Novice Timeline

YamahaTX

As a new dedicated graphic artist/animator what feayures is best to start with toget that professional technique?

Dartanbeck

Well, without any further information as to what you might be trying to use Carrara for (we can do a bazillion different types of project in Carrara), I would suggest that you check out the table of contents at the ►►► Carrara Information Manual ◄◄◄ and peruse the long list of topics, read an article or two, follow siome more links, etc., and don't be afraid to get those questions a little more specific as to what you need to know.

► Some Miscellaneous Tips & Tricks has some good tips for new Carrara users.

► Carrara Walkthrough too, but there's a quite a few topics there to soak in.

► Forum Help Links is basically a directory to a pile of topics already available in this forum, but being in a table like this makes it easier than try to search through the pages manually. The cool part about that is that people whom have been discussing those topics often subscribe to their thread, so if you ask a question within any of those, those subscribers will get an e-mail that someone has posted in the thread - enabling, perhaps, faster support by those fresh on the topic.

 

Please note that DAZ 3D has recently switched to a new forum format which broke many links. So if a link within the manual doesn't take you where it should, let me know and I'll get it fixed ASAP ;)

Anyways, welcome aboard YamahaTX!

Mistara

light and shadow the basics.

Dartanbeck

MistyMist said:

light and shadow the basics.

Yes. The above image, as noted in the upper corner, has no post work applied to it, even though there's a whole, complete set of scenery in the background. While perhaps not the most interesting image, it does help to show how we can bleach out the background simply by using some well-placed, intense spot lights with cone effects braodcasting volumetric light to fade the geometry to paper white. I personally also like how it desaturated the main character with overly intense light. 

Dartanbeck

These Training Courses are invaluable to unlocking a good many secrets!

 

Dartanbeck

These might provide some inspiration (?):

These two talk about my EnvironKit - Woodlands. The first one gives a lengthy run-down on how I've put it all together, which might also inspire you to create your own stuff. It's really fun! The second one shows how to add a content scenery item and get it to match its surroundings and look cool for still images and/or animations. I personally mostly focus on animation, so I'm always striving for speedy renders.

- click to play the video -

- click to play the video -

Dartanbeck

This one gives some experimental fun creating a test bed for getting used to the Global Illumination and Indirect lighting in Carrara

For using content made for Poser or DAZ Studio in Carrara, it's important to get used to tweaking the shaders (textures). All 3D rendering applications have their own way of interpreting the surfaces of objects, so content made for other apps, while they may work beautifully in Carrara (making Carrara quite unique compared to any other modeling app), the materials (shaders) will need some tweaking. Nowadays, many of the newer models from DAZ 3D in the way of buildings, props, vehicles, etc., may look somewhat decent upon loading, but to really get them to look their best, go in and correct the shaders to make it as great as it can be. Here is a good pack-of-hints tutorial on correcting the shaders for the popular Victoria 4 figure, which has special cases where she just doesn't look right at all when she's first loaded, but looks fantastic with some quick and simple tweaks, as you'll see. I also try and throw in other convenient practices as well - but everyone has their own methods for comfortable workflows

Volumetric Clouds in Carrara can be used to great effect to enhance the atmosphere of an image or animation.

This one focusses on setting up a quick flying animation for the Steam Dragom model from DAZ 3D for a 10 second animation challenge that was going on in the forum here

...and then this one takes the result of the above project and brings it into Howler to add animated post work to the render. For fun and example, I've also masked off part of the animation to make it look as if we were viewing it through binoculars

Dartanbeck

Oh Man! I haven't given you a link to Cripeman's videos, have I? No. Here you go :)

► Cripeman's Carrara Video Tutorials Index
Carrara Community's very own Super Hero takes plenty of time from his busy life to
explore many exciting features of this amazing 3d content manipulation, modeling and animation suite

Dartanbeck

This one is a total babble session of me playing around with Genesis in 8.5 Pro shortly after release

This one isn't a tutorial, but just a bit of fun spllicing together a bunch of test renders from when I first started using Carrara, just to test out Sony Movie Studio HD before buying it. 

Mistara

this one was a help, good things to know, saved me some frustration lol

  -cripeman volumetric fx