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Modeling Objects in Carrara - Q&A - Come One and All

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  • StezzaStezza Posts: 8,054
    edited February 2017

    talk about getting the bug... these Carrara challenges have really done it to me.. Being a requirement to make something for the challenges has got me right in.

    From trying to make boats, simple objects, crater critters, space ships, trains, cars and now Louie the Fly!

    when will it end!!! .............. damn you Carrara!

    I've started a new FJ ( attempt number 36 ) thinking edges and quads... in between Louie!

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    Louie the Fly.jpg
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    Post edited by Stezza on
  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145

    That's a great character!

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,206
    edited February 2017

     

    or more recent

     

    Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Much better work on the car. yes  Louie as well of course... what was that song line??... "Little Loop and Loopdy Lou".

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited February 2017

    TIPS:  Looping and Welding

    Looping: A few things I've discovered...

    • When you select one or more polylines and choose the Loop button nothing happens except to grab one more adjoining polyline.  If this happens try instead Double Clicking the polyline you want to loop.  Note that I'm working with a 2d circle, filled poly, which I extruded by adding thickness.
    • If that does not work then Looping is broken.  I'm searching for a way to make those edges Loopable again.  Too bad there is no "Make Loopable" button.
    • I've found a ?Sure Fire? way to break Looping... Still working with that circle above I turned smoothing on, I wanted more geometry... I then clicked the Convert button.  Well I got more geometry and now the center of the circular part auto joined as well as adding extra vertices so as to keep the object from having 3 sided polys... now it has 4 sided polys...  Hooray!... Oh wait... the circle of poly with the extra vertices is no longer able to Loop... Boo!  This "hair brained" modeler just learned something.  "What" you might ask?... Work with Smoothing on but don't click that Convert button until you are done with needing Loop to work.  Hmm... wonder if I should have used Tessellate, Mid Edge to Mid Edge instead??
    • Ahah!.... Eureka!  I started over with the 2d circle and first turned smoothing on, at level 1, and then hit that Convert button before adding thickness.  Whalla!  Loop still works and I have the quads I wanted and Double Clicking that polyline Loops... Cool!

    Welding:  A problem I had and a solution.

    Last month I welded two polymeshes together... the result was Blue, apparently creased, polylines.  I tried repeatedly to uncrease them using Model/Smooth Edges with no luck... so I just left them as they were.  This just happened again... determined to figure out why this time I thought about what I'd just done...  I Drag Selected the polylines just welded and looked in the right panel under Statistics and sure nuf'... it said that 2 polygons were there.  Easy to fix that I'll first try Detach  Polygons... Yep that did the trick... just have to delete the detached polys.  Hmm... guess I could have just used Empty Polygon(s)... will have to try that next time.  Oh noooo... somewhere along the way I lost looping afterwards, perhaps even before... wasn't paying attention,  Oh well I am modeling a rather strange object... I'd start again but am almost done.  Btw: it's a Sharp symbol for the Music Carrara Challenge.  Perhaps I'll do better with a Flat symbol.

    Feel free to let me know if there are any errors, spelling or modeling above, and I'll correct them.

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145
    the3Ddigit said:

     

    or more recent

     

    I thought it was an original character! Louie the Fly never made it over the Atlantic (well it is a long way for a fly!).

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145
    wgdjohn said:

    TIPS:  Looping and Welding

    Looping: A few things I've discovered...

    • When you select one or more polylines and choose the Loop button nothing happens except to grab one more adjoining polyline.  If this happens try instead Double Clicking the polyline you want to loop.  Note that I'm working with a 2d circle, filled poly, which I extruded by adding thickness.
    • If that does not work then Looping is broken.  I'm searching for a way to make them lines Loopable again.  Too bad there is no "Make Loopable" button.
    • I've found a ?Sure Fire? way to break Looping... Still working with that circle above I turned smoothing on, I wanted more geometry... I then clicked the Convert button.  Well I got more geometry and now the center of the circular part auto joined as well as adding extra vertices so as to keep the object from having 3 sided polys... now it has 4 sided polys...  Hooray!... Oh wait... the circle of poly with the extra vertices is no longer able to Loop... Boo!  This "hair brained" modeler just learned something.  "What" you might ask?... Work with Smoothing on but don't click that Convert button until you are done with needing Loop to work.  Hmm... wonder if I should have used Tessellate, Mid Edge to Mid Edge instead??
    • Ahah!.... Eureka!  I started over with the 2d circle and first turned smoothing on, at level 1, and then hit that Convert button before adding thickness.  Whalla!  Loop still works and I have the quads I wanted and Double Clicking that polyline Loops... Cool!

    Welding:  A problem I had and a solution.

    Last month I welded two polymeshes together... the result was Blue, apparently creased, polylines.  I tried repeatedly to uncrease them using Model/Smooth Edges with no luck... so I just left them as they were.  This just happened again... determined to figure out why this time I thought about what I'd just done...  I Drag Selected the polylines just welded and looked in the right panel under Statistics and sure nuf'... it said that 2 polygons were there.  Easy to fix that I'll first try Detach  Polygons... Yep that did the trick... just have to delete the detached polys.  Hmm... guess I could have just used Empty Polygon(s)... will have to try that next time.  Oh noooo... somewhere along the way I lost looping afterwards, perhaps even before... wasn't paying attention,  Oh well I am modeling a rather strange object... I'd start again but am almost done.  Btw: it's a Sharp symbol for the Music Carrara Challenge.  Perhaps I'll do better with a Flat symbol.

    Feel free to let me know if there are any errors, spelling or modeling above, and I'll correct them.

    I don't think that lines and polys are "marked" as loopable or non-loopable. For a line, it examines the mesh to determine which line is an extension of the existing line, and it takes account of a threshold angle, so if the extension line makes a greater angle than the threshold, it does not extend. maybe that is the issue - you can change the threshold angle in Preferences, so increasing this will make lines loop around bigger angles.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited March 2017

    Phil,  Thanks.  I just searched for anything to change the threshold in Preferences... for the Vertex Modeler settings I increased each seting one at a time which had no effect... see pic... it's not a very big angle.

    Loop_QuitWorking.png
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    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145

    I just had a look - it is Preferences / Vertex Modeller (down the bottom of the drop down list) - Edge Propogation Angle.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited February 2017

    I increased... apparently not enough though.  Next time I'll shut down and restart Carrara... in case it needs to re-read prefs to take effect.  Thanks will try again.  Hmm... I wonder if it might have to be increased before smoothing is converted... I'll go experiment. 

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited February 2017

    Well... here is my sharp symbol, looks a bit like a hashtag?  I created it with Dynamic Extrusion... Symmetry was used for adjustments so each side could be streched.  Afterwards I had a solid center which I emptied front and back polys then filled outer polys.  Afterwards I used Model/Deform and added Shear to give it a bit of tilt, 25%.  Note that I only used Y Z for shear so as not to effect all axis.

    Strange things happened...  After emptying the polys I tried Link to link front and back points which refused to add an edge.  I had to use Bridge... I think to get the centers edges.  For some reason I ended up with a few creased edges, Blue,... I could not UnCrease them... will have to examine it more closely to find out why.  No big deal they needed to be creased anyway.

    Sharp_2e.png
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    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • StezzaStezza Posts: 8,054
    edited February 2017

     

    PhilW said:
    the3Ddigit said:

     

    or more recent

     

    I thought it was an original character! Louie the Fly never made it over the Atlantic (well it is a long way for a fly!).

    Louie the fly is 60 years old this year!!

    amazed he isn't known world wide as the most popular fly.. then again we Aussies like to keep things to ourselves devil

    Post edited by Stezza on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited February 2017

    Eh?  Did I hear something in the direction of the land of Oz?  wink

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited July 2017

    Goodness... the Flat design went rather quickly.  This consists of 2 polymeshes... the upright is a cylinder... for the curvature I used 3 templates along with Double Sweep... I'd made a copy of the outer backward "c" shape then just scaled and tweaked a bit.  Hey... instant Funky B. :)

    Tips:  Polyline and Double Sweep

    I've become fond of the Polyline that is an "S" with 2 dots... you can draw in segments, similar to Vector drawing, and later shape the segments... kewl.

    For my primary path I used a rectangle with 8 vertices... this allowed me to end up with a line to crease in the middle of the top, bottom and sides.  On my first attempt I found that the center lines couldn't be added later since the center top was wider... Extract Around didn't work for me.

    Thanks PhilW for letting me know what Double Sweep does awhile ago... I'd never tried it until then.

    MusicNotes_Flat_1c.png
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    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,206
    edited February 2017

    I got sidetracked from my rollercoaster and decided to path sweep a staff topper finial? for My Zynk Luke Zydian character

    the staff of infinity

    (the infintity loop looped >< yeah I am not very imaginative there)

    was fun UV mapping it as I wanted to have scratches or marks following the loops and took me a while to figure out how

    boning a cylinder it would have been there already!

    anyway I pinned a loop around it and unwrapped it, fit the UV then in UU3D I selected and edit, straightened all the horizontal edge loops 16 of them

    just a pity its not evenly spaced like a graph, but it will do.

    this is what Carrara gave me

    I then straightened those curved lines in UUW3D and fit it to the square again in Carrara

    Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on
  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145

    Nice work, Wendy, even if it was a struggle!

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,566

    Yeah... looks cool!

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    yes

  • krickerdkrickerd Posts: 188

    Newbie Fillet Question:  I have a simple vertex object and would like to fillet some edges.  When I try, nothing happens and I have no idea why.  Any ideas?  Below is a screen shot of the object in questions with edges selected.

    Carrara Fillet Question.jpg
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  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584

    Firstly, save your project before you go any further. 

    Try using Quick Fillet. Sometimes that'll work when the regular fillet doesn't. You need to click & drag the edge out though, since Quick Fillet doesn't take numbers. Once you've got a bevelled edge, give it a really good inspection. Look for places where it's gone kinda wonky - if you find any, that'll be why the regular fillet didn't work. You've probably got some doubled up vertices, or really tiny polys that are too small to see, or a crossover, or somesuch. Once you see where it is, go back and fix it in your saved project, and then you'll probably find that fillet will work.

    Those little tiny mesh anomolies can easily creep in unnoticed, but it's always best to fix them as soon as you spot them, cos they can fester and bite you in the bum further downh the road.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Cool Tip TangoAlpha!  Oddly I just had this problem myself... Fillet did noting but Quick Fillet came out very wonky... so I aborted the object tried again with the same results. Since it was in early design I've decided to take a different approach to create it but haven't started yet.  I've never had a problem when using the Create menu to insert a cube or cylinder of my settings.

  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584

    One other interesting little titbit regarding QuickFillet: it doesn't break a UV map. So if you've already mapped an object and need to quickly bevel an edge, use Quick Fillet rather than Fillet, and you keep the UV.

  • VyusurVyusur Posts: 2,235

    In my case both tools work.

    2017-03-01_0946.png
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    2017-03-01_fastfillet.png
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    2017-03-01_fillet.png
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  • StezzaStezza Posts: 8,054
    Stezza said:

    talk about getting the bug... these Carrara challenges have really done it to me.. Being a requirement to make something for the challenges has got me right in.

    From trying to make boats, simple objects, crater critters, space ships, trains, cars and now Louie the Fly!

    when will it end!!! .............. damn you Carrara!

    I've started a new FJ ( attempt number 36 ) thinking edges and quads... in between Louie!

    First test render of the FJ up Ship Creek

    getting there very slowly.

  • Hermit CrabHermit Crab Posts: 841

    Getting there very slowly?

    It looks fantastic to me!

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,566

    Slowly my tush! It's looking really nice!

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,168

    ​Excellent, Stezza!  I want me some of that creek you are up!

  • StezzaStezza Posts: 8,054

    any time @Diomede, we have a guest room out the back which is only a very very short walk to the creek for you to throw a fishing line into.. 

    thanks for the comments, the lighting has covered up a few discepencies and I'm having trouble with the front mud guards... but it's been fun.. Spent a few hours on the back door then Carrara crashed.... oops... forgot to save that bit, start again!

    here's my eldest daughter out the back yard which shows how close we are to the creek.. notice the kookaburra in the tree cool

    creek out the back.jpg
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  • TabascoJackTabascoJack Posts: 865

    Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree......

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,168
    edited March 2017

    I had to google kookaburra.  LOL.  Lovely back yard and family. I am only three blocks from a spot to drop a fishing line in a river.  Unfortunately, it is the Anacostia River.  no

    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/07/120723-fishing-anacostia-river-washington-dc/

    Post edited by Diomede on
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