Ice Dragon Art WIP's
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Sonja, Good to hear you are liking it. I've been creating objects for all the Animation Club for Carrara which has helped me enormously since they must be done within a time limit.. I've plently of WIP objects that I want to get back to. Wanting to do 3D animations has always been my interest. If you understand keyframes it's not hard to animate in Carrara... I did my first without even watching a video or reading the manual... I admit it and later ones were fairly simple but Carrara actually does most of the work for you. While I love creating my own unique content in the Modeler, Terrain editor etc. I do like to watch things move occasionally. The Carrara Callenges force me to create a scene within a time limit and by entering them it has made my scenes better each time, IMO. I've now decided to start making a simple animation a week in order to get better at animating. The opening titile for the current ACC project only took 4 secs to render with Fast quality and 7 secs in Good quality... that is of course just for text on a black screen... the more complicated the background and number of objects will increase the render time... note that you can preview an animation much quicker.
My current Carrara Callenge scene is perhaps done and waiting for the entry thread to open... perhaps I'll model something else for the scene.
Keep up your cool work... no matter what program you use. :)
More things on sale for Carrara today... some were not on sale the other day.
I do think IMO that once you conquer Daz it seems to make the rest look much easier to handle!!!
Yes, I picked up the badlands for Carrara today for $2.61 and the portrait studio lights for .61 I think. Also got some batch converters for m4 and v4 skins to gen2 and sickleyields Gen3M ultra templates for a ridiculously low price.
I totally agree!
Absolutly. I started with Poser which made learning some things in DS quite easy.
Cool... take a close look at how Dart creates Woodlands and Badlands Environ Kits. He creates a medium terrain to place people on and then creates large terrains to make the higher level backgrounds and mountains using terrain shaders that match up.
Darn... missed the batch converters... I do use Blacksmith3D Pro for converting skins... haven't messed with it for 3D painting yet and don't know if it has a batch convert.
Brontosaurus. Just wanted to see what the older dino's looked like This is with Terra Dome 3, using the atmosphere effect (which didn't slow things down nearly as much as I expected) and some dead trees and ivy props. Am going to have to play with that dino skin a bit I think......
Sonja, Take a look at these pics for reference that I googled... some look interesting. Did you render that in Carrara or DAZ Studio... if former I have a question. Either way I've a suggestion, ??, on one of the branches put a single leaf or more to indicate that Bronto already ate all the other leaves... just a crazy idea.
Oh I like the striped one he looks pretty realistic. I did this one in Studio but am hoping to open Carrara up again this weekend and see what I can do. so I may revisit this render and see what I can do in there with it.
Hmmm... I was wondering what the grey area was between the grass and sky. Needs some distant mountains... unless of course it is water.
I just uploaded an update in It's Raining Men. Check out the SnowMan I made There.
The grey area is a low lying hill actually. TerraDome 3. This was a pretty quick render, I really wanted to see what the dinosaur looked like more than anything. I do a lot of quickly put together stuff to test things out lol. I just can't stand to plop the prop into thin air and render.
Oh my gosh that snowman is adorable! Very good job on that!
At first I thought that the low lying hill was an infinite plane or a background gradient for land/horizon/sky in Carrara... in which case there is a way to lower the horizon. Know what you mean... for test renders I always place something in them... always a plane scaled large enough to not show black background of screen... and either copy of the plane rotated for a back wall or a digital time exposure pic I took. Oh... I have one of the TerraDomes but not yet used it.
For a sorta Dino skin look I would try out "Natural Functions/Cellular"... comes with Carrara and is Procedural. I find it useful for all kinds of effects.
Thanks for the compliment on my SnowMan... I'm now redesigning it to have legs... wanted the original design for my "Happy Holidays" pic for my website welcome screen.
I don't even know what procedural means lol. I have a render cooking in Carrara for the raining men competition. Its super simple but its a start lol
Okay so I finally did a super simple scene for the raining men challenge in Carrara. Might try and figure out how to add grass or something to front. or a dirt path or something. I was just happy to figure out a somewhat complete scene. The loincloth is the skirt from the jungle outfit for G2F.
Sonja, Kewl. I don't ever remember seeing jaggies as in the foreground. What render setting were you using? I always set it up from Fast for test renders to Good and then to Best for a final render... this will change your anti-AntiAliasing and might make the jaggies less apparent... if that does not help I would try tilting the view just a bit... up or down... you might also try rendering to a non-square image size. Also be sure to set check Gamma Correction box and set it to 2.2. See the settings I usually use. For image size I start with 640x480 for very quick renders and increase for final renders. Lately I've been using more cinematic image sizes... wide and narrow... 1280x720... image aspect will change to 1.78... this is changed in Render/Output which I'm sure you know. I always have "Show Production Frame" checked in Assemble room/View.
Ok I think the reason for the pixalation in foreground is because the texture for the ground is a bitmap or texture map... it's likely lower resolution and you just happened to get too close... like using magnify in a 2d paint program. ?? Color me puzzled. :) Let me know what caused it.
For grass I've sometimes grabbed it from another product... most I've used in the past is from one or more of HowieFarkes scene products. Be warned that Grass can take longer to render than Hair. EvilProducer and some others have been using Hair in place of a grass object. If using Grass objects you can one or more and use replicate to save on memory.
Procedural Shaders are programs that create different designs/effects and are easily changed in there settings. If you create a shader that contains them you can use Baker by Inagoni to create texture maps of your masterpiece. :) Note Baker comes with Advance Pack.
Looks really good. I wish I was picking up Studio as fast as you are Carrara.
One minor suggestion would be to increase the tiling rate of the texture map that is applied to the ground plane. I am just guessing because it looks like his right toes are on a giant red leaf. Increasing the tiling rate a little would reduce the size of the leaf and other ground cover images relative to the human. It might also address the pixilation issue that wgdjohn mentioned.
You can drag a hair object on to the ground plane (hope it is not infinite!) Change the texture of the hair to green (or yellow/brown for dry/dead grass). Brush the tips in the direction that you want the wind blowing. It will increase render time. If you choose to use hair for grass, you might consider a smaller foeground object with the hair-grass and then use a texture for the ground cover in the distance, just try to make the colors compatible. Here is an example in which I used hair for the grass for the foreground but not the background.
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/images/30138/
Another thing to consider is the angle of the cape. Carrara has a physics function that works OK for static objects (calculation times for colliding with a key-framed rigged figure can be too high). If you pose your figure and ground the way you want, you can model your own simple cape and then drape it using the physics function. You can also insert a directional force if you want wind applied to the cloak. I used physics for the Pied Piper's cloak here.
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/images/92577/
See, I have no idea what all that stuff is lol! BUT, it sounds really exciting and fun and I can't wait to figure it out! I have no idea where to go to find any of that stuff but I think this weekend I am going to sit down and not only read through some more stuff but just push buttons and see what happens.
You can apply wind?!!! That's just so...so..amazing lol!
I have a bunch of plant props as well and I've read about the hair for grass thing, that sounds really cool. I'm going to have to track down the replicate button. I do have at least one Howe Farkes scene I will have to see if it comes with grass.
I had no idea there were fast good and better settings for renders....I did finally figure out that I had to turn some stuff on in the render panel as far as the sky etc goes so that the sunlight and all would actually show up lol. (one of those push buttons see what happens moments) I knew there was more lighting included in the scene, it just took me a while to figure out which buttons would work to have it all show in the render.
Diomede the first time I opened Carrara I spent 10 minutes in it then walked away lol. It was absolutely overwhelming I've played with Bryce a bit though since then and there are similarities in the interface as far as the landscape portion anyway which helped. And its taken me over a year to get semi comfortable with Daz Studio and there is a LOT of stuff I yet to even look at.
I will be checking out the suggestions you guys have given me when I get home, (thank you!) I have to go run some errands before I can sit down and play a bit today lol.
Doh... I didn't even think of the texture tiling... sorry about that. To set it go into Shaders and find all settings that use the offending texture map, you will want to set them all the same... click on the setting with a texture map and increase the V and H values at right.
There are 2 replicators. One is Surface Replicater... it is midway in top icon toolbar just to the right of the Fire icon... to modify this after adding to your object just click on it and go to Model room for it's settings. The other is Replica... find this under the Edit menu close to the bottom or past midway down... you need to select the object first in order to use. I've only played with both of these but not learned enough to explain how to actually use either. If you have any scenes that use one or the other of replicated objects these are represented by White outlined boxes or rectangles. The object that you use to replicate is only used for reference and will need to be dragged out of the scene after replicating... straight down beneath the terrain or plane is fine... off to one side or another is ok also. Since I've little experience with replicating there may be reason in some circumstances to not drag it out of the way.
The Wind or rather Directional Force is the arrows like icon next to the Camera icon.
Have fun this weekend.
Late morning walk. Daz Studio 4.9. Gen 2 with Cesar skin
Looks nice, Sonja. I love the dog and the cats in the background. :)
Awww, cute doggie!
Those cats really add to the scene, it gives it very nice energy- well placed and great posing!
Aww, that looks like a nice, relaxed walk with a well-behaved dog.
But.. the man and dog seem to be floating (not to be nasty, it just caught my eye). Correct me if I'm wrong, but their shadows don't seem to match their position.
Still, very fun scene :)
Thaks everyone. I thought about putting more people in but it was already bogging down pretty good even though I turned off as many of the streets as I could but the Peroges set is huge so I decided not to push my luck lol.
@mori_mann Please if you see something that looks off don't hesitate to say so! I am alway happy to get constructive criticism so no worries! Wasn't mean at all. They are touching, if I sink them further their feet disappear lol. Must be something about the lighting, its Iray so sadly, I don't have any control over the shadows. I used the real world lighting set to 11:30 am on a bright and sunny day. Wonder if I change it by an hour or two if that would make the shadows look better and show they have their feet on the floor.
I got the M4 to Genesis 2M product and this is the first skin I converted. Its Cesar and I am quite happy with it. All I need now are the Generation X products as I have the auto fit products and just picked up sickleyields dress rig as well. But those will have to wait for a good sale price.
Silly Iray, making shadows look off! I am curious if using different light will change how the shadows show up. Does it put/calcualte shadows on the 'zero' floor position here? That would explain the oddity.
Haven't upgraded from 4.6 myself yet, so I have no idea how Iray does its tricks :)
I honestly have no clue lol. I am still a long way from understand exactly how it all works which is why I rely rather heavily on premade sets or things that are supposed to mimic real life as much as possible. I try and pay attention to how things are set up but its still pretty much greek to me.
Sonja, I didn't even notice the floating problem... I wonder if you do sink the char down a bit did you try a test render? Just a guess.:) I'd be upset and probably open a support ticket... noting all the products you used since I consider that unacceptable. How you get it to work right and do not need to contact support. An alternative would be to raise the entire item which contains the sidwalk. As I stated I'm guessing... just know that someting is wacky. Changing the time a few hours would only make the shadows shorter or angled different... you should still have the floating problem.
What took my attention away and looked odd are two things...
As far as more people you might have someone walking up the steps and/or sitting at the one visible chair at table. You can make muliple renders hiding one at a time and later composite the pic. Also see KM's Labratory where I asked what Canvases are.
Yes canvases are great. I might open the scene, place the 2nd and/or 3rd character in it then render it without the background then composite like you said. I have done canvasses exactly once and really liked it, so I will have to experiment with that a bit more as well. Will try sinking them in just a tiny bit and see if it fixes the issue. The cat pose is just a quickly applied pose that came with the Hivewire cat, I was mostly focused on the man and dog but that's easy enough to fix. Thanks for pointing that out! No idea why his face looks like that DOF is off. Wonder if its the conversion to Iray on the Cesar skin. I tried the Anagenessis on it and it turned blue. Very strange lol.
Sonja, I've just added the 3rd Animation Club for Carrara's anim link to WGD Crazy Artwerks. This was a group effort in which I only contributed a rough Intro anim which thankfully mmoir improved upon along with about 5 objects created for the ACC.