis Carrara Setup.JPG
    1525 x 1031 - 217K
    Mentallis.png
    1600 x 924 - 850K
    Post edited by UnifiedBrain on
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,158

    Not even a full week yet and already great stuff is comng in.

    @3drendero - sorry I missed your WIP.  Got lost between EP's asteroid belt and Stezza's disasterous file implosion.  Blobs make excellent energy attacks so good idea there.  You don't have to do both a metaball and a dynamic hair.  I may have misread your post so just ignore me if ramble aimlessly.  Excellent project.  

    @UnifiedBrain - and lots more energy.  I'm sensing a trend.  Energy + blobs.  Great idea with the Kirby Crackle, an awesome image and the effect really works.  Powerful style.  I think there may be something funky going on in the thighs.  The suit appears to be coming apart, and not at the seams.  The little hexagons are not lining up.  Like 3drendero, ignore me if I am not making sense.

    @Bunyip - Loving the idea of an homage to Aiko 3. I did a quick search for Aiko 3 comic.  She has been in more super legendary epics than Daniel Boone.  I got over 5 million hits.  Looking forward to seeing where you take it.

    @Stezza - on further reflection, I think you should still go with Astroboy and hairy meatball.  Postwork is allowed this month, and you could take your existing render and put it in the background.  Just a thought to try to salvage some amazing work. With your speed, I guess you could have another amazing scene before I finish typing, but it would be nice to salvage what you have already done.

     

     

  • StezzaStezza Posts: 8,048
    edited July 2018

    redid a scene to test... wouldn't believe it a Runtime error!

     

    Astroboy and the runtime bug.jpg
    1240 x 1755 - 973K
    Post edited by Stezza on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050

    LOL! That's great!

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,158

    LOL! That's great!

    +1

     

  • Persona Non GrataPersona Non Grata Posts: 1,365
    edited March 2021

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    Post edited by Persona Non Grata on
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,158
    edited July 2018

    @Selina - very clever idea. I like it.  The forest of no return!

     

    Brash Lonergan's alter ego, Captain Sunburn!!!

    I think we need a villainous trap.  The only question is whether Captain Sunburn is being lowered into the vat of acid, being crushed by descending concrete slabs, strangled by aloe plants (Captain Sunburn's weakness is aloe and similar moisturizers.),....

    or,

    is Captain Sunburn coming to the rescue of his sidekick who is in the villainous trap?  Feel free to vote here.  smiley  I'm not saying I will abide by the vote, but wouldn't hurt to hear some opinions.  You may also vote on whether or not Captain Sunburn has a cape.

    Meanwhile, something appears wrong with the fingers on Brash's left hand.  Will have to check the joint rotation orders.

    Brash Captain Sunburn.png
    1200 x 1600 - 923K
    Post edited by Diomede on
  • 0oseven0oseven Posts: 626

    I am still struggling with the topic to come up with inspiration for the competition - but trying, just so you know I am frown

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