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The blossoms do look nice though.
Between Pimpy and Diomede 64's flower making tutorials, this thread has really taken root! Well done guys and thanks for sharing.
The monthly challenges are an excuse to branch out. :)
Well done to get the formula to make the cherry blossom :)
Would it not work better in the replicator if the blooms and stems were all one object? I gave it a quick try - converting to other modeler facets crashes Carrara, but exporting and importing as .obj works - although the poly count is horrendously high. The default formula is 35K polys! This could be reduced considerably by decimating in MeshLab.
@Pimpy: Excellent mini-tutorial. I use .png rather than .gif, but my process is essentially the same for "soft" plants. BTW, you can also use rotate with soft selection, this is especially useful when it comes to stems, since it gives a nice curve.
Speaking of stems, build them from a 4-sided cylinder rather than a cube, since that gives you the option of segments along the length without all the extra x- and y- edges too.
@Diomede64: Really nice blossom. I took some reference photos of cherry blossoms while they were out, for another project, but I haven't tried anything that complex in the tree modeller.
For comparison, I threw together a quick vertex model similar to the formula blossom. It has 2k polygons, which appears to compare favorably to the 35k polygons that Roy reports for exporting and importing the formula as an obj. However, keeping the blossom in formula form greatly reduces the size of the carrara file. Saving the vertex model as a carrara file results in a file size of 66KB, while saving the formula version of the carrara file results in a file size of only 4KB.
So in terms of the carrara files the formula approach has smooth mesh and has a greatly reduced file size compared to a similar vertex object. I don't know if that resource savings remains when an object needs to be rendered or how it interacts with light calculations, though.
In any case, I think the final scene could have a mixture to hold down file size. I might use the vertex modeler to model some cherry blossoms as a single object (and therefore use the opportunity to get much closer to the petal shape of cherry blossoms) replicated on a custom tree, and use the formula blossoms along with the vertex blossoms replicated on simpler trees in the background.
I've noticed in my own scenes that viewport performance is also faster with many instances of spline objects or even primitives as compared to vertex objects, even if the the spline object is a more complicated object. Not sure why that is.
Very cool information, guys! I've had formulae on the brain for a while - a while back - after seeing how many things are possible - like, anything, pretty much. It would really be fun to just play around with a huge pile of formulae and see what all comes up!
Pimpy, very cool tutorial! Love it! Thanks!
wow, blink and you'll miss it, what amazing work so far :)
you're not wrong...
did you guys lose power during the super storm?
it was friggin' wondrous wasn't it!!
we only got it back last night at about ten ! my aluminium balustrading is bent at 15 degrees, half the ceilings in the house need replacing and are still dripping and sagging, big sections of my eaves blew away (pita because it;s a three story house) and the roof is flapping in places, - lucky it wasn't a bad storm :)
hope you are faring well !
I hate dripping and sagging as well. Sucks to get older! ;-)
Hello Head Wax
Was wondering how you fared when I was watching the news on TV.
At least you still have a house !!!!!!
Hope the insurance covers you.
Regards, Bunyip
Hello all
Finally getting motivated for my entry, have the subject matter - Humpback Whale & assorted fish, just need to create the environment.
Will need to model an underwater sea setting, have not done this yet in Carrara so will be a learning curve for me.
Regards, Bunyip
I hate dripping and sagging as well. Sucks to get older! ;-)
I'll let you know when I get there! ;)
Hello Head Wax
Was wondering how you fared when I was watching the news on TV.
At least you still have a house !!!!!!
Hope the insurance covers you.
Regards, Bunyip
Thanks Bunyip! Yes you are right, good to have a house!
Crap... my sister also had power restored probably a couple of hours previous to you guys..
We did ok as we didn't cop the brunt of it.. for once!!
good to share it 'round ;-)
the extent of damage to us was minimal.. nothing like what you got .. hope everything works out ok..
Thanks Stezza, I will send your pigeons back now , ;) I had a lot of trouble fitting them in the envelope, they kept wriggling :)
I think this one is more or less done. I might fiddle with it a little more because I am not 100% happy with the composition but let's call it done for now.
Attached images:
My fountain pen model in the vertex modeler
My final image
I still want to do a second, outdoors/nature entry but the weather has not been cooperating in my quest to go out and take photos.
Mark
MDO2010 what a great start.. looks great with plenty of detail :-)
I think it's wonderful! maybe you could sag the book mark a little to sit on the page more?
Many thanks to all who have appreciated and commented on my work :-)
Now I'm using displacement map to create a mayan ldol image and here my last WIP
Love it! Great idea.
...this is amazing to see what people are creating for this challenge. Never paid much attention before but it is really showing off the modelling capabilities of Carrara very well.
@ diomede
Thank you. I have included the use of displacemente map because I think it is impressive and relatively easy to do.
@ Kyoto
I agree with you. Carrara is truly an amazing tool and I love it!
..I have to rethink my position. Been struggling with Hexagon and it's instability (as well as still being 32 bit) for a while. Even with all the tutorials (most of them in video format which I have poor retention of) I still find Blender is like sitting down at the controls of a space shuttle without an operator's manual.
As long as I can create .objs I can use them in any app provided I have a 3rd party mapping tool (which I need with Hexagon anyway as it's UV tools are pretty weak).
BTW, am working on an idea, will be fairly simple but have to test the water sometime.
I am very happy with your decision but why dont you try Carrara for the UV?
About Blender... no comment ! I try it a lot of time and I agree with you. I love Wings3d and of course Exagon (that I still use sometime on my old pc win XP)
I'm not entering, but I thought I'd just show you a new and seasonal plant I knocked up this evening. The method was largely similar to what Pimpy showed a couple of pages back, and there's nothing more complex than a few vertex grids and a couple of cylinders.
There are two varieties of bluebell growing in my garden - English and Spanish. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which this is ;) Anyhow, a camera and macro lens provide both photo and texture references.
This is a fully modelled plant, not a transmapped one. There are no complex shapes, so it's not a big overhead. I started with the flower, as the smallest component. The petals are made from a 10 x 3 grid. Knock off the corner vertices and UV map. It's best to do the UV mapping before you start bending polys about, since the map will be cleaner.
Push out the centre row to give a nice curve, then bend and squash the top, and curl the bottom (I use a mixture of soft selection and rotate) When you're happy, duplicate 5 more and rotate them all by 60 degrees. Push them all together and adjust to fit.
The stamens are simply 4 sided cylinders squidged and stretched. There are 5 of them. Sepals are another grid, 2 x 5, and squeezed into a tapering V shape. Tapers are easily made using soft select and the scale tool. Leaves are made exactly the same way. I pulled out the end middle vertex to form a tip. With 2x smoothing on, this gets rounded quite nicely. As you duplicate the leaves around, vary the bends, rotation angles etc to add a bit of variation.
The stem is just another box cylinder, tapered and bent, and finally, the flowers are duplicated and arranged. It's not a low poly model (2200), but it's pretty straightforward to make and easily done in an evening.
You'll probably see a few thousand of these in a render sometime soon ;)
Very nice work, Tim! It does read a little funny in the beginning where you say that you've knocked up a plant one night. Hmmm... what will the botanists call a human/bluebell genetic crossing? LOL Seriously though... very fine work. We could really use a new replacement for "Lisa's Botanicals", whom is no longer with DAZ 3D. Plant models would also be really easy to make DS and Poser versions! (hint-hint) ;)
Mark,
Amazing picture my friend! Ouch is that ever cool! I just can't stop myself from going back and looking at it again... very nice render!
Pimpy,
That's awesome! So much fun, eh?!!! Very nice work!
I have a lot to catch up on in this thread... plus I'm still hoping to get involved. There's still time. I just need to finish that dynamic hair I'm messing with. That or try and pry myself away from it long enough to get this thing going... decisions, decisions! :ahhh:
Sorry I've missed your alert.
I'm fairly certain that the plant modeler likes to have the leaf objects a single model, not a group. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. That's why you're getting missing parts.
I'm wondering if you could somehow combine everything in the model room as a single model? If not, try exporting the group as an obj, including a texture export - to hopefully make it easier to shade once back into Carrara as an obj. Just some quick thoughts from a tired guy aftera long day of shoveling stone! LOL