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2014 Holiday Season Carrara Challenge (#14) - WINNERS ANNOUNCED - WIP Thread

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  • stringtheory9stringtheory9 Posts: 411
    edited December 1969

    Working on some of the background elements. This is the lodge. The model was downloaded from 3Dwarehouse. This model only occupies about 4% of the complete image so I had to exaggerate the bump mapping to give it a little texture due to its distance from the camera. It's a little rough and unfinished at this size but none of that is noticeable when its 1 inch across.

    wip8.jpg
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  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    Roygee said:
    Thank you so much for the explanation on the dimensions :)

    I'll give your suggestion regarding using volumetric clouds a go - I hope that will work better than my effort at a blizzard!

    What I did with the next WIP is to put two particle emitters into an empty scene, one with a flow force and the other with a point force. Did several alpha renders at different points in the animation, combined them and gave some motion blur in Gimp, then layered that over my render of the scene.

    I also cloned a bit of the sky over a background rock to give the wolf a better profile.

    Is that overdoing the postwork limitation at all?

    I did try putting the emitters into the scene, with motion blur, but that took so long to render that I gave up on it before seeing the result - come to think of it, that would probably have blurred the whole scene?

    Thanks for the guidance - much appreciated:)

    Very cool way to deal with the time issues for the render and the blizzard! Great sense of wind. Makes me want to howl too :)

    If you plan to put fur on the wolf at some point, you can greatly enhance the sense of wind-chill by brushing some of the fur on the back directly up and slightly bent in the "against the grain" direction to show just how chilly and windy it is. (I'd feel great pity for the wolf, if you do that....) :)
    In fact, you might not even need to add dynamic hair for that, I think. You night just add fur-textured geometry that looks like roughed up fur on the back and tail, since you'd only need it to be seen in the silhouette, not all-over.

    You are not overdoing the postwork at all - there is no restriction on postwork. The only requirement there is that you post your original renders here in the WIP thread. So, in your case., once you figure out all the elements you are going to need, render them out (from however many files you need), and before you blur/composite/do whatever else you need for postwork, post those raw renders here, so we'd know how all the things looked before you did postwork on them.


    Chickenman said:
    I have been busy watching Phil's tutorials to learn how to do terrains and replicators.
    I have the Chickenman and Lady done with I think.
    Now to move onto the rest of the scene.,

    I am going to have to take a little break as my daughter was invited to dubmit any animations she has done to the Melbourne Animation festival after here entry at the Ottawa international animation festival was viewed by some on from Melbournes festival.
    She has submitted her original claymation and now wants to do a Carrara one. Has to be submitted by 15 Dec for us international contestants.

    I will try to get things done in time for the contest.

    Good luck with the animation! Creating an animation in under 15 days is quite a tall order.
    But, I hope it will leave you enough time to finish your entry before the 24th.

    I am intrigued by your Chickenman and Lady concept, and I want to see what you had in mind for the entry.

    WIP #2

    Tweaked shaders a bit to brighten up the snow and add a hint of the blue cast you always see. Added some Lisa's Botanicals dead bushes and grass to a second replicator. Changed the angle a bit to show a hint of clear sky to one side (after all, this is "Winter Weather is Coming")

    And, of course, added the 9mbi red fox.

    Love the fox and how he's sniffing the air, it creates the illusion of that winter air smell in the image. So cool!

    Is that dynamic fur or trans-mapped geometry or some other form of hair? I think it might need some highlights or translucency - it seems to dark at the moment, I think. Or it might be my screen maybe?

    Working on some of the background elements. This is the lodge. The model was downloaded from 3Dwarehouse. This model only occupies about 4% of the complete image so I had to exaggerate the bump mapping to give it a little texture due to its distance from the camera. It's a little rough and unfinished at this size but none of that is noticeable when its 1 inch across.

    That lodge looks very impressive. I think your image is going to make me want to spend Christmas in the mountains... You are creating a de facto ski resort advertisement, aren't you? :)

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945
    edited December 1969

    Antara,
    I have a problem with the size required.
    Q: if I want to be near 2000 pxl width, what is the maximum size for the height ?
    I was a donkey in the school !:P

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 2014

    DUDU_00001 said:
    Antara,
    I have a problem with the size required.
    Q: if I want to be near 2000 pxl width, what is the maximum size for the height ?
    I was a donkey in the school ! :P

    :)
    Sorry for all the size confusion.
    So, if you width is 2000, you have the following options:
    2000w x 1533h
    2000w x 1548h
    2000w x 1020h (or 2000 x 1021, depending on how you choose to round it off.)

    EDIT: if you want to get really precise and don't care about the exact 2000px width, you can go with these numbers:
    2010w x1541h
    or
    2015w x1560h
    or
    2157w x 1101h

    Post edited by Antara on
  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945
    edited December 1969

    Thanks.
    I see your EDIT precisions but, the maximum size for the forum is 2000pxl, it isn't ?

  • FenricFenric Posts: 351
    edited December 1969

    Antara said:
    Fenric said:
    WIP #2

    Tweaked shaders a bit to brighten up the snow and add a hint of the blue cast you always see. Added some Lisa's Botanicals dead bushes and grass to a second replicator. Changed the angle a bit to show a hint of clear sky to one side (after all, this is "Winter Weather is Coming")

    And, of course, added the 9mbi red fox.

    Love the fox and how he's sniffing the air, it creates the illusion of that winter air smell in the image. So cool!

    Is that dynamic fur or trans-mapped geometry or some other form of hair? I think it might need some highlights or translucency - it seems to dark at the moment, I think. Or it might be my screen maybe?

    Foxy there is pretty strongly backlit. I'll brighten things up a little in postwork, but it's going to be a little blue-cast and dark.

    I decided foxy might get hungry, so I modeled him a mousy snack:

    Mousey.jpg
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    Untitled-1.jpg
    989 x 800 - 91K
  • stringtheory9stringtheory9 Posts: 411
    edited December 1969

    Antara said:

    stringtheory9 said:
    Working on some of the background elements. This is the lodge. The model was downloaded from 3Dwarehouse. This model only occupies about 4% of the complete image so I had to exaggerate the bump mapping to give it a little texture due to its distance from the camera. It's a little rough and unfinished at this size but none of that is noticeable when its 1 inch across.

    That lodge looks very impressive. I think your image is going to make me want to spend Christmas in the mountains... You are creating a de facto ski resort advertisement, aren't you? :)

    Thanks Antara, funny you should say that; I've been tempted to use the big patch of blue sky to put a "Winter Powder is Here! Come Ski..." message but I'm a little worried it might take away from the rest of the image. I'll know after I dust off photoshop and play around a little :)

  • stringtheory9stringtheory9 Posts: 411
    edited December 2014

    I found a quick way to give my guys pants some wrinkles using the water shader in the bump map channel.

    water.png
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    Post edited by stringtheory9 on
  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    DUDU_00001 said:
    Thanks.
    I see your EDIT precisions but, the maximum size for the forum is 2000pxl, it isn't ?

    oops, yes, forgot about that.

    Well the first 2 have the precise values available in just a bit under 2000 pixels:
    1980w x 1518h
    and
    1984w x 1536h

    But the third one is really tough because it's a prime number ratio of 719w x 367h. Therefore, the only exact whole ratio under 2000 is 1438w x 734h. Which is not even close to 2000, so for that, you'd have to use the approximated one anyway.

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    stringtheory9 said:
    I found a quick way to give my guys pants some wrinkles using the water shader in the bump map channel.

    Once again, that's a brilliant method you've come up with there! :wow: It probably wouldn't work with all UVs, but I suspect it can be tweaked to work with most.
    Thank you! Another cool trick that would never have occurred to me...

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    stringtheory9 said:
    I found a quick way to give my guys pants some wrinkles using the water shader in the bump map channel.

    Nice trick! I may have to try and animate that effect to see how it looks.

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    stringtheory9 said:
    I found a quick way to give my guys pants some wrinkles using the water shader in the bump map channel.

    Awesomely cool trick, and it looks very realistic. Excellent tip!

  • stringtheory9stringtheory9 Posts: 411
    edited December 1969

    Antara said:
    stringtheory9 said:
    I found a quick way to give my guys pants some wrinkles using the water shader in the bump map channel.

    Once again, that's a brilliant method you've come up with there! :wow: It probably wouldn't work with all UVs, but I suspect it can be tweaked to work with most.
    Thank you! Another cool trick that would never have occurred to me...

    Thanks Antara, evilproducer and Jonstark,

    I do think it's application is fairly limited as wrinkle maker and it will only work under certain conditions before the wave pattern becomes too obvious. There are 3 wave generators so with some experimenting one could be used out of phase with another to try randomize the wrinkling a little more.

  • stringtheory9stringtheory9 Posts: 411
    edited December 2014

    I've added some rocks to the lake shore because the transition into the water was looking really abrupt (even from up on the mountain). For the rocks I used "Flinks Instant Meadow 2 - Stones" and did some modeling on them for some randomness since I was duplicating the base model along the shore.

    I also picked Howie Farkes' incredibly well constructed Spruce 1 tree from his Valle Alpina for my shoreline trees. I played around with the leaf shader to try get a more dry winter looking tree. I also added a parametric mapping shader across the leaves in an attempt to give the trees a light dusting of snow look since they are at a lower elevation. For this is used the noise shader in the Alpha channel to make the white color channel splotchy. I don't know if I really achieved exactly what I was going for but I did manage to quadruple the rendering time!

    shoreline-wip.png
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    rocks-wip.png
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    Post edited by stringtheory9 on
  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    You really are pulling off some innovative tricks that work well - thanks for sharing :)

    I'd be interested in how you did the big blobs of snow on the trees in your first post - are they carefully placed meshes, or another trick ?

  • stringtheory9stringtheory9 Posts: 411
    edited December 2014

    Roygee said:
    You really are pulling off some innovative tricks that work well - thanks for sharing :)

    I'd be interested in how you did the big blobs of snow on the trees in your first post - are they carefully placed meshes, or another trick ?

    Thanks Roygee,

    Those were from the "Flinks Conifer" product. I don't think I would have the patients to model something like that!

    I just tried to see if creating a mesh ball with a soft cloth modifier with the internal pressure turned up would drape over the branches to create that same effect and inadvertently discovered the fastest way to exit out of Carrara. :ohh:

    Post edited by stringtheory9 on
  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited December 1969

    stringtheory9 said:
    Roygee said:
    You really are pulling off some innovative tricks that work well - thanks for sharing :)

    I'd be interested in how you did the big blobs of snow on the trees in your first post - are they carefully placed meshes, or another trick ?

    Thanks Roygee,

    Those were from the "Flinks Conifer" product. I don't think I would have the patients to model something like that!

    I just tried to see if creating a mesh ball with a soft cloth modifier with the internal pressure turned up would drape over the branches to create that same effect and inadvertently discovered the fastest way to exit out of Carrara. :ohh:

    Interested,, what was the poly count doing it that way?

  • stringtheory9stringtheory9 Posts: 411
    edited December 1969

    chohole said:
    stringtheory9 said:
    Roygee said:
    You really are pulling off some innovative tricks that work well - thanks for sharing :)

    I'd be interested in how you did the big blobs of snow on the trees in your first post - are they carefully placed meshes, or another trick ?

    Thanks Roygee,

    Those were from the "Flinks Conifer" product. I don't think I would have the patients to model something like that!

    I just tried to see if creating a mesh ball with a soft cloth modifier with the internal pressure turned up would drape over the branches to create that same effect and inadvertently discovered the fastest way to exit out of Carrara. :ohh:

    Interested,, what was the poly count doing it that way?

    Hi chohole,

    The ball only had about 100 polygons. The tree was a generated tree so I'm not sure how to see how many polygons or if that is even applicable. It did have a very complex branch/leaf structure and I'm pretty sure that is over the line when it comes to the cloth physics math.

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited December 1969

    stringtheory9 said:
    chohole said:
    stringtheory9 said:
    Roygee said:
    You really are pulling off some innovative tricks that work well - thanks for sharing :)

    I'd be interested in how you did the big blobs of snow on the trees in your first post - are they carefully placed meshes, or another trick ?

    Thanks Roygee,

    Those were from the "Flinks Conifer" product. I don't think I would have the patients to model something like that!

    I just tried to see if creating a mesh ball with a soft cloth modifier with the internal pressure turned up would drape over the branches to create that same effect and inadvertently discovered the fastest way to exit out of Carrara. :ohh:

    Interested,, what was the poly count doing it that way?

    Hi chohole,

    The ball only had about 100 polygons. The tree was a generated tree so I'm not sure how to see how many polygons or if that is even applicable. It did have a very complex branch/leaf structure and I'm pretty sure that is over the line when it comes to the cloth physics math.

    OK thanks

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    stringtheory9 said:
    chohole said:
    stringtheory9 said:
    Roygee said:
    You really are pulling off some innovative tricks that work well - thanks for sharing :)

    I'd be interested in how you did the big blobs of snow on the trees in your first post - are they carefully placed meshes, or another trick ?

    Thanks Roygee,

    Those were from the "Flinks Conifer" product. I don't think I would have the patients to model something like that!

    I just tried to see if creating a mesh ball with a soft cloth modifier with the internal pressure turned up would drape over the branches to create that same effect and inadvertently discovered the fastest way to exit out of Carrara. :ohh:

    Interested,, what was the poly count doing it that way?

    Hi chohole,

    The ball only had about 100 polygons. The tree was a generated tree so I'm not sure how to see how many polygons or if that is even applicable. It did have a very complex branch/leaf structure and I'm pretty sure that is over the line when it comes to the cloth physics math.

    Since it sounds like it is a Carrara tree/plant it uses a replication system for the branches and leaves which may have had more to do with the crash than the poly count.

  • stringtheory9stringtheory9 Posts: 411
    edited December 2014

    Yesterday I became really tired of waiting 2 hours every time I just wanted to see how the little area at the bottom of my render was going to look. My production frame is not the same dimention (way smaller) as my final render and way to often quick render vanishes right after it's done rendering.

    So last night I built a little tool to mask out the camera production frame leaving a spot open for rendering. It has 4 morphs to adjust the unmasked area. These let you adjust the left/right and up/down positions as well as two to adjust the size of the hole in the mask. Once you have scaled the tool to your production frame (making it larger to account for the border of the tool) you can drop it onto your camera so that it remains in place while you pan around your scene.

    Click to download (www.sharecg.com)

    SPOTRENDER.png
    969 x 1458 - 153K
    Post edited by stringtheory9 on
  • stringtheory9stringtheory9 Posts: 411
    edited December 1969

    evilproducer said:
    stringtheory9 said:
    chohole said:
    stringtheory9 said:
    Roygee said:
    You really are pulling off some innovative tricks that work well - thanks for sharing :)

    I'd be interested in how you did the big blobs of snow on the trees in your first post - are they carefully placed meshes, or another trick ?

    Thanks Roygee,

    Those were from the "Flinks Conifer" product. I don't think I would have the patients to model something like that!

    I just tried to see if creating a mesh ball with a soft cloth modifier with the internal pressure turned up would drape over the branches to create that same effect and inadvertently discovered the fastest way to exit out of Carrara. :ohh:

    Interested,, what was the poly count doing it that way?

    Hi chohole,

    The ball only had about 100 polygons. The tree was a generated tree so I'm not sure how to see how many polygons or if that is even applicable. It did have a very complex branch/leaf structure and I'm pretty sure that is over the line when it comes to the cloth physics math.

    Since it sounds like it is a Carrara tree/plant it uses a replication system for the branches and leaves which may have had more to do with the crash than the poly count.

    Yeah, I totally agree. Generated trees are extremely complex data objects. I must say though, there are plenty of times that I'll do something crazy (like this attempt was) and I'll be thinking "ok, there's no way this is going to work" and then it just does. I am constantly amazed at the depth there is to Carrara. For the most part I do believe that our imagination is the biggest limit.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    stringtheory9 said:

    Yeah, I totally agree. Generated trees are extremely complex data objects. I must say though, there are plenty of times that I'll do something crazy (like this attempt was) and I'll be thinking "ok, there's no way this is going to work" and then it just does. I am constantly amazed at the depth there is to Carrara. For the most part I do believe that our imagination is the biggest limit.

    I agree with you! There's things I've done in Carrara that I thought wouldn't work and they did! Carrara still has stuff I'm learning, and even though I've been horrible about posting in this challenge so far, you guys are giving me plenty of things to try when I have more time!

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    stringtheory9 said:
    Yesterday I became really tired of waiting 2 hours every time I just wanted to see how the little area at the bottom of my render was going to look. My production frame is not the same dimention (way smaller) as my final render and way to often quick render vanishes right after it's done rendering.

    So last night I built a little tool to mask out the camera production frame leaving a spot open for rendering. It has 4 morphs to adjust the unmasked area. These let you adjust the left/right and up/down positions as well as two to adjust the size of the hole in the mask. Once you have scaled the tool to your production frame (making it larger to account for the border of the tool) you can drop it onto your camera so that it remains in place while you pan around your scene.

    Click to download (www.sharecg.com)

    Thanks for sharing that! I've read of the masking trick before, but have never tried it myself.

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945
    edited December 1969

    Here (again) a version of my wip.
    I read the rules of Antara yesterday and asked for some details concerning the formats of images.
    I'm not happy for the additional work, but my character thanks Antara because in my previous models, it didn't have shoes (Brrrrrr .....).
    I builded some to him and he's happy now.
    I worked over textures again and add some elements in the scene and also had to work the ground a little more, approximately 131.000 polygons, soft resolution on 3 = 1 selection click for waiting five minutes minimum !
    Sunday is the only day which I can work on this project, fortunately , we have long period this time !
    I still think about some details, but I would like your opinion before that.
    The title will be: the last sun (of the year), because afterwards, it will be the polar night…
    Thank you.

    WIP.jpg
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    Tundra_v40_(GI).jpg
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  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    I scrapped the idea of a blizzard - the context would be wrong - a wolf would be under shelter, not baying at the moon! :)

    Added some cloud on a surface replicator. To get around the problem using volumetric clouds with the transmap on the Aurora Borealis, I did a render, put that in the backdrop, added the clouds and rendered.

    The only post-work I'll do will be to clone the sky over the background rock to give the wolf a better silouette, so I guess this is the last WIP for this entry.

    I still like the idea of a blizzard, so am planning another entry. This needs quite a lot of modelling, so I hope to have enough time to finish :)

    entry.png
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  • MarkIsSleepyMarkIsSleepy Posts: 1,496
    edited December 1969

    Roygee said:
    I scrapped the idea of a blizzard - the context would be wrong - a wolf would be under shelter, not baying at the moon! :)

    Added some cloud on a surface replicator. To get around the problem using volumetric clouds with the transmap on the Aurora Borealis, I did a render, put that in the backdrop, added the clouds and rendered.

    The only post-work I'll do will be to clone the sky over the background rock to give the wolf a better silouette, so I guess this is the last WIP for this entry.

    I still like the idea of a blizzard, so am planning another entry. This needs quite a lot of modelling, so I hope to have enough time to finish :)

    Is that wolf wearing a cape? Because Super Wolf would not be afraid of a blizzard. ;)

  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    Now there's a thought....the goggles and speedo shouldn't be a problem, but dunno if I can manage the tights :)

  • chickenmanchickenman Posts: 1,202
    edited December 1969

    Antara said:


    Chickenman said:
    I have been busy watching Phil's tutorials to learn how to do terrains and replicators.
    I have the Chickenman and Lady done with I think.
    Now to move onto the rest of the scene.,

    I am going to have to take a little break as my daughter was invited to dubmit any animations she has done to the Melbourne Animation festival after here entry at the Ottawa international animation festival was viewed by some on from Melbournes festival.
    She has submitted her original claymation and now wants to do a Carrara one. Has to be submitted by 15 Dec for us international contestants.

    I will try to get things done in time for the contest.

    Good luck with the animation! Creating an animation in under 15 days is quite a tall order.
    But, I hope it will leave you enough time to finish your entry before the 24th.

    I am intrigued by your Chickenman and Lady concept, and I want to see what you had in mind for the entry.

    Well she got her spaceship modeled in Hex on the weekend now she will set up the shader domains in Hex then into Carrara she comes.
    She is doing the actual shaders in carrara as well as the animation and rendering. She used Hex as that is what she as played with before so kind of knew.

    She is trying to keep it somewhat basice due to the time. She will expand it depending on time left.

    She is looking at doing a fly by kind of like the begining of Star Trek Voyager.

    For the star background she will use Dart's Starry Sky

    I have built a new computer for this so that will also speed me up as well.
    I have watched some more of Phil's video's to assist her and help me with the challenge.
    She has used DAZ Studio for the last 3 years and is fairly good at it so Carrara is a good step for her as in the fall she wants to go to college for 3D animation to start her career.

    I now know how to do my own landscapes and a little bit about the replicators so I may be able to include them as well.
    We will see where my scene will take me.

    Hopefullly I can get mine done.

  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    Here's the start of my second entry - Some say he's a wondering poet, others call him a homeless bum - we know him as the Pilgrim!

    At the moment he's stuck in a cave during a blizzard :

    What I've done so far - posed M4 and exported as .obj and modeled everything else in Hexagon. Did the cloth drape in Blender and the UV mapping in UU3D.

    Still to do - hair and lots of it - on the cloak, boots, beard as well as on his doggy companion, still to come. Make a fire and a blizzard.

    I'm going to try for monochrome, so will need to do some serious "painting with shadows", as Dart says.

    wip1.png
    640 x 480 - 165K
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