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Carrara Challenge XVII - Wonder of my World - WiPs Thread

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  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,983
    edited April 2015

    Kyoto Kid said:
    ..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.

    there's a great uv tut in pdf form on sharecg, somewhere, just found it the other day, cant find it now!! teapot is the obj

    here it is, brilliant stuff :)

    http://www.sharecg.com/v/42005/browse/3/PDF-Tutorial/3D-Painting-for-Carrara

    Post edited by Headwax on
  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584
    edited December 1969

    Dartanbeck said:
    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) ;)

    LOL, you Americans and your changed meanings! ;) It just means to make something quickly. It also means to wake someone up by knocking on their door (in Victorian times and earlier, before alarm clocks were generally available, Knocker-Upper was a respected profession, and involved banging on upstairs windows with a long pole...)

  • Bunyip02Bunyip02 Posts: 8,563
    edited December 1969

    First render, still got more work to do:-

    Humpback_Whale.png
    1024 x 768 - 842K
  • Bunyip02Bunyip02 Posts: 8,563
    edited December 1969

    First WIP, Angel Fish added. Boat is stock Carrara obj, turned upside down and given a rust shader.
    Yet to decide if I will add to the wreck or add some rocks.

    Ocean_Story_2_WIP-1.png
    1356 x 764 - 605K
  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,027
    edited December 1969

    pimpy said:
    Kyoto Kid said:
    ..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)
    ...well isn't the UV wrapping only usable in Carrara?

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,983
    edited December 1969

    Bunyip02 said:
    First WIP, Angel Fish added. Boat is stock Carrara obj, turned upside down and given a rust shader.
    Yet to decide if I will add to the wreck or add some rocks.

    great viewpoint :)

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,983
    edited April 2015

    Kyoto Kid said:
    pimpy said:
    Kyoto Kid said:
    ..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)


    ...well isn't the UV wrapping only usable in Carrara?

    uvees are uvees - export as obj with materials

    Post edited by Headwax on
  • pimpypimpy Posts: 274
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    Kyoto Kid said:
    pimpy said:
    Kyoto Kid said:
    ..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)


    ...well isn't the UV wrapping only usable in Carrara?

    uvees are uvees - export as obj with materials

    Hi Kyoto
    I confirm the Headwax answer . You can model in Carrara or another modeler and create UV maps in Carrara then export the model that you made (.obj or another) with the UV map and materials that you have created

  • pimpypimpy Posts: 274
    edited April 2015

    Tim_A said:
    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 ;)

    Great work Tim!
    I love it

    Post edited by pimpy on
  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,027
    edited December 1969

    pimpy said:
    head wax said:
    Kyoto Kid said:
    pimpy said:
    Kyoto Kid said:
    ..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)


    ...well isn't the UV wrapping only usable in Carrara?

    uvees are uvees - export as obj with materials

    Hi Kyoto
    I confirm the Headwax answer . You can model in Carrara or another modeler and create UV maps in Carrara then export the model that you made (.obj or another) with the UV map and materials that you have created
    ...thank you.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Tim_A said:
    Dartanbeck said:
    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) ;)

    LOL, you Americans and your changed meanings! ;) It just means to make something quickly. It also means to wake someone up by knocking on their door (in Victorian times and earlier, before alarm clocks were generally available, Knocker-Upper was a respected profession, and involved banging on upstairs windows with a long pole...)

    What Dart was referring to would also need a pole. The longer the better, or so I hear. ;-P

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Bunyip02 said:
    First WIP, Angel Fish added. Boat is stock Carrara obj, turned upside down and given a rust shader.
    Yet to decide if I will add to the wreck or add some rocks.

    Don't forget light gels. They're a great way to fake caustic effects.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,158
    edited April 2015

    diomede64 said:
    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.

    I have some evidence now regarding how formula and vertex objects are treated in rendering calculations. Using a very crude vertex tree/limbs as a base, I replicated and rendered several cherry blossom trees on a simple plane with a blank background, default lighting, and default render settings. I believe that the formula objects are much more resource intensive when it comes time to interact with light and do renders. Each tree had 300 blossoms. I replicated 20 trees. The vertex scene rendered in 5 seconds, while the formula scene rendered in 98 seconds.

    So, I'd say if you are worried about file size as you manipulate the objects or saving to the hard drive, the formula approach can be resource efficient. However, when it comes time to light the scene and render, the formula objects take much, much longer. And that was with very simple lighting.

    assemble_room.JPG
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    formula_replicate_render_1.JPG
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    Post edited by Diomede on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    diomede64 said:
    diomede64 said:
    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.

    I have some evidence now regarding how formula and vertex objects are treated in rendering calculations. Using a very crude vertex tree/limbs as a base, I replicated and rendered a several cherry blossom trees on a simple plane with a blank background, default lighting, and default rende rsettings. I believe that the formula objects are much more resource intensive when it comes time to interact with light and do renders. Each tree had 300 blossoms. I replicated 20 trees. The vertex scene rendered in 5 seconds, while the formula scene rendered in 98 seconds.

    So, I'd say if you are worried about file size as you manipulate the objects or saving to the hard drive, the formula approach can be resource efficient. However, when it comes time to light the scene and render, the formula objects take much, much longer. And that was with very simple lighting.

    Maybe the math is more complicated?

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    I am working on my WIP. I needed a space shuttle model, and the one that came with the Carrara Native content was not nearly high enough of a resolution. I found one on the Foundation 3D site that is still lower poly, but reasonable. Unfortunately it's an.lwo object and must have had lots of N-gons, because the mesh imported with lots of them and they tend to cause the mesh to be rather less than airtight.
    ;-)

    Anyway, I've been working on repairing the mesh, which tends to collapse the UVs, so I can't use the included image maps. I'm building them procedurally. The model was never going to be immediately front and center anyway, so some of the warts won't be that visible.

    Picture_3.png
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    Picture_1.png
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  • MarkIsSleepyMarkIsSleepy Posts: 1,496
    edited April 2015

    evilproducer said:
    I am working on my WIP. I needed a space shuttle model, and the one that came with the Carrara Native content was not nearly high enough of a resolution. I found one on the Foundation 3D site that is still lower poly, but reasonable. Unfortunately it's an.lwo object and must have had lots of N-gons, because the mesh imported with lots of them and they tend to cause the mesh to be rather less than airtight.
    ;-)

    Anyway, I've been working on repairing the mesh, which tends to collapse the UVs, so I can't use the included image maps. I'm building them procedurally. The model was never going to be immediately front and center anyway, so some of the warts won't be that visible.

    I'm not sure if it's any better than what you are using but NASA has a hi-res model of the Space Shuttle in .3DS format on their website: http://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/detail/shuttle-hi-res

    They have a few other versions here: http://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/models

    EDIT: I just downloaded that hi-res one and tried it out and it looks OK with just a few issues - the texture maps all seem to have different names than what it looks for on import so you'll probably have to manually assign them with a bit of guess work and the doors need to be imported separately and come in at a different scale.

    Post edited by MarkIsSleepy on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Thanks, I'll look into those.

  • Bunyip02Bunyip02 Posts: 8,563
    edited December 1969

    WIP No.2 - Scene elements almost completed.
    Rocks are from Bryce but with Carrara shader.
    Lion Fish & Moray Eel added as well.

    Ocean_Story_2_WIP-2.png
    1354 x 769 - 1M
  • VarselVarsel Posts: 574
    edited December 1969

    My first WIP for this challenge.

    I am going for the epic fjords of Norway. One of the wonders of nature.
    And the epic journeys one took when you wanted to travel along the west-coast of Norway.

    The ship in the picture is just a place-holder, although it is one of the ships that was before the one that I am modelling for this challenge.
    The picture is also just a sketch.

    This is the one that I am going to use.. and model.
    http://www.skaanevik.no/kulturferja/mf_skaanevik.htm

    Untitled-2.jpg
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    Doc1.jpg
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  • MarkBremmerMarkBremmer Posts: 190
    edited December 1969

    My first time checking into this thread. Some really nice work in-th-works.

  • VarselVarsel Posts: 574
    edited December 1969

    More modelling.
    Still a long way to go with this.

    And I have to make a decision about how to do the doors and windows. Modelling or texture.

    Doc3.jpg
    800 x 600 - 209K
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Varsel said:
    More modelling.
    Still a long way to go with this.

    And I have to make a decision about how to do the doors and windows. Modelling or texture.


    I suppose it will depend on how close you want to get the camera and how you want to use the model in any future scenes you want to create.
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    So, here's the concept I'm working on.

    The earth images are from NASA. If I can track down their location again, I'll post it, as my original bookmark gives me a 404 error.

    For the atmospheric glow, I'm using a sphere a hair larger than the cloud layer. I have the alpha set to 1% and a glow in the glow channel with a 3D aura applied to the sphere. I'll post the settings for that as well.

    I tried displacement on the cloud layer, and the maps are very high res, but the displacement didn't look good close up, and the clouds still look fuzzy and 2D. I'm thinking about trying to use a surface replicator to replicate clouds on the cloud layer, using the alpha image map as the distribution map to see how that works.

    WIP_Test.jpg
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    Picture_1.png
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  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,027
    edited December 1969

    ...that is really nice. "Hey, I can see my old hometown from here". :cheese:

  • MarkIsSleepyMarkIsSleepy Posts: 1,496
    edited December 1969

    I picked up Luxus this morning and started playing a bit.

    Attached is my image slightly revised and rendered via Luxus. I don't think I'm going to keep playing with it for this image since the render times are crazy - 15 minutes for this scene in Carrara's native rendered and over an hour for a grainy LuxRender version.

    Still, lots of fun to mess with and once I figure it out I'll probably add it to my tool set.

    Quick question for anyone who uses Luxus... is there a way to preview the materials in the Shader Room? Whenever I change anything to a Lux Surface and set it to any Lux Material it immediately turns jet black in both the Shader room and the Assembly room, but the promo images for Luxus show images appearing in the Shader room. Is there a setting I am missing somewhere? Because right now it's kind of annoying to have to do constant test renders just to tweak a material a little bit and it makes it pretty much impossible to create any kind of complex procedural shader with no preview.

    luxout2.jpg
    1000 x 1000 - 191K
  • DADA_universeDADA_universe Posts: 336
    edited December 1969

    Tim_A said:
    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 ;)

    Lovely work there Tim.

  • DADA_universeDADA_universe Posts: 336
    edited December 1969

    MDO2010 said:
    I picked up Luxus this morning and started playing a bit.

    Attached is my image slightly revised and rendered via Luxus. I don't think I'm going to keep playing with it for this image since the render times are crazy - 15 minutes for this scene in Carrara's native rendered and over an hour for a grainy LuxRender version.

    Still, lots of fun to mess with and once I figure it out I'll probably add it to my tool set.

    Quick question for anyone who uses Luxus... is there a way to preview the materials in the Shader Room? Whenever I change anything to a Lux Surface and set it to any Lux Material it immediately turns jet black in both the Shader room and the Assembly room, but the promo images for Luxus show images appearing in the Shader room. Is there a setting I am missing somewhere? Because right now it's kind of annoying to have to do constant test renders just to tweak a material a little bit and it makes it pretty much impossible to create any kind of complex procedural shader with no preview.

    I love the approach you took to the challenge and the process with which you made the image. As per Luxus, before buying Luxus, perhaps you should have played with the Luxcore for Carrara beta being developed by Spheric Labs and being discussed at this thread: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/50130/P300/#812423 and then maybe you might have waited for the release version instead since Luxcore is an improvement on the Lux render engine in Luxus.

    I know nothing of Luxus, but I know Luxcore has an IPR render window which can be opened via the edit tab. There is also a Luxcore for Carrara manual which you might find useful being compiled at http://carraracafe.com/plugins/luxuscore-for-carrara-plugin-unofficial-manual-2015-02-15/

  • pimpypimpy Posts: 274
    edited December 1969

    New WIP
    Upper temple and preliminary scene settings...

    @ Varsel - Great model!
    @ EP - Incredible view! I like it

    temple3.jpg
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    temple1.jpg
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  • bighbigh Posts: 8,147
    edited December 1969

    pimpy said:
    New WIP
    Upper temple and preliminary scene settings...

    @ Varsel - Great model!
    @ EP - Incredible view! I like it

    love the full view effect

  • pimpypimpy Posts: 274
    edited December 1969

    bigh said:
    pimpy said:
    New WIP
    Upper temple and preliminary scene settings...

    @ Varsel - Great model!
    @ EP - Incredible view! I like it

    love the full view effect

    Thank you !

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