PC+ sale here now, any must-buys for Cararra? The Wrap-up and unfinished business
UnifiedBrain
Posts: 3,588
I've never participated in a PC+ sale until now, and as a newbie to Cararra, I've never knowingly purchased a product designated for Cararra.
Seems like a good opportunity. Are there any specific PC+ products that are considered essential for the Cararra user?
Post edited by UnifiedBrain on
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This Premier Artist sale was the big opportunity for getting Carrara-specific stuff on sale, like all of my products, Tango Alpha, Ringo, PhilW, Infinite Skills, mmoir, 3DLUST, Howie Farkes, GKDANTAS, Dimension Theory, MAT Creator, Age of Armour, Fenric, Tim Payne, I know I'm missing someone here...
As for PC+, there are no actual Carrara-Specific products that I can think of.
However, there are a lot that work nicely in Carrara!
I have really enjoyed all products from Jack Tomalin and Petipet, and I know there are many others too. Pretty much anything that's not "Iray" products will work fine - but I think that there are exceptions.
It really all depends upon what you're looking for. I love the Platinum Club because I'm in need of building up a model catalog for building scenes for my movies. So I've been grabbing the GIS series of elegant SciFi stuff from Jack Tomalin, pretty much everything from petipet, which is often vehicles and some scenery structures.
Laurie S. and Lisa's Botanicals have a bunch of stuff I've bought, I basically buy everything I like from PC - such excellent deals: twenty-some dollar products for a couple of bucks!
One key element that "I" have been going by when I'm exercising caution is that I'll check to see if it has Poser-compatible formats. Petipet and Jack Tomalin have been really good in these respects for me - but I'm sure other's have been too.
But like all Genesis 1 and 2 related stuff has been working well for me too - so I buy that stuff too - even though I must admit that I'm still having a lot of fun with V4, M4 Freak 4, Hiro and Aiko 4, etc., as far as actually working with stuff - but I've collected a lot of Genesis stuff that seems to work as expected.
I should mention that it's not really that I'm reluctant to switch to Genesis. I've just been working with Fouth Generation figures for years now - and have a lot of stuff saved to my browser for them - so I don't really want to lose all of those hours of work is all.
Genesis is Great!
Okay... I'm really babbling! LOL
Oh... I should also mention that we have a special thread:
Carrara Challenge 28 Marriage Entry Thread
How it works is:
Click the star by the thread to Bookmark it. That way, any time someone posts in that thread, you'll get an e-mail. When a special sale comes up, we check that thread and, if nobody's posted the sale, we mention it and put a link to it in there. That way everyone following the thread will get notified of the sale.
We talked about the PA (Premier Artists) sale in there - so we all new about it.
Also, I like to Check Here for PC+ items. If you see something you like, but are not sure if it works in Carrara or not, just ask in the forum and someobe who has bought it already with often chime in and let you know if it didn't work or if they love it! ;)
I try to check the store when I can. Being a PC member, we get free stuff - so I never want to miss those things. Recently we got a cool SciFi Trailer thingy from petipet and a cool confinement chamber scene. Even when those things are DUF or Iray, I 'buy' them for free anyways.
Hmmm... did all of that help, or was it just confusing?
Here's an example:
I would gladly buy the Car Roland, knowing that it will work beautifully in Carrara
But this Iray addon for it will only work in Daz Studio!
So we need to learn to understand what does work with Carrara and what does not.
We can get results like the above addon directly in Carrara by getting used to working with shaders - which is really fun to do!
We have a great course which includes instructions on making a rather dull looking car model look like it's absolutely real! Phil Wilkes is the teacher and the course is through Infinite Skills: Carrara - Realism Rendering
Here's a screenshot of the beginning of the course
and here's a shot toward the end of it. Big difference, and we 'learn' how to do these sorts of adjustments to 'any' model we wish to use!
He (Phil) also demonstrates how to take one of the houes from the browser and turn it into a photographic scene! Really cool stuff!
All of Phil's courses are a must-have for me. I love them!
I think that Ringo Monfort has some great Carrara Specific products: Shaders, Brushes and Skies
Speaking of Skies, Tim Payne and Phil Wilkes have some excellent products as well, Phil also having cool scenes and dynamic hair!
Tango Alpha, mmoir (Mike Moir) and Howie Farkes also have wonderful scenes where mine are more like scene-creation helper kits and 3DLUSTs are high-end SciFi interior scenes
MatCreator has some cool Shader kits, GKDANTAS, Dimension Theory and Age of Armour have assorted excellence for Carrara users as well.
I often forget some of our other excellent Premier Artists who make some really cool stuf for Carrara - simply because I'm often typing and connecting links in a hurry! LOL
Orestes Graphics makes some cool Terrain pieces... so does 3D Celebrity, whom also has a skin shaders kit - and there's a bunch of others making hair and such... I'll get back to this later when I can! ;)
Keep in mind that some of these artists make stuff for other software - so be sure to read the descriptions! ;)
for future reference most of Fenrics stuff is a must have but not pc plus
all the carrara specific pa's make wonderful stuff
there is a thread around here demonstrating some of their goodies - again not pc plus that i know of
► Fenric's Tools
A brief overview of Fenric's amazing Carrara plugins
...and for moe information about all of the plugins for Carrara - exception being Philemo's cool new VWD-to-Carrara Bridge (anyone have a link for info on that?)
► Carrara Plugins FAQ & Information - By Jay_NOLA
Jay compilled and organized a great measure of info regarding Plugins specific to our
beloved Carrara. FAQ, Information and Links to help you determine which are right for you. Thank You Jay_NOLA!
Well, I guess that I missed an opportunity. But I will be ready the next time there is a big sale.
Good to know. How strange is this? In the few short days since I got PC+, the only items I have purchased are from Petipet and Jack Tomalin. We must have similar tastes.
Do Poser formats work better in Cararra? It's hard to get a definite answer on this subject.
I like the older stuff as well, even in Studio. But I started pushing G1 and G2 in Cararra, just to see if there are limits. Only problem so far is that G2 custom skin loads black. I know that it has been discussed here, and I will figure it out eventually.
Hmm. I think that you mean this thread:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/55201/carrara-sale-email-message-alert-thread/p1
Very useful, thank you!
Are you kidding? With Cararra, I am still at the stage where I don't know what I don't know. Some of what you said was familiar, but a lot was new. Besides, it never hurts to be reminded. And just seeing someone elses perspective on purchasing products, particularly someone with experience, gives me a much better sense of direction in my own purchases.
The reason I didn't respond earlier, was that you stay up a lot later than me.
Many thanks!
The free wild west mega-bundle looks cool. Doubly so because it's free and I don't (sorry, didn't) have any of the parts. the pay one I've got about half the sets, so it's not such a good deal (for me)
The sets include Poser versions, and those often seem to import more cleanly into Carrara than the Studio versions (although both generally work perfectly well)
Thanks for the informative comments. I love your work!
This link to the Wild West Carrara challenge uses some to the Wild west stuff in the free bundle.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1005937/#Comment_1005937
and the Saloon interior from the same set.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1008968/#Comment_1008968
I love his work too! Yeah, I just got the Wild West bundle! I've been wanting to get those and their interiors for a while now. Now all I need to buy are the three interiors! Woot!!!
Well, it seems debatable. But in my experience, Poser formats do seem to be a 'safer' buy. Yes, every once in a while we might find a product that just doesn't work as expected in Carrara. But one thing I notice for sure are 'Pose' files - Poser version seem to be a LOT faster - or is it that DUF versions are just a LOT slower? LOL
I've been meaning to try some of the DUF-only content that I've been getting for free... but I just haven't yet. I did buy i13's "Drawbridge" kit, which comes with both Poser and DUF formats - I loaded in the DUF version just to test it and it works great!
Man, Tango Alpha makes some killer models!
He's got a lot more made than what he sells at Daz3d! Before he became a Premier Artist here, he had a thread going for the progress on some of them... just freaking cool!!!
There are a lot of excellent modelers in this community. There are a lot of really great Carrara enthusiasts here!
Is the following product useful in Carrara -
http://www.daz3d.com/forest-grass
- or is it better to use Carrara to create vegetation, or to use Carrara-specific vegetation products only?
Yes it is. Of course, you may have to tweak the shaders a bit - likely just turn the Highlight color to pure black or really, really dark greenish yellow with a shininess of 3 - 7.
It says in the promo images something about Eco-script, which won't work in Carrara (I don't think), but we have the Surface Replicator - so we don't need the script! ;)
Various folks have different opinions on that. We can always model our own, but if we want grass, but don't feel like modeling, and we see a great deal on something like this... I always just buy this sort of thing. If I decide to model my own later... no big loss ;)
By the way, did you grab all of the Free stuff they've been giving away lately, like Traveler's Swarms: Bats, Bees, etc., and other goodies? Man I love being a PC member! ;)
I like to click the "Shop" button on the top of the store page, then scroll down to the Sort By drop-down and select Price: Low-to-High, then all of the Free stuff floats to the top of the page! ;)
Looks like it should be fine.
Having said that, grass is one of the easier plants to make - essentially a blade of grass is just a long thin plane in several segments, tapered towars the top and curled over. If you look at the 'fog' picture I posted yesterday in my commercial thread, you'll see a bunch of grass props - I made 4 or 5 of various sizes, including one with 'ears', probably took about 15 minutes to do (once you've made one blade, you can just duplicate it and pull it about for all the others. PhilW has a section on making grasses in his Advanced Carrara Techniques video.
Which is not to say don't buy plant sets - they have a huge convenience factor, especially when you get lots of different sizes / shapes and a range of material options. And if they're cheap . . . (worst case, you can open them in the vertex editor and see how they're made)
BTW, to use, put them into a surface replicator and spread them about! Here's one of the grass replicators I used for that pic:
The shader is essentially a mask - a black & white image of the ground plane, where white is where to put the grass and black is left clear.
I had to google "surface replicator in carrara."
Not ready for that!!!!!!
I really like the fact that you give answers with so much context. You may call it babbling, but it sometimes fills in gaps in understanding. Much appreciated.
Yep, I put a lot of that stuff in the cart this morning. The Viking bundle wasn't free, but it looked like the deal of the day.
Your grass looked very impressive, as did the fog. Should I get this Poser fog freebie? http://www.daz3d.com/rdna-atmospherics-fog-vol-1 ; Not sure it even works in Carrara, or if Carrara can do fog better by itself.
Buying stuff is probably the route for now. Not ready for surface replicators yet. Truly, I still don't fully understand the scaling and manipulation tools.
Cool... that's my meaning for it. There truly are a lot of things 'between the lines' - so in my videos, I try to cover that stuff - I originally made those from questions I got here, so I was actually helping people on a personal level.
Yes you are! we'll show you. And that's how you'll end up getting the most from packs like that Grass you've linked to.
We'll show you.. it's easy!
I did - even though I might not ever use it. I just like collecting things - and sometimes I find that things really DO work well, even when other folks say that Carrara has an easier route!
Whatever you have for a ground surface in your scene. Think about that element. Not the stuff sitting on it - just the ground piece itself.
Let's say you want grass all over that - using that Grass product you just bought.
On the top tools bar, one of those icons is a surface replicator. Just drag that over the word "Scene" in the right panel.
Now drop a few pieces of that new Grass onto that surface replicator. Don't forget to Edit > Remove Unused Masters > Consolidate Duplicate Shaders!
Now double-click the surface replicator.
Inside, in the top button that's asking you what surface to replicate onto, click that button and select that ground piece I had you thinking about earlier.
There!
You've just replicated stuff onto your ground using the Surface Replicator! Easy Peasy!
Although you'll definitely want to play with some of the other settings in there, that's truly as simple as it is! Now let your imagination soar as you play with the slider that allows you to add many more of them, plunk a value in the random z-axis box (the one on the right) to give all of the grasses a random rotation, maybe some random scaling - positive values for larger randomness, negative values for smaller... you'll see... it's all just filling out the form how you want to see it work!
You'll find that everything in Carrara is as easy as opening the tool, which is a form to fill out, and use your imagination to fill out the form and render the result!
Carrara's Fire is a form to fill out. So is the ocean, the volumetric clouds and the fog... it's all powerful, it's all set up to be really easy to use.
All it takes is to try it once - and you'll be inspired to try it again and again!
Always remember:
When we're experimenting, there are no screw-ups! Because we're Experimenting!
Try stuff - you'll love it!
Speaking of trying things, I realize what you've just said about text-based tutorials... but if you can, you might just love this thread:
► Building Carrara Terrains Intro
In the meantime, I'll see if I can get some new video tutorials going... but I certainly won't be able to do anything like that this week... RL being too darned nutz right now! LOL
Thanks for the heads up on this Dart - I put Traveler in the search box, sorted Price Low-High and found a LOAD of useful FREE models that I didn't know were there, all brought over from RDNA!
HI Unifiedbrain :)
Carrara has a Fog "primitive object" (you can find it under the INSERT menu) ,. it also has Volumetric clouds,. which can be used to create fog,. (see howie farkes Spruce vale) or Stoney Creek bundle ,. as an example.
Carrara's dynamic Hair system, can also be used to create grass. the Plant system can be used to create grass and has animation options for wind and russle, or you can create your own grass in the vertex modeller.
Surface replicators,. and replicators are really simple and extremely easy to use.
they're essential for creating forests,. and if you want grass, from small modeled clumps, that's the only way any system could handle that type of task.
Replicators in DS are (send in the clones) of something like that,.
Replicators can create hundreds of thousands of "virtual" duplicates,of a model, and arrange them in a variety of ways,. Grid, Ball, Arc, etc..
Surface Replicators do the same thing,. but they can replicate objects onto a selected surface,. such as a terrain with grass, plants and tree's replicated over it's surface,. the placement of objects can be controlled by using a Black and White / Greyscale map ,. white areas get objects,. black areas don't.
For moving the Camera around in Carrara,.
You can hold ALT while you drag in an empty part of the scene to Rotate (left mouse) ...Track (Alt+middle mouse and push/pull) and ....Pan (alt+Right mouse)
It's also really good to get into the habit of changing your working camera from "Camera1" to the Directors camera.
you can move around the scene,,. scouting for good camera locations,. then save that position,. (using the camera menu) ..change back to Camera1,. and Load that saved position.
go back to the Directors camera and move around or move objects around in your scene,.
The Directors camera isn't animated.
"Camera1" and any other camera's you add are animatable. which is the main reason for suggesting you use the Directors camera.
when you're moving the camera around, Carrara uses the selected object in your scene as the rotation point, if you have nothing selected,. the camera uses the scene centre.
To Zoom in , or focus on an object in your scene,. select it and hit 0 (zero),. that will frame the camera on that object.
You can add a (Target helper object) a (NULL in DS),. you can then add the "point at" Modifier, to your Camera1, and select the target helper,. ..the camera willl always point at that helper objects,.
Target helper objects,.. can also be animated,. or parented to an animated object.
On scale:
The Scale of any object in Carrara can be changed using the Motion panel on the right,. you can adjust the scale, rotation and position using the numeric inputs.
you can also select the scale tool, on the left toolbar, and push/pull the scale handles on the object, or pull a side of the object,. ...try with the edges of a plane.
it's important to note that scale in the Assembly room,. doesn't change the real geometry's scale,. the original model remains unaltered. it's just temporarilly scaled in your scene.
to really scale a model you need to edit it in the modeller, or use it's "primitive" options,. and scale it there.
By Primitive,. I mean a cube, sphere, ..etc, but also Terrain's, Ocean's, Plant's etc.. any Carrrara "primitive object" can be resized or adjusted from it's own options panel.
or by using the Motion panel,. or the Scale tool.
Scene scale:
The three scene scales in Carrara,. are set up to help you navigate (moving camera's or objects around).
Large scale will allow you to move the camera in larger steps,. which is ideal if you want to move the camera several Miles over a landscape.
Medium scale scenes are perfect for working with Human scale,. where you need more control over the camera,. EG: to focus on a face
Small scale is ideal for product shots,. and other small scale modeling work, such as jewelery design
Some of that may seem strange if your only working with daz/poser figures,. but they will make much more sense once you start to delve into the features of Carrara's terrain editor and modeling tools.
Hope it helps :)
I know, right?
I'm having a LOT of fun looking at cool new items from RDNA!
I've never had a whole lot of internet time, so I didn't really have the opportunity to check out other places - spent all my time here! LOL It's fun having all of this cool stuff available! V4 and M4 items galore! And then these cool little scenery items as well - Sweet!