Carrara Challenge #19: Above and Beyond - WIP Thread
Diomede
Posts: 15,158
Carrara Challenge #19: Above and Beyond
"Above and Beyond" refers to anything that takes place above the surface of the earth. This could include anything from a space scene from your favorite space opera, a WW1 dog fight, a trip in a hot air balloon, to a romantic dinner on your 15th floor balcony overlooking a scenic park. So, fly a kite, climb a tree, or pull a parachute cord, but do it with Carrara as part of your workflow.
Basic Rules
1. Each participant may submit up to 2 images into the Challenge.
2. Images must be new (previously unpublished).
3. Images must be primarily set up in Carrara.
4. Images must be rendered in Carrara or in an external renderer for which there is a Carrara plug-in (e.g. LuxRenderer, Octane)
5. At least one WIP (work in progress) image must be posted to the WIP thread (this can be as simple as the scene setup, a pre/post post-work comparison or just a final image with a brief description of the process you used or as complex as modeling rooms shots, shader setups or partial scene setups or test renders)
Sponsors
Once again, Daz will generously sponsor the monthly challenge with the following:
1st = $100 in Daz Original items
2nd = $50 in Daz Original items
3rd = $25 in Daz Original items
Honorable Mention = $10 in Daz Original items
Dates to Remember
WIP Thread Opens: Monday, 03 August 2015
Entry Thread Opens: Saturday, 29 August 2015
Entry Thread Closes/Voting Begins: Saturday, 5 September 2015 23:59:59 CST (GMT-6)
Voting Ends: Saturday, 12 September 2015 23:59:59 CST (GMT-6)
Note - Ncamp and I agreed to share the coordinating role, but Ncamp will be exercising the monthly dictatorial powers regarding the rules. This thread will be converted to the standard WIP thread pending a chance for email exchanges with appropriate folks. In the meantime, feel free to start brainstorming, sharing ideas, and look for that bird, biplane, or balcony model.
Possibly helpful resources
Cripeman on clouds - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amlkk_6zyTc
Cripeman on planet in the sky effect - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OioSfOv5yFo
Marcelo Teixeira on sky light settings - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5qGHG7t8Bs
-----
Example of airship blueprint from Library of Congress collection, including link to rights - http://www.loc.gov/item/ggb2004001385/#about-this-item
Blog on Leonardo Da Vinci airplane concepts - http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/awakening101/leonardo.html
Website devoted to birds - http://10000birds.com/category/birds
Blog devoted to spaceship concept art - http://conceptships.blogspot.com/
Blog with plans for spaceships - http://www.rogersrocketships.com/category_show.cfm?cid=6
Website devoted to WWII pilots and aircraft, including nose art - http://acepilots.com/planes/nose_art.html
An announcement has been made in forum for The Commons. Feel free to provide any updates or share there as well.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/60499/above-and-beyond-challenge-with-prizes#latest
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Comments
This place reserved for further announcements
The entry thread has been opened here.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/61815/carrara-challenge-19-above-and-beyond-entry-thread#latest
wonderful!
Here ye, here ye. This WIP thread for the Above and Beyond challenge is officially open for business. Standard Daz sponsorship is confirmed. Come one, come all.
(The bottom of the first post provides a link to an announcement thread in the commons if you would like to share any thoughts there as well).
thanks again diomede, a silly man holding on tightly to a flying elephant comes to mind (not you, I mean my image)
Bird's eye view
@bigh
I'm not seeing you attachment right now.
ncamp
can you now ?
Now I see it!
Did you know that you can copy and paste the address of your attachment into the inline image feature and it will display at a larger size?
Like this:
You can also control the size so that it fits on screen and isn't too large.
yep - some people can see mine - some can't
don't know why !
it there !
I can see it now.
ncamp
Yes it's a small cross in a box. I thought it was both religious and minimal. An improvement in many ways ;)
I can see, I can see.
Thanks, Bigh, for getting us off to such a good start. And thanks de3an for the image posting tip, which I will now ignore to my own detriment.
I have an idea that is inspired by the attached pics and a tightrope, but hopefully with a lot more silliness. Now to track down various tips on creating rope in Carrara.
This is my first post in the new forum.
I have been busy, and sorry for not participating in the last challenge. I hope I will be able to join in to this one.
diomede : is it something like this you would be looking for. I can create a mini tutorial for making this...
Hi Varsel - welcome back, hope all is well.
A tutorial is always welcome. There are usually several ways to do something in Carrara. Here are 2 ways to make a rope. One way uses primitives and one way uses splines.
1 - Primitives and modifiers from previous challenge WIP thread
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/539492/#Comment_539492
2 - Cripeman youtube tutorial using splines with spiral preset
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS6Dw7JF3hA
I'd be curious how you made the cool multicolored rope, especially if you used the vertex modeler. Any UV and shader tips are also most welcome.
Mini tutorial for creating a rope.
First create a Spring Primitive : using Sparrowhawks plug-in. http://www.sparrowhawke3d.com/
The Coil Detail and the Wire Detail will determent how many polygons the final model will be.
To get the other values can be a bit of trial and errors depending on how long and what diameter You want the final result to be.
Then convert this Primitive to a vertex object.
For getting a fine round shape : select all and Smooth Edges.
The model is triangulated, and this will distort the final shape, so select the the cross lines, loop, and hit Backspace.
This will also bring the model from 3200 polys to 1600 polys.
Then smooth the model.
Select all and Duplicate. Without deselecting the new part, chose the rotate tool and Chose the Z-axis and type in a value of 120.
Repeat the last step.
You have now a 3 cord rope of 50 ft, at 4800 polys.
This can now be further shaped, deformed or modified....
When using the Plug-In, it creates a Primitive. These are automaticly UV-mapped. And when converting into a Vertex object, it will keep it, as long as you don't do any welding etc...
This was interesting.. getting the pictures in at the right size and resolution.... But I got it at last...
And as a little penance, do to my abbsence... I have started to upload some of my models, that I created for these Challenges, over at Rendo free stuff..
Excellent! Thank you so much, Varsel. And so fast!
Here is my first attempt to make a unicycle. Plenty of time to play with the details, but here is a collection of spline and vertex object components that together make a unicycle.
And here is one more way to make a rope.
- insert a vertex object
- use construct 3D oval and set size to 2. This oval will just be to frame the other ovals.
- now in the top camera, insert 3 smaller ovals of size 1 and arrange them so that they overlap within the circle created by the first oval.
- select the first oval and delete so that only the smaller 3 ovals remain.
- now focus on the vertexes that are within where ovals overlap. Select those vertexes and weld.
- when the remains of the three ovals are a single non-overlapping plane, select all, then use the backspace key to dissolve
- at this point, you should be able to see a cross section that appears to be three threads.
- now, highlight all, and use the extrude command and enter the distance numerically. We will be repeating that exact same distance so note it.
- with just the new surface selected, hold te shift key and rotate just once (45 degrees).
- repeat the extrusion and the shift-rotate enough times so that the top cross section matches the original cross section (360 degrees).
- you should now have a piece of rope in which the top points line up verticall with the bottom points.
- select all, and duplicate
- use the arrow to translate the duplicated section so that the you double the length of the rope. Line up the points as close as possibe.
- select and weld using custom tolerance to connect the two rope sections.
- now repeat selecting all, duplicate, tanslate, and weld to increase the length of the rope exponentially until the lenth is what you want.
- I used a simple color gradient for the color and a procedural marble function to create the bump,but you could shade like any other vertex object.
- you can now use the bone tools to rig if desired
So I've got a unicycle and a rope. Throw in genesis and get a little silly with shaders and the result is a WIP.
cool
I'm going to try and make my version of the classic sci-fi cloud city for this one. At this point I'm just sort of blocking it out with low poly vertex objects to try and work out the composition; I made a couple ships, some buildings and the rough shape of the base of my floating city then replicated the buildings onto a few spots on the base. I will need to detail the buildings a little more, add detail to the base and then texture the buildings, base and ships (which are not in the test scene but will be so small in the final that I don't plan to spend much time on them at all).
Lighting is a realistic sky and a single sun light - I will probably add some fake GI for the final render. There is also a backdrop I made in Photoshop using a planet image generated in FilterForge and some stock photos of clouds. I plan to add some detail to the clouds by adding some of Carrara's volumetric clouds but they were not cooperating and I don't have time to mess with them right now, so they aren't in this image. I may also convert my replicated buildings to real instances and place them a little better - they are low poly enough that I think I can get away with it without killing my computer, but I'l wait until after I finish detailing and texturing them.
A few low-poly buildings, detail and textures to be added:
Some low-poly ships that will be added to the scene later:
And my test render:
So many intriguing ideas so far. Good work everyone.
ncamp
Thanks Varsel and Diomede for the rope tutorials - excellent, and there's at lest one new way for me to try. :-)
But a length of rope is only a means to an end, rarely is it the end in itself. And that's where I come unstuck -- tying knots in it, looping it on the deck of a ship, tying a boat to the dock or a horse to the hitching post, lassoing a cow, tying a hammock (see yesterday's item in the store), rigging a sailboat etc. etc. All the stuff that comes just after the tutorials frustratingly end with words like "and now you can do lots of fun stuff with it!"
Tim, good point.
Depending on just how intricate you plan to get, and on whether this is a one time use or something to be used a lot, you could rig the rope, or you could use yet another method. Another method is to start with a flat oval in the vertex modeler and then use a curved polyline to extrude the shape however you want, including modeling in the assembly room. That way you can get a smooth knot, or wrap around a barrel in the assembly room, or whatever.
However, in the attached, I simply rigged and posed my rope. And, I replaced genesis with an M4 clown character that I am working on. I'll explain the components of the clown character when it gets closer to finished, but for now I'll just say that I used some of the sample hair as a base. I like the progress on the hair so far, but the character is not finished.
Thanks Diomede :-)
I can see that having a rigged rope in "My Objects" would be a very useful thing, going forward. I know absolutely nothing about rigging at this point (always handy having new things to learn!). once I've rigged the rope and posed it, can I "fix" the geometry so it becomes a static vertex object in the new shape?
The only way that I can think of, is that when you have it in the pose you want, you export it out as a .obj file, and then reimport the .obj file back in.
Here is the start of what hopefully will be my contribution.
Alot of details left to model. Needs an engine. some wongs. ...
Got the general ide from http://conceptships.blogspot.no ;
Hey Tim, here are some good free video tutorials from Cripeman (of course) that may be helpful.
1) Cripeman on making a rope, includes making and attaching bones. He starts in the spline modeler then converts to a vertex object. But whether you follow that or not, you will want to watch where he includes rigging the rope model with bones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS6Dw7JF3hA
2) Cripeman on bones for a toon animal (but is a good intro to bones)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJZlzko6nD8
3) Cripeman on editing bones influence (good to know if begin rigging more objects)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiAnIqlfgOg
There are other good tips to pass along, such as always make a morph of your base object before attaching it to the bone skeleton. Another tip that I follow is to create a group for the bone skeelton and the base object while they are unattached and save that to the object browser in addition to an attached version. That way you have a good starting base to make other changes. But these Cripeman videos should get you started.
I'm in.
Let's start with the window and see what happens ...