Would you like to contribute Ideas for the next challenges?

2»

Comments

  • bighbigh Posts: 8,147
    edited December 1969

    ManStan said:
    10 second minimum animation, teens and cars?


    "I never read them, far too long for me ;-) " head wax

    Oh you don't know what you're missing. I often wonder where he gets the extra strength happy pills; I could sure use some some times.
    :-P

    works for me :-)

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145
    edited December 1969

    I might be coming to this discussion a little late, but someone mentioned using a unique feature of Carrara, and I am always amazed how little replicators / surface replicatirs get used in people's images. How about using that as a theme?

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Great idea Phil!


    What surprises me is the limited use they get. People forget that you can use the surface replicator to replicate objects on surfaces other than terrains, and you don't have to replicate just grass and trees!

  • SockrateaseSockratease Posts: 813
    edited August 2013

    Here's a recent Surface Replicator animation I did - https://vimeo.com/62060170 (When I saw Fenric's plug-in for unlocking the Teapot Primitive, I was compelled to animate a Cow being covered with teapots!)

    And I used a replicator for Heart Of The Magic Forest (an abstract entry in the Garden challenge) - http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/23635/P15/#353481

    So yeah, I like and use replicators often.

    They are indeed good for more than just terrain related stuffs.

    Post edited by Sockratease on
  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,983
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    Oh yes :) The render would be on a box for sure. I might even print it out and make a box from it and put it on my shelf and pretend I have a real live copy of Carrara :0 and not a digital downloaded one. ! Ahh the smell of fresh software, the heavy feel of a shiny new dvd in your hands, the romantic wirr of a floppy disc drive, the tangled cord of a corded mouse.

    Now they were the days. :)


    you could even burn it onto a DVD, stamp a cover and print out the manual!

    Hya Wendy, yes I have accidently printed the manual twice _ I would post you my second copy but it would be a zillion dollars in stamps :)
    Still it's down hill from my place to yours, maybe the post office could consider that? ;)

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,983
    edited December 1969

    ManStan said:
    10 second minimum animation, teens and cars?


    "I never read them, far too long for me ;-) " head wax

    Oh you don't know what you're missing. I often wonder where he gets the extra strength happy pills; I could sure use some some times.
    :-P

    Heh, Dartanbeck probably makes them in his garage :) After a hard night drumming mind you!

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,983
    edited December 1969

    PhilW said:
    I might be coming to this discussion a little late, but someone mentioned using a unique feature of Carrara, and I am always amazed how little replicators / surface replicatirs get used in people's images. How about using that as a theme?

    Never too late PhilW, you always have concepts that are worth while paying attention to thankyou.

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,983
    edited August 2013

    Here's a recent Surface Replicator animation I did - https://vimeo.com/62060170 (When I saw Fenric's plug-in for unlocking the Teapot Primitive, I was compelled to animate a Cow being covered with teapots!)

    And I used a replicator for Heart Of The Magic Forest (an abstract entry in the Garden challenge) - http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/23635/P15/#353481

    So yeah, I like and use replicators often.

    They are indeed good for more than just terrain related stuffs.

    wonderful video, :) how did you get the random arrangement of teapots at the beginning .... let me guess, you had two cows in the scene, the same size, you replicated the teapots on one cow and then made it invisible, then you expanded the invisible cow at frame 1 and bought it back down to the original size for the last frame, but that doesn't explain the movement of the teapots - but that would give a linear movement,

    (I guess you could also animate the teapots hotspot, )

    so did you animate a parameter in the replicator, can you even do that - note to self steal Socrateese' idea :) ?

    Post edited by Headwax on
  • SockrateaseSockratease Posts: 813
    edited December 1969

    Nothing complicated.

    I just started with the teapots all replicated on the Cow, then used physics and a spinning linear force to blow them off.

    The trick was in running the frames backward for compiling into a video.

  • 0oseven0oseven Posts: 626
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    Double O Seven :)

    Great ideas, I like most of them with the exception of course about no post work ;)

    Evil wroteth:

    Just so long as the contest doesn’t require a plugin to generate the image. Well, maybe the exception would be if it was a free and readily available plugin that had versions that worked with multiple versions of Carrara, such as C6, C7 or C8.x


    I meant plugins that extend Carrara's capability rather than software such as "Luxus' which just reworks something - you know any of the inagoni, dcg, or fenric's except of course some users may not view that as a "level field" . On the other hand it could introduce people to Carrara's extended capabilities and inspire them to try out themselves


    Yes, that is very important. It must be a level playing field.

    Post processing takes things ouside of carrara which may "cloud " what has been achieved in Carrara itself which rather takes away the idea of "showcasing " Carrara and as I for one am hopeless with photoshopping it impinges on the "level playing field too - moan and gripe"

    I believe many wonderful things can be achieved with Carrara without PP so I reckon that's what this should be about.
    Experimentation produces some awsome things and as the man said " Ask not what Carrara can do for you but what can YOU do with Carrara ?" ( yes I think some other forum member used that once - but its very apt.)

    I think to showcase Carrara we have to try something Unique.

    As to what that UNIQUE THING is, I have no idea. (yet)

    I'm sure ideas will flow when the ground rules are set
    excuse me - I must get on with drinking my beer

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,983
    edited December 1969

    Nothing complicated.

    I just started with the teapots all replicated on the Cow, then used physics and a spinning linear force to blow them off.

    The trick was in running the frames backward for compiling into a video.

    thanks, I never use physics I obviously should!

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,983
    edited December 1969

    Ooseven wrotith

    Post processing takes things ouside of carrara which may “cloud ” what has been achieved in Carrara itself which rather takes away the idea of “showcasing ” Carrara and as I for one am hopeless with photoshopping it impinges on the “level playing field too - moan and gripe”

    I believe many wonderful things can be achieved with Carrara without PP so I reckon that’s what this should be about.
    Experimentation produces some awsome things and as the man said ” Ask not what Carrara can do for you but what can YOU do with Carrara

    Yes you are right of course. It just depends on what you are looking for in the finished product. It's been a few years since I tried to do everything with one piece of software - to me it's like trying to buid a house with a very good screwdriver as your only tool. You can do it all with the screwdriver but it might take just a little longer, and not give you exactly the results you envisaged in the end.

    But I understand where you are coming from exactly, having had that same viewpoint in the past (with anim8or at the time)

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Since the rules are fluid based on who is saddled with- ummm- hosting the challenge, I'm sure at some point that no postwork will be a rule. I certainly have no problem with that, with the sole exception of animations. My system is older, so I tend to render in layers and composite in my video editor. If there were an animation challenge with no postwork, I'd have to bow out.

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,983
    edited December 1969

    saddled with- ummm- hosting the challenge

    Heh :) Yes it's been a little work but a lot of fun :) I am glad I will not win again though! I hope being a Host hasn't put people off though.
    I am quite happy to help out the next Host.

    I've also had a kind offer from a Daz PA to help out if things go askew - which is very kind of them.

  • 0oseven0oseven Posts: 626
    edited December 1969

    Rendering 2 minutes of animation ( let alone 5 or more ) in Carrara would take ages and bog down a lot of systems. So i would regard it as normal to make several short avi files in carrara and marry them in a video editor - whether it should be allowed to add more effects may be the issue.

    So what about Two Challenges ?
    One for stills and one for animation - I think the complexities of animaton ( especially character ) set it apart deserving of it's own challenge and ground rules..

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    And speaking of animation... Sockratease, that teapot animation is really cool!

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,179
    edited December 1969

    I definitely use a video editor (mostly just virtualdub) as I render image series, most of the time my Carrara will not actually render a usable avi anyway, my codecs work in EVERY other software so it is a Carrara issue and length related, short avi's do work.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    I definitely use a video editor (mostly just virtualdub) as I render image series, most of the time my Carrara will not actually render a usable avi anyway, my codecs work in EVERY other software so it is a Carrara issue and length related, short avi's do work.

    What kind of length Wendy? Also, do they include the sound files you use?

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,179
    edited August 2013

    I add the sound file again in vdub, sometimes I render a crappy 1x1 pix video and save the .wav and add that
    my carrara videos render with sound but tend to have weird issues like inverted colours and scanlines jumbled if more than about 30 secs or slow renders and I get too many that crash and cannot be salvaged esp if over 4GB on a FAT drive!, image files I can continue on.

    as I said, it is a size issue mostly

    Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on
  • 0oseven0oseven Posts: 626
    edited December 1969

    Maybe Wendy means Carrara will not render a compressed file ? I dont think it works for me when I select "xvid" from the drop down box at save time . A raw avi file is too big to be useful in the sense of uploading to the web. Sound files aren't normally that big so shouldn't be an issue included or not.
    I save video and audio as uncompressed avi no problem . Then again I dont attempt anything more than about 30 secs.

    OR do you mean you cant save as AVI at all so have save as an image series - jpg or whatever ?

    But here we go - as I said, Animation is whole different box of "considerations" worthy of it's own challenge don't you think ??

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    I add the sound file again in vdub, sometimes I render a crappy 1x1 pix video and save the .wav and add that
    my carrara videos render with sound but tend to have weird issues like inverted colours and scanlines jumbled if more than about 30 secs or slow renders and I get too many that crash and cannot be salvaged esp if over 4GB on a FAT drive!, image files I can continue on.

    as I said, it is a size issue mostly

    With long videos, image sequences are the way to go. I even doubled the length of a render without having to re-time keyframes or anything by simply setting Carrara to render an image sequence at 60 fps (the maximum) and then compiling them at 30 fps.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    0oseven said:
    Maybe Wendy means Carrara will not render a compressed file ? I dont think it works for me when I select "xvid" from the drop down box at save time . A raw avi file is too big to be useful in the sense of uploading to the web. Sound files aren't normally that big so shouldn't be an issue included or not.
    I save video and audio as uncompressed avi no problem . Then again I dont attempt anything more than about 30 secs.

    OR do you mean you cant save as AVI at all so have save as an image series - jpg or whatever ?

    But here we go - as I said, Animation is whole different box of "considerations" worthy of it's own challenge don't you think ??

    Absolutely. It's one of those areas I want to spend more time in, but just don't have the time to do it.

  • pnewhookpnewhook Posts: 70
    edited December 1969

    0oseven said:
    Maybe Wendy means Carrara will not render a compressed file ? I dont think it works for me when I select "xvid" from the drop down box at save time .

    You mean there can be other options for AVI other than uncompressed, Microsoft Video 1 or Intel?
    I've been rendering my movies as AVI uncompressed, then using a free external converter to compress to H.264. Unless I'm going to Adobe Premiere when I have to use Intel compression as it wont read uncompressed properly. The Microsoft Video 1 leaves too many artifacts on the video.
  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,179
    edited December 1969

    uncompressed is always my avi choice but as I said if more than a few seconds they corrupt quite frequently and I do not want to chance it
    the temp folder is particulary dodgy too so I render to desktop if I use avi at all.
    seems file size is the factor here
    the temp folder does not like too much in it.
    even image series will lose earlier frames after a point
    I render as many images as I wish to an external drive no problems

  • 0oseven0oseven Posts: 626
    edited December 1969

    pnewhook said:
    0oseven said:
    Maybe Wendy means Carrara will not render a compressed file ? I dont think it works for me when I select "xvid" from the drop down box at save time .

    You mean there can be other options for AVI other than uncompressed, Microsoft Video 1 or Intel?
    I've been rendering my movies as AVI uncompressed, then using a free external converter to compress to H.264. Unless I'm going to Adobe Premiere when I have to use Intel compression as it wont read uncompressed properly. The Microsoft Video 1 leaves too many artifacts on the video.

    Well Ib guess this all gone off topic but I'll just make a last comment.
    The final window in my save (video) process lists the options you mention plus xvid and ffdshow. Now I dont know if these are coded into carrara or whether it has picked up something from the codecs I have installed. There are quite a lot odf settings in the configure options for them and I admit to not understanding most of it. But changing anything seems to bring up an error " unable to decode" when I continue with the save. Not sure how well this is covered in the manual( probably not) However like you, I just save uncomressed, use video editor to compile takes then save out whatever format I want - usually mpg4 .I'm not sure why Wendy has issues - are you running out of ram perhaps?

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,983
    edited December 1969

    Well Ib guess this all gone off topic but I’ll just make a last comment.

    never off topic when you are helping someone or getting helped ;)

Sign In or Register to comment.