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This is a menu background for a BluRay disc of a trip to Branson, MO during Thanksgiving week.
Nice scene, kakman! I clicked on it and just let myself get lost in all that's going on. During this, I was really liking your trees. While Carrara's Plant Editor is fun and cool, there are some really great trees on the market - and I have purchased quite a few. It's fun - and gives us great variety.
Hey, Thanks for sharing!
Dartanbeck,
Thank you very much for the comments. The trees and the terrain are from the Forest Autumn product sold here at DAZ.
My wife and I travel quite a bit - and family, friends and some of our clients were always asking to see pictures from our trips. I used to make several copies of them to distribute until I realized it would be easier and much more fun to make a DVD of them set to music (it really is such an enjoyable experience to watch them on a 60” widescreen with the stereo cranked up). So when we returned from Copenhagen in 2005, I began to figure out how to do it all. Now, instead of having photo albums (which we would hardly ever look at) taking up room and collecting dust, we can just pop in a DVD and enjoy our travel memories whenever we want. It is way better then passing a book around from person to person.
I always want each disc to be different from the others (Branson was the 21st). For this disc I wanted the menu to be reminiscent of the old “Highlights” magazine (see how many things you can find in the picture) that was always in doctors and dentists offices when I was a kid.
In Branson, Christmas is already in full swing by the start of Thanksgiving week. During our trip we went to the Butterfly Palace, The Toy Museum, two different drive-thru light displays and of course Silver Dollar City amusement park. So, the various characters in the scene are a hint of what is to come on the disc.
How very cool! What a great idea! Now you should try animating the whole thing into a short(ish) loop to have a motion background for your menu! Of course, I'd suggest doing this using several clips that you later edit together to form the looping (it doesn't even have to loop!) video - save that and use it for your video!
I only say this because I bought Carrara mainly to be my animation film studio. I was (and still am) amazed at how much more Carrara is than what I really bought it for. My animations are now turning out looking really cool - and I use the Batch Queue to let my animated clips render as I sleep. Using several filming cameras at different angles and distances within the same scene can add a lot more mileage to each animation made. Here's an early test I made - joining a bunch of test render clips together and adding sound and music just to try my Sony Movie HD software towards editing possibilities.
Anyways... no animation necessary- I was just making my usual plug towards that end! lol
Love that render, you did a really nice job.
BTW, the hospital I take my daughter to still carries "Highlights" in their waiting rooms!
"Genesis tawho?"
Dartanbeck,
I couldn’t agree with you more! Animation is what FIRST drew me to Carrara. I wanted to do an animated menu for Disc #10, a Christmas trip to Denver and found Carrara. For that menu I used a snow covered mountain terrain with Polar Bears sliding down the mountain and flying off the screen. That was my very first experience with Carrara and I was hooked and have been happily animating ever since. (My most recent animation was a hula sequence with 2 rows of 5 hula female dancers and one main dancer in the front for the introduction of a disc of a Christmas trip to Hawaii).
My first disc was fairly simple (I used Pro Show Gold for that one). My second disc was a trip to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore, Deadwood, Wall and the Badlands. I realized that I wanted to have credits for that one with dates, sights, restaurants, etc. I decided I wanted to use the “Star Wars” title effect (scrolling off into the distance) and I discovered BluffTitler, which is an incredible and inexpensive piece of software with a terrific community of users (check it out, I think you will be amazed).
Once I outgrew Pro Show I went to Sony Movie Studio and then to Sony Vegas Pro.
As we travel a lot for Thanksgiving and Christmas, I was running out of music (I have never used the same song by the same artist twice except for intros) and so I decided I needed to do my own instrumental versions of Christmas songs. It was at that point that I found Reaper and Native Instruments.
the damned - where's Stan
I used this as a background for some animated credits titles. The set is Flipmode's Easy Environments Top of the World.
It took me quite a lot of trial and error (which is not unusal since I possess absolutely no expertise) to get the set to look right in Carrara, particluarly the Sky Box (especially to eliminate the "seams") and the associated lighting. I am sure there are much better methods to use instead of my convoluted approach, but I did get it to work to my satisfaction.
Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
sky looks great - terrain not so much
I'm blaiming head wax for this. I was going through my carrara object folder and found this neat lamp. Spent the rest of the day on this.
"Left behind"
heh, sorry ManStan, it was obviously worth the time, nice render (smiley here). The tattooed Genesis is great too. (exclamation mark here)
Kakman. love your sense of design, really interesting repetition of elements.
by the way MN, I think Bigh is calling you out.
Damned - seek and you will find
I have read over and over again, in this forum (and elsewhere), about the importance of lighting (which I agree with). I finally purchased the Jeremy Birn book and along with his book and all the incredible and generous advice offered by the fantastic participants in this forum (which I can’t possibly thank all of you enough for) I have produced this image.
While it may not be an “accurate” image, for me it evokes a “mood” and a “feeling” that I am actually happy with (finally!). Of course it may well NOT strike a chord with anyone else, but at least I feel as if I accomplished something that I have been striving to do.
So, while it is hardly enough, I offer a big, heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone that has given so much of their time, expertise and help. There is no way I could have gotten this far without all of you. I wholeheartedly look forward to continuing my Carrara education that this forum so kindly provides.
lovely glow on the moon kakman!
I agree. Nice job! Night scenes can be very difficult to light.
Been really busy at work lately...so I haven't had much time for 3D fun.
I did create a tanto knife in LightWave to learn some sub-division modeling techniques. The OBJ export is available on ShareCG at that link.
Feel free to bring that into Carrara and tweak it up.
This image is an older version of the file -- it should appear to be a bit sharper and more lethal now in the model! {winky smiley here}
Freaking amazing that you JUST got into this not long ago. Now you're in LW making SubD models! Proud of you, bud!
It would probably have turned out better if you made it in Carrara.
Hah! Kidding! lol
You know me and Carrara!
Thanks Dart. I'll have some breathing room tomorrow on the July 4 holiday (Happy Birthday USA!) so I'll be sure to Carrar-ize it then.
I am also going to dive for the 3D mouse -- it'd be awesome if C8.5 would support that!
Doubtful. 8.5 is only intended to add Genesis support - even though it does make Carrara a much better machine, in my opinion, whether you use Genesis or not.
Also... you know I was only ribbing you on the LW thing. LightWave rocks - and everybody knows it!
Of course I knew that! In Australian, "Dartanbeck" means "The One Who Ribs." {insert goofy grin smiley here}
Of course I knew that! In Australian, "Dartanbeck" means "The One Who Ribs." {insert goofy grin smiley here}
And in American English, "Dartanbeck" means: Crazy rock haulin' Cheesehead!
And, don't forget: "Danimal the mad manimal Beck... a Dog's Best Friend"
A name I picked up in Chicago after I calmed a charging Doberman Pincher into licking my face. The group of people that I've ended up knowing for years afterwards, I had just met an hour or so earlier - and stood there shocked! It was funny!
My first addition to the render thread.
Steve
congrats Steve, you're a fast learner ! welcome to Carrara forum too. (smiley here)
Love that image!
Hey Gars-Man,
All LW vs Carrara joking aside, I like this knife. A most generous offering... Thanks.
Okay, back to the LW vs Carrara jibes, I think it's funny how one of DAZ's major tutorial providers is who tore you from Carrara and plunged you headlong into LightWave! lol
It goes along with my theory that DAZ 3D doesn't really want to force your hand toward using any one software over the next - so long as you're having fun and creating what you want how you want. I have yet to see a reason to switch from Carrara to LightWave from a 'final result' point of view - but I haven't been looking either. Once I get some free browsing time, I'll have to head to their site and do some more looking around. I do know that LW is vast in its features and capabilities - and that it's one of the top dogs.
The spam was totally worth it! {insert tonguing smiley here}
You could be right with that theory. But then you don't see Microsoft saying, "Hey, go ahead and use Oracle instead of SQL Server! So long as you are having fun!" {insert winking smiley here}
Here's a beginning to trying Carrara and Daz Studio to make a clothing set for the new Genesis 2 Female. This is a low res top piece with smoothing set at 2 in Carrara. I did this for the purposes of using Daz Studio SubD smoothing in the end result. I still have to name the polygons to match the rigging, as described by Phil Wilkes in Chapter seven of his Advanced Carrara techniques, but I have already applied UV mapping and textured the harness with a map - but the metal is all just procedural out of the Carrara browser to give it a temporary starting point. I just used a simple bi-gradient and global illumination to see those shaders.
Now that I've just named all of the polygons, I'd like to point out that there are new bones in the Gen2Female rig that should help a lot with auto-follow. These might also be present in Genesis, but not generation 4 figures: Right and Left Pectorals. These each have a bone within the rigging now - rather that relying only on morphs. Now I export according to Phil's advice, of which I am very grateful, and import into Daz Studio.
It takes a little getting used to the process of getting it all done - but looking at the time stamp between two posts up and this one, that's not very long to have a nice clothing item all rigged, weight mapped and structured into the newest Daz Studio format - readable by Carrara 8.5 as standard content - no fitting required. V6 just auto morphed into place. I'll still go through and make morphs for some of the morphs that exist on the figure - to prevent certain changes from taking place. I also want to make texture maps and other shape-change morphs. But DS has proven to perform some incredible work in very little time - and I still can't see why Carrara gets picked on in the modeling world.