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DAZ and Carrara, it is the same thing!
There are DAZ Studio, DAZ Carrara, DAZ Hexagon, DAZ Bryce…
Still an example of the extreme orientation of the Home Page of DAZ !
I should have been more articulate... when I said DAZ, I was referring to DAZ Studio (DS).
Welcome to Carrara, Rogeraususa, I have a feeling you're going to love it. It really is hidden gem :)
I agree with you 100%, the Octane plugin for Carrara is phenomenal, the developer really did a great job marrying it to the Carrara interface to make it as seamless as possible.
It sounds like you've got a pipeline you're comfortable with, but just to add to Evil's comment you may want to save yourself the extra step and animate in Carrara, as it definitely supersedes Studio in animation capability. I don't have Messiah, but I hear very good things about it. You also may want to check out the Carrarators site for tips and tricks for Carrara animations.
You can also model and rig in Carrara too, not sure if you even need rigging for previz architecture scenes, maybe doors and windows opening/closing or something along those lines, just thought I would mention. Sounds like you're very comfortable with the pipeline you've got going, but potentially you could model, rig, animate and push the render button for the Octane render, all in Carrara. If you did go down that road, you also might want to check out Architools, a plugin to assist in quickly modeling buildings in Carrara. There's actually not much Carrara can't do natively, except dynamic cloth, and I've seen some of the forum members here do some pretty dang close to dynamic cloth sims using the softbody bullet physics.
Just wanted to say welcome, and I completely agree that the Octane plugin for Carrara is excellent (very happy with it myself). :)
I just wanted to share a couple of Octane for Carrara renders which I have done in the last couple of days as light relief from a big animation project I am doing at the moment. The girl is Mec4D's Mamita character for V4, the car and factory come from InLite Studios and are both free, they have some very good resources there, worth a look.
I've been getting errors when attempting to load the LiveDB files. Does anyone know a fix for this?
It normally gets to about number 178 and then stops and eventually crashes.
I've tried deleting the files, but it still stops there. Is there an index file somewhere that I must also erase to start anew?
See attached screenshot...
Hmm, I had that same error/problem when I first started using the plugin too, but I can't remember off the top of my head where I found the solutions. May be somewhere in this very thread, towards the beginning, or more likely over at the octane forums in the carrara section. I'll take a peak around and see if I can find where it was mentioned previously. I know I solved it somehow, just can't remember how...
This ain't the thread I found (it's more recent) but it jumped out at me over at the Octane forums as pretty much identical problem:
http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=43502
Hi Rogeraususa, welcome aboard!
The LiveDB is now handled in a different manner, more like in the other plugins (via the Render Settings from the ORVP)). Download and install the latest "test" version - 2.14 and you will have access to all of the LiveDB materials (also suggested by the link in the post by Jonstark above). I've been using 2.14 since it came out and hven't had any problems (Signman's test versions are typically very good). This will give you the ability to change the materials via the ORVP similar to the DS plugin (not drag and drop, more of a selct LiveDB material then click on what you want to change in the ORVP).
I have the DS plugin as well (haven't upgraded to 2.0+ yet) and the Carrara version is much more stable for me. I work on a laptop, and have literally had Carrara/Octane running for days without problems/crashes (including closing the lid and letting the laptop go to sleep). Enjoy and happy rendering!!
Thanks guys, that solved the problem right there! Now, off to play with it... =D
I posted this in the render thread, but thought it might be of interest to Octane users that don't frequent the render thread. It also shows how important great textures are to good render result.s Click on the image - then enlarge (click again) to see the amazing textures that come with the Battle Kimono set that G2F is wearing!!
This image got 2nd place in the Annual PC Render Contest!! There were many many outstanding entries, with over 120 entries. It’s hard to believe that it actually placed.
Anyway, I thought a few folks here might like to know that a Carrara/Octane image actually placed in a general contest here (judged by DAZ 3D staff). I'm also adding information below, sort of a "making of" that Magaremoto requested in the other thread.
The image was rendered using the Path Tracing Kernel.
First - general materials (not the figure):
Everything it the scene, except for G2F of course, and the spell ball, is from the Mage Tower and it’s accessory sets (except for one book, and I think that was from DM’s Dark Rights set, but I could be wrong). I converted most of the materials to octane materials and adjusted to make them look like I wanted. The plugin does an excellent job of converting the mats/shaders, but I almost always fine tune my shaders, whether I’m using DS, Carrara, or Octane. Most of the modifications were just adjusting the specular and roughness values to fine tune the shine/sheen, adding in bump maps that got dropped, and changing from fast mip map to sampling (IMVHO sampling gives better texture detail).
For the figure (all materials for figure, cloths and hair were converted to Octane materials)
The figure is a custom G2F figure using V6 and a lot of additional morphs from the Evolution Morphs, Handspan Studios, and Zevo. The texture set is the V5 Bree texture set using the Octane shaders that come with the Octane plugin (I developed them originally - they use an Octane Mix Material with Glossy and Diffuse).
The clothes are the from the Battle Kimono, available here at DAZ3D. Unfortunately, the textures don’t load properly (or at all), so all the textures were set-up manually from the texture set that comes with the Battle Kimono. The texture set is huge, I only used the diffuse and bump maps (running out of VRAM). Again, IMVHO all the textures needed to be changed from Fast Mip Map to Sampling (I really think the results were worth it with these textures - they are amazing), then I adjusted the specular and roughness settings to get that perfect sine/sheen, which was especially effective on the Kimono top. I made a few adjustments with Poke Away 2 to fix the poke through, and I also made some adjustments to the left sleeve in the modeling room the make it fit properly on the “extreme” arm pose.
The hair is Hawthorn Hair, I had to add the hair to the scene, then conform it. Letting it auto-conform by selecting G2F before double clicking on it always resulted with Carrara hanging and crashing. Adding the hair firgure then conforming worked perfectly. I had to make a few adjustments to the hair with the included morphs and Poke Away 2 to get it to fit perfectly. I adjusted everything to sampling, added in bump maps, and adjusted the poser of the specular maps (just the diffuse put in the specular channel).
For lighting. I used the Octane sunlight to provide a “natural” light through the windows, but this didn’t quite work as well as I had hoped. So I added one low intensity mesh light at 6500K near the ceiling (a plane), and one additional mesh light (plane) at 4500K to the left - above - and in front of the figure for mood, and to provide the proper specular highlights on the figure/cloths. And finally a small mesh “rim” light (plane) slightly above and behind G2F.
The Spell Ball was took a bit of fiddling to figure out and get right (and of course it needs editing if you change the lighting much). The base model and texture map is from Shadowcaster Spellribbons available here (was PC a freebie years ago) which has a round plane enclosed by two spheres. I set it up with a fairly complex shader combination of SSS for volumetrics and emitters for the spheres to give it a “plasma glow” effect (Octane Mix materials with Specular and Diffuse or Glossy and Diffuse). The plane in the center used a blackbody emitter to give it a light glow as well.
There is no post work on the image other than just a touch of adjustment to the levels, down-sampling the image, and adding the sig.
Hope all this is of some interest.
Nice renders Phil! I really like the car and factory.
Hi Dustrider,
I noticed that to said you changed the Texture filter from Mips to sampling, does that really make any difference to the Texture when it is Exported to Octane.??
Cheers,
S.K.
hello Dustrider,
very kind to disclose some of your expedients used in this great work. It sounds like the learning curve is pretty low; I was hoping that DL kernel had done the job, mostly for the PT known limitations and animations purpose; anyway the torso realistic tridimensional effect is terrific, this plugin may be a huge help for carrara indeed
You may be absolutely correct!! :-S
That's why I try to always put IMHO when talking about changing from fast mip map to samples. Logically, I'm sure Carrara is just passing the texture map info to Octane (i.e. where to find it), and there is no similar filter/sampling method parameter for Octane materials. So, it would follow that the sampling methods in Carrara have no effect in Octane. However, in several instances, especially with transmaps for hair, there has seemed to be a loss of detail or clarity that looked to me like it improved by changing from fast mip map to sampling. It is very possible, and logically probable, that this is all just in my head, and a perceived difference that isn't really there at all. :roll:
I guess I should actually do some real tests to ensure I'm not just wasting my time on a needless step.
Yes, the learning curve is actually quite low, and if you have used LuxRender (or any other unbiased renderer) at all, it's even less!! I would say the learning curve for Octane is less than what it is for Luxus/LuxRender. Probably the biggest part of the curve is learning to set up lighting, which is actually quite simple, especially if you've done any serious photography. The materials are rather intuitive, and thanks to how Sighman has set up the plugin, the interactive nature of Octane. Experimenting with them can actually be quite fun.
The scene could have come out quite good using the Direct Lighting kernel, with the exception of plasma ball. The use of SSS (volumetrics) isn't supported by the DL kernel, so the plasma ball and the SSS effects on the skin would not work. But everything else in the scene should render almost as well (almost meaning there may be a slight perceptible difference, but probably not). The DL kernel does handle light differently than PT or PMC. The DL kernel gives a bit more ambient light to the scene. Below are two renders, the first one used the PT kernel, and the other one used the DL kernel. No SSS was used in either image, and the light set up was the same, so it's a good example of the differences between the two kernels (these were done with 1.5x).
Dustrider said "The DL kernel gives a bit more ambient light to the scene". Just to add that the DL mode is essentially an ambient occlusion renderer, not physically accurate and the results will depend on the occlusion distance setting - the higher it is set, the closer it will be to a physically accurate RT (or PMC) render, but of course the render time will increase to similar values as well. In my mind I am seeing DL as generally useful for animation and other occasions when you need fast render times, but go for PT or PMC for best quality still images.
thank you dustrider, the path tracing works definitely better, but is the DL sample set to diffuse or ambient occlusion? have you ever tried to make an animation of any kind to find out possible issues?
Nice work on the characters. Someday soon I hope to begin to tackle characters. For now I am still fussing around with plants. Here are a couple of recent renders. Nothing special at this point, no atmosphere just yet, and I don't have a real plan, just a random terrain with some plants and trees replicated. Vegetation models are made in Carrara and in ngPlant. No billboard leaves are used, only full meshes to speed rendering in the various applications if indeed this project ever matures into a product. Feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time.
Sorry for the belated reply - I answered "in my head", but obviously got distracted and forgot to actually answer.
For the DL image it was set to ambient occlusion. I haven't played with animation much, but it works quite well. SiFiFunk or Orion_UK would be able to better answer your questions regarding animation (or PhilW).
Wow Rashad!!! I wish I had something constructive to say, but these are just simply outstanding. IMHO the leaves look much better than trans-mapped planes, and the tree bark is exceptional. Fantastic work, thanks for sharing!
I started an unbiased render thread over in the commons (http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/50021/), it would be great if you could share these there as well, I'm sure a lot of people would really enjoy seeing your work.
Rashad, simply stunning renders! Just exceptional, very cool to see what you are achieving. I hope you do post it to the unbiased render thread in the Commons, this kind of work deserves more eyeballs.
Btw dustrider, thank you so much for the idea of an unbiased render thread, it's an idea who's time has long since come. It's weird to think there's no other 'natural' place where all unbiased renders can be posted, elsewhere we're relegated to posting in the forum of the software that's being used to set up the scene, which doesn't always make sense. It's nice to see the work of different unbiased renderers all together :)
Sorry for the belated reply - I answered "in my head", but obviously got distracted and forgot to actually answer.
For the DL image it was set to ambient occlusion. I haven't played with animation much, but it works quite well. SiFiFunk or Orion_UK would be able to better answer your questions regarding animation (or PhilW).
I have done a few short animations in Octane, one of a dancing V4 was used in the original Octane for Carrara promo video. While Path Tracing gives the best (fully unbiased) results, Direct Lighting is faster. Which to use will depend on scene complexity and lighting, and how fast the render clears of noise. You can do a test and set the samples per pixel accordingly to get a minimal noise image in the fastest possible time. When animating, I try to keep the renders under 5 mins per frame, but you can often get terrific images with Octane in that time. Oh and image size will affect it too of course!
I hope this addresses the point but let me know if I have missed anything. By the way, Octane generates sequenced PNG images and I use a free program called VirtualDub to compile these into an AVI or whatever.
P.S. Rashad - wonderful images!!
thank you dustrider and philw for your clarifications, hey dustrider great thread idea in the commons, would have to come out a book with the best images within
Rashad, you're on the way to get something oustanding, maybe a video or a 360 pano, maybe a fly through; I'd put a stream somewhere, with all that lush vegetation
Rashad, those are really great. Love the detailed plants.
Phil, Dust, Ep, JonStark, Magaremoto,
Thanks to each of you for your acknowledgment. It really helps to encourage me. More to come soon I hope. I have a few more species of plants I want o add, then I've got to get serious about the terrain. I also have to learn how to apply materials via Carrara shaders, as all of my materials are Octane Materials at the moment so if rendered n Carrara native all I get is black.
OK I blew $!60 AUD and bought it after fluffing around with demo last few months
I hope I figure a bit more out though as did not get far with demo though I use DAZ plugin and standalone a fair bit
I found one thing that really sold me on it though
orcs import export, just hope it actually works, if I can get DAZ HD stuff in via alembic it would rock!!!
Nice work. These are quit well done, I find that native Carrara plants look a little fakey most of the time, but these are believable and realistic. Did you put this together manually would love a copy of these files to mess with and test. Again well done.
well that was short lived joy
it was activated I downloaded the new test version and now it is not
I guess I better try going back to the original and I think having it in C8.1 as well as 8.5 might have borked it
had to fight my AV Trendmicro too to install it, get that too often
Congratulations, Dustrider! Well earned recognition for a great image.
(now to be snarky, I know you couldn't have done that image with Carrara/Octane because G2F is not supported in Carrara. What did you really use?)
Great explanation of techniques. Thank you.
And Rashad, love the plants. I don't have ngplant. Am I correct that all of the leaves are modeled, not just txtures with an alpha on a flat grid? Either way, great work. Love to see the progress you are making.
well for those who care I am back in business
well sort of, it seems animation is not possible as can not limit time per frame
I solved it by unistalling my antivirus Trendmicro which I shall be replacing with Norton 360 very soon
it deleted iClone6 and I had much stress getting that into exceptions ringing them to assist well fudge this I am sick of it scrubbing my expensive software, just putting into exceptions does not work btw it is a sneaky bugger and removes on resstart
anyway my first render
ah ok solved it
set max samples like standalone
and video where in spite of live update I missed the outer ferns were white!!!
http://youtu.be/QYAY9E446UA before after images in video are carrara native one distant light