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That looks really impressive. Does the Wacom make a big difference? My artistic drawing skills are not my strong point (just look at my avatar!) but I can manipulate photoshop well enough, although I only have Elements.
:) For what I see, you have good motives for that... It really seems a great software!! mac version please :P
In this particular case... none...
I actually painted the texture of the stairs and columns, but it was before the wacom arrived.
About wacom... I wanted to buy it for some time now, but not for this. I want to do really digital painting, probably mix it up a little with 3d (the characters for my book are made in 3d, but the hair and cloths I will paint for example). if it was for painting textures, my aiptek would do the job I think.
Some years ago, when I wanted to buy a digital pen, a friend told me that to buy a wacom and don't have a good trace and drawing skill is throwing money away, cause the wacom is very sensitive and without drawing experience what you are able to do with it, you can do with a much cheaper digital pen. But there's lots of people with no drawing skills using wacom so... can't really tell you.
I'm happy that I followed his advice, cause in that time I didn't had the draw ability I have now nor a good computer. So now that I have it I also have a top wacom with a top mac. Other wise I would have a top wacom when I weren't able to really take full advantage of it and now it would be outdated. But just for that, cause i would really love to have a top wacom and a top computer years ago ;)
If you could try with digital pen before you buy you could see how much it would be worthy for you (relative to how much improved your work) and then chose the price you wanted to pay. I would give you my aiptek for free... But sending it to you would have costs so... :P
Yup.
He's making it work with WINE, I think. ;)
It might already.
One more day of work...
and my crystal is starting to look pretty good...
my columns have some nice cracks... and they look a little more like stone... I think...
Curiously, I thought the crystal would be the most difficult surface... but it seems I was wrong... it's being the easiest to do.
But to make that columns and stairs texture look like real stone... not easy... it still seems to bright... But I will get there!
How weathered do you want the stone? There should be some various presets in Carrara's Shader Browser you can examine. I recommend all newer users to crack open some of the shaders to see how they're made. The Texture room is very powerful and can be great fun.
If you are using image maps, you can also mix procedural functions to enhance the look. Of course, there's so much you can do without an image map as well.
Here's an example of a 100% procedural shader that I made to depict a weathered stone column.
I'm using maps yes. Not very comfortable with shaders in carrara yet. Using maps is more like I'm used to in daz studio. Thanks, you just remind me something very important. One of the best ways to learn is to do exactly what you said - go see whats already done. I was so engrossed in doing that I totally forgot that exploring part.
Really have to explore more procedural shaders in carrara.
Going back to this right after lunch :)
There's nothing wrong with image maps. What's great about the Texture room is that you can use mix and match for another whole level of effects.
I'm really wanting to learn more about carrara. When I start this project, the idea was doing it to daz, so I bought carrara just as a modeling software since hex don't work in my mac. Of course that as soon I start using Carrara I fall in love and it was really obvious that it is much more than that... Shader room seems really great... I'm starting to think that the reason there's so many people saying so many bad things about carrara, is just because carrara is really a very complete software and for that reason, you really have to learn many things in order to take full advantage of it. That doesn't scare me at all...So now I really want to learn carrara.
Already got "Learning Carrara" from Infinite Skills and think I'll buy the model tutorial from mmoir to. But really want to "finnish" this project before (I can always improve it later). When I start to have lots of pending things going on in here, chaos get installed... and believe me, when I get into chaos, I do lots of things but never finnish anything... so it's not very productive. Right now I'm starting to have to many pending things again... lololol (me and my "having lots of projects going on at the same time" thing) So I'm back to finnish pending things so I can reorganize my learning and projects again :)
So for now I think this project will not take full advantage of texture room features... But for sure I will dig into shaders in carrara very very soon. Am hoping to learn a lot about in Phil's training tutorial! :)
Everybody has their own way of learning and their own workflow. There's a lot to learn, and even though I started with Raydream 5 (which eventually evolved into Carrara), I still finding myslef learning something new almost everytime I come to these forums or talk to somebody else.
Last night for instance, I learned it was pretty simple to work with sweep paths to get more complex shapes. Intellectually I knew it, but I had never tried applying it. The impetus was a challenge Garstor gave me, in that his fancy pants LW ( ;-P ) could do something it would be difficult to do in Carrara. Guess who was mistaken (at least for this task)?
Faceted gray LW object + Lovely smoothed and (procedurally) shaded Carrara 7.2 Pro object = p0wned!
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Really nice!! I think carrara won this!! ;) It really gives a great effect and the smoothing is just amazing!! one of the very good features of carrara!!
Have to admit that I gave a try to LW... and immediately decided to buy carrara... don't really know how powerful LW can be... just know that I hate the workflow...
To be fair to Garstor, the model LW model came in with all creased edges which accounts for the faceting. I don't know if it was something about how the object was made in LW, something that happened while opening it in Carrara, or something Garstor did intentionally.
There's already some cool stuff going on here!! My stone is starting to look more like stone. I can already see the difference between the columns (in which I'm working) and the steps (still to shinny for stone as the columns were).
Seeing the procedural shaders helped. I also went to see some props I had with stone surfaces. All that helped to adjust the settings and values of my surface! :)
Anyway, you did something that he thought it was very difficult in carrara in an easy way! Think that's the most important. When I first opened carrara everything seemed difficult... Then here in the forum I started seeing that is not difficult, it's just done in a different way. When we know how, it becomes simple.
And I like to see that these nice shapes are easy to do in carrara. For now I'm with simple shapes, but what most fascinates me in modeling is organic modeling and this kind of shapes. Also the nature shapes. For what I understand carrara as "rooms" for modeling trees and vegetation... Can't wait to be able to create my fairy and pixies tree houses!! ;)
Anyway, you did something that he thought it was very difficult in carrara in an easy way! Think that's the most important. When I first opened carrara everything seemed difficult... Then here in the forum I started seeing that is not difficult, it's just done in a different way. When we know how, it becomes simple.
And I like to see that these nice shapes are easy to do in carrara. For now I'm with simple shapes, but what most fascinates me in modeling is organic modeling and this kind of shapes. Also the nature shapes. For what I understand carrara as "rooms" for modeling trees and vegetation... Can't wait to be able to create my fairy and pixies tree houses!! ;)
There's also the Spline and Metaball modeler in addition to the tree/plant modeler and the terrain modeler.
Spline I already explored a little. Metaball I know but didn't actually explored for modeling. Just played like a child with the objects!! It's so funny the way they blend into each other. :) For me it's very interesting!! Being from sculpture degree, metaball really seems like adding clay. I think I will become a fan as soon as I learn how to use it well.
In a near future also want to learn z brush because of that. It's amazing the way it works. It really mimics the steps sculptures do in their works. I fell that with carrara and z brush I will be happy forever. And there's even a z brush goz for carrara!! But one thing at a time, and now it's time for learn carrara. z brush is really really complex, I almost get scared just by looking at the work environment... daz and carrara suit best the projects I have in hands now.
Some more hours of work and a better light just to see how it works.
That crystal sure has some more work to do... Not easy to make it shinny without over shine is some place. A little of over shine is fine, this is just to much... It was working good on the lights I had, but you put a sun in place and suddenly... this happens... And it actually happens in reality, but in render does not seem natural...
Anyway... almost done... :)
Looking great!
Do you have some sort of background in that scene? That will help you to see what's going on with the crystal. Bi-Gradient would help some, but if you actually has a spherical background or some other method of getting reflections to show can also play with the light and the shaders.
Anyways... I love it. It's really looking nice! :)
Thank you Dartan
In this render I have a sky dome, which made all the difference in the crystal. But yes, have to try it with a more complete scene to see how it works.
Right now I'm making some adjustments to the high of the columns... Really love this proportions, but with a character in the scene it seems to much... This will be part of a temple I will build next and it will make more sense than, but even dough it's a little to high...
When you get to the point in the construction of your scene where you really want to dedicate yourself to the crystal shader, let us know. We can definitely help in that area.
WWWWOOOOOOOWWWWWW!!!!!!!! AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!
Ok, I'm totally convinced!! Learning shaders in Carrara is now on my top list!!
And believe me, I'll let you know EP... You just got my complete attention with this crystal ;)
If you wish to see what I did, I do have the crystal with shader applied at ShareCG.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/67244/view/5/3D-Model/Large-Vertex-Crystal-and-shader
I've been thinking of revisiting it, as I have an idea in my head that using a color gradient in the maybe the transparency and reflection channels may give a prismatic look.
Whatever you do with the shaders, you may wish to include caustics in your scene to enhance the crystal. I have a nifty little trick to get a white light to split into component colors, such as what happens in real life with light passing through a prism.
In Carrara, and probably many other render engines (excluding the modern un-biased renderers) a white light is just that, white, so it can't break apart. However, if you place three lights in exactly the same spot with exactly the same orientation, and have them the exact same brightness, but one light is red, one light is blue and one light is green, then the cumulative light looks white. When caustics are enabled, the light splits when passing through the clear and refractive surfaces in your scene. You need to be cautious with the brightness as it is cumulative. So, the three lights set at 33% brightness should look like one light set at 99% brightness provided that gamma correction is not turned on. I haven't tested this with gamma correction.
After an insomnia night going round and round in bed, and waking up at 12 o'clock, and some opinions on my work, just had a creative burst and an afternoon completely glued to the computer... I wasn't liking something in my work... just had not understood what yet...
Now I like the result. And even "carved" some ornaments in the columns... Now I think it's more interesting.
The crystal still has some over shine, but it's just impossible to put it in a way that stays well with most of lights. Every time I change a light I have to make some adjustments, so I'll have to adjust it when I make my scene. For now it stays like this. And I'll improve it when I learn a little about shaders in carrara, just wait a little EP! ;)
And I'm now going to try one more thing to enhance this project... but that's a surprise... if it work out :P
I think that, what you are calling 'over-shine' is something that might be necessary to give the crystal a good crystal-like appearance.
Sometime when you have a chance, just as an experiment, save the file and in a separate save, delete all of your lights. Yes... All of them, this is an experiment! ;)
Now go to your browser's scenes tab under Lighting, and drag into your scene the one called 3-point lighting. Now look at your model through the new camera that just came in from that file. Zoom in or out, but try not to change anything else before you render it. This will give you another opinion of how light works with your crystal, and everything else. It will also give more ideas for scene lights ;)
Anyways... I think it's looking very nice.
I really like the new parts in the columns... looks fantastic!
That's coming along really nicely! No need to worry about the shading quite yet. As the model comes together you may have other ideas.
Or hide the lights if you don't want to delete them. Setting up one light at a time is the way to go.
Beatcha again, Brutha from anutha Mutha!
...And what did I say about beating me to the punch, young Dartanbeck? Pray it does not happen again... ;-)