Basic Questions about Carrara
Rashad Carter
Posts: 1,799
I've had Carrara for years. I've done some very basic tings with it, and by basic, I mean I've never once set a specific goal I've just played around.
I can no longer faffle around, as I need productivity from the OR4C Plug in.
So here are some embarrassingly newbie questions.
1. How does the camera work in Carrara? For example, why is it that sometimes the rendered scene is not what I see in the wireframe? Or maybe even better stated, is there a good camera tutorial out there to help me get past this very basic issue? I cannot zoom out, only inward so far. As a guide, in Bryce, the camera view always matches horizontally. If I had a flower on the far left edge of the game in wireframe it will be on the edge in the render as well. Right now that's not what I'm getting from Carrara.
2. I also need a tutorial to explain to me the shader structure and how it all operates. Any tutorials you might point me to are greatly appreciated.
Thanks all for your advice and feedback.
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Maybe you already know this, but you need to go to View > Show Production Frame. That will show you the extents of what the camera sees, and what will be rendered, hot keys Ctrl+Alt+F will toggle it on and off.
I will leave shaders to others with more of an idea than I have :)
Take a look at carraracafe.com
There you'll find a tutorial directory with lots of basic stuff in the beginner section.
At least here some simple shortcuts:
enable "show produktion frame" as already mentioned
turn the view to camera 1 in the upper left corner of the scene window if it is not already selected (click on the little text there)
press e to zoom in and out (moving the mouse)
press w to pan
press d to rotate - if you want to rotate around an object have it selected
Thanks a ton!!! I will surely check out Carrara cafe. I might already be a member. Talk to you soon with more questions.
E seems to move the camera itself, it does not seem to affect the zoom. I see some preset zoom options of 25% 50% etc. up to about 600%. Are these the only zoom options?
If you hold in the Alt key, LMB = Rotate, RMB = Pan, and Middle Mouse Button = Zoom (or Scroll Wheel zooms anyway)
EDIT
If you only have a two button mouse, hold down both buttons to zoom.
If you hold in the Alt key, LMB = Rotate, RMB = Pan, and Middle Mouse Button = Zoom (or Scroll Wheel zooms anyway)
EDIT
If you only have a two button mouse, hold down both buttons to zoom.
The camera itself is still moving when I press ALT. The scroll wheel moves the camera in and out from the scene. What I am looking for is the tool that adjusts the scale of what's being viewed without causing the camera itself to move from its fixed position. I think I must be missing something painfully obvious again. This happens to me from time to time. I will continue studying. Thanks for dropping in.
Ah, the penny drops :)
What you want is the 2D Zoom, which just lets you look more closely at items in the scene?
The 2D Zoom tool is on the left toolbar at the bottom, in a group of three, just below the Test render and 2D Pan icons.
Painfully obvious just as I expected. I do graciously thank you for your patience answering such questions.
Select the camera in the scene browser (right hand side), then you'll see options to set the focal length. There are 3 presets and a zoom slider.
In the Motions tab you'll also find settings for accurate placement and orientation. In Effects you can set and define Depth of Field. Modifiers lets you do things like "point at"(so the camera always points at the subject, no matter how you move it) etc.
Fantastic! Perfectly logical as are most aspects of Carrara. It's all beginning to fall into place now. I extend my thanks once again, Tim A!
Tim beat me to the screen caps!
Carrara also has the wide angle camera and a spherical camera which is super useful.
I believe the near-plane setting is to help avoid clipping when the camera is moved in close to an object, but I may be wrong on that. If I recall, if you are getting clipping, try lowering the value.
The Depth of Field effect is a bit primitive in Carrara. The interface is a holdover from the old Raydream days. The effect is a post render filter, so volumetric effects and volumetric primitives such as hair won't be treated correctly. The way around that is to select the raytraced DOF, but that is super slow on an order of magnitude similar to blurry reflections.
I actually prefer to render a depth pass and add my DOF in Photoshop.
Since you've been experimenting and learning the Octane Render plugin, you probably don't need to worry about Carrara's DOF effect unless you use the native renderer.
The renders I did for this month's challenge each took about an hour, and produced a rather unsatisfactory DOF effect. I aborted a full ray traced DOF render when it became clear that it would take around 28 hours to complete! (that gives you an idea of the time increase)
I only have toy photoshop, which doesn't support channel manipulations like DOF, so I can't do it that way.
Here is a sheet of Carrara (and other 3D apps) hot keys you can print out for reference, from 3D World Magazine. I have found these to be way easier to use than the menu/icon controls along the sides, especially for camera control.
http://www.3dbuzz.com/forum/threads/170353-Keyboard-Shortcuts-for-Max-Maya-Bryce-Carrara-Motionbuilder-Maxwell-Modo-Daz-Studio
Hi,
Keyboard Shortcuts for Carrara 8 / 8.5:
http://carraracafe.com/downloads/?did=27
rk.
Yup, a good update, thanks.
Sometimes when you are navigating a scene , you may find the camera moves around a bit too quick or zooms in to much/fast when you use the mouse scroll wheel. The problem here is that the camera is probably far too large for the scene! Simply select the camera in a view that the camera is visible in and resize it smaller ,it becomes easier to handle.
Wow. Thanks to all of you for your help on this matter. Adjusting the camera size would never have occurred to me.Excellent advice from the community. I really appreciate it.
Rashad Carter A warm welcome to you! Glad you decided to dust off your copy of Carrara and give it a try. I've recently got back into it myself after taking a break for a couple of years. As you've already seen, there are a lot of great people here who are very generous with their help.
Stu Sutcliffe Thanks so much for sharing the camera resizing tip. I've got an Apple multi-touch mouse. It was driving me crazy, sending my camera into the Carrara stratosphere. I had no idea changing the size would make a difference.
Hiya,
I need more help.
I'm new to Carrara for sure, but I find the camera handling in Carrara to be far more complicated than it should be. Anything you give to people they will eventually find a usage for. So I am certain there are people out there who find that the Production camera makes sense and is essential, but for me, it's an extra step of complication I don't really like very much.
Production Frame for example is a complete waste of time and an unnecessary added level of complexity to what should be very simple and straightforward. In any other software, what you see in wireframe is what you get in the final render. Your current working frame IS your production frame. And why wouldn't it be? There is no reason for Carrara not to assume that what is in view in the wireframe is what will be in view for the final render. Because of the Production Frame nonsense, I have to constantly go back and forth double checking that what I expect to be in the final frame really will be there in the final render.
All this to say that I am once again running into an issue I shouldn't be having.
I finally found the perfect position for the camera. Great. But I want to look around and see other things and render from other perspectives without losing the original camera position. Seems the best way to do this is to simply add another camera...isometric in this case. Fine, so I then create a new camera. But how do I go about telling Carrara that now I want to view the scene through the lens of the second camera?
I assumed the answer to this question was to go to the Render Room and select Camera 2 as my rendering camera. But so far I don't see it working. And when I go back to the Assembly Room I am still viewing the wireframe from the perspective of the original camera.
I'll bet, that just like Production Frame, there is some additional step to this that isnt there in other software packages so I'm getting confused.
So I need two things, First, I need to be able to save multiple settings for a single camera without needing to either create keyframes nor needing to create secondary cameras. I am working in a still frame, so keyframes are out of the question. Bryce for instance has memory dots which store camera information allowing you to go back to them with a single click. Second, for those cases when I do need more than one physical camera, how to instruct Carrara to navigate and render from the perspective of the second or third camera.
Thanks again. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Hi Rashad:)
You may recall the discussion I initiated in the Bryce forum regarding the camera controls a couple days ago and what a PITA everyone finds navigating it?
The production frame in Carrara is a real boon because you can use it to frame whatever you want, in any size you want without having to change document size, etc. You can even use it to give you guidance on the rule-of-thirds by setting the "safe" frame to 30%.
Set the size in the render room - disable "Keep proportions" and you can drag the corners of the production frame to whatever size - even to frame the whole view, if you want. It is also good for, say, you want a tree to be mainly off-camera, but to use it to frame the picture. Once you are happy, go back and enable "keep proportions".
Just like Bryce's dots, you can store a camera position by saving it - select the camera in the left top of the screen, go set position to ->save position. Give the position a name, so you don't need to remember which dot is which.
I think most of us mainly use the director's camera to move around and place things, because that doesn't record key-frames, so you don't inadvertently change camera position.
Seriously, you'll love it once you get used to it and wish Bryce had the same :)
Edit: Sorry, forgot. If you do use more than one camera, you need to select it by name at the left top of the screen to see what its looking at - good idea if you have several to hide the ones you aren't using in 3D view or you'll get confused with overlapping production frames!
If you line up a shot that you like with the Director's camera you can select your production camera as Roy described above and then use the menu to Set Position To--> Director's camera.
Another Trick I Wish I'd Known ™
That's it! Thanks indeed. The community comes through once again!! With the post form Roygee and the visual examples form Evilproducer I think I'm set. Now it all falls into place.
Most of the features I've explored in Carrara make perfectly logical sense to me. I've made good sense of the 3D Painting and I;ve had some fun with Carrara's Lighting and Plant Generators. But this camera business so far has not much sense to me. I can see room for a good degree of consolidation.
1. Selecting the current camera should be as simple as selecting its Instance from the list on the Right.
2. Once the user selects a given camera, the wireframe and production frame should immediately update. Saving multiple camera perspectives would be as a simple as saving multiple cameras as needed as they are added to the Instance List.
3. The options from the Top Left would be represented as an additional tab perhaps under the options available under Instance, or they could be placed in General where the zoom controls are. It doesn't matter so much where once we get these over on the right hand side of the screen. I find my head swinging back and forth considerably on this huge screen I just bought so keeping as many things as possible in one place really appeals to me.
By the way, nice to meet you, Sukyl.
A couple of my favorite Camera helpers not often noticed are "inset view" and "hide unselected objects. Both are helpful in scene management. The inset view allows for a different camera view, so you can get an idea where things are being placed in relation to another from another view. (can also use (2,3,4) split views instead.
You can set as many cameras in the scene as you wish. You can also save the camera positions and they will be available in the camera's menu where they will be universally available for all the cameras in the scene. The cameras can even be animated by using the saved positions. For instance, you could have your camera at position 1, then advance along the timeline and select the second position, etc. You could even do an instantaneous change of position which could look like switching cameras by either using the Discrete Tweener or having the keyframes a single frame apart.
Having a different aspect per camera can be done, but it requires a workaround and the Batch Renderer. First, determine how many cameras and aspects you want. Next, I would name the cameras to reflect the dimensions (just as a memory aid). Now, go to the render room and set the aspect for your first camera and then in the Assembly frame the scene. Now, go back to the render room and set the aspect for the second camera and then go back to the Assembly room and frame the scene. Do this for each camera with a different aspect that you have. Save your scene.
Once the scene is saved, go to the Render room and select the Batch Queue tab on the lower left side of the screen, and from there load your scene. Change the source to the first camera and set the aspect to match the camera. You will want to use the Save as Named file option to give the saved image a unique name. Now load the scene again in the Batch Queue. It will show up below the first instance of the scene. Now, go and change the source to your second camera and change the aspect to match the second camera. Be sure to use the Save As Named File option. Repeat these steps for as many cameras you have in your scene.
A misconception I come across occasionally is that the Batch Queue is only for network rendering (and that network rendering is for animations only). Obviously this is not the case.
Brilliant!
Saving this for reference
Not so :)
Each camera has its own production frame, which is why I warned about hiding the camera in the 3D view to avoid getting confused with overlapping production frames.
What I wish Carrara had to improve the cameras is the radiating pov lines Bryce and other apps have, so you could, for instance, see exactly what the boundaries of the camera view were from above.
Not so :)
Each camera has its own production frame, which is why I warned about hiding the camera in the 3D view to avoid getting confused with overlapping production frames.
What I wish Carrara had to improve the cameras is the radiating pov lines Bryce and other apps have, so you could, for instance, see exactly what the boundaries of the camera view were from above.
Another great idea. Lightwave has their camera looking like this with radiating lines with their equivalent production frame view.