Carrara Challenge 3: PARADISE LOST AND FOUND. Work In Progress (WIP) thread.

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Comments

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,987
    edited December 1969


    Varsel said:
    The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence..Killer pun, my friend! Nice image, too!


    “Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely: and pined his loss”

    ― John Milton, Paradise Lost

    Beautiful! Is that AnyFX filter in Dogwaffle?
    Regardless, Great images - both.

    thank you Dart :)
    Oh I just upped the saturation, then erased part, then copied that and pasted, then fiddled with the levels, then erased part, ciopied and pasted, up the saturation and made that a 'screen' parameter then dropped the opacity down to about 7 percent - well I think that's what I did, it's like driving a car, you put the key in, turn the ignition and suddenly you are where you wanted to go without remembering how you got there :)

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,987
    edited December 1969

    zgock that's a marvellous plug in you have made thank you :)

    ManStan said:
    Wip it. M4 and the coronet from the carrara objects folder.

    ManStan that's a wonderfully emotive image so far. It really expresses something within all of us at one time or another.

    Socratease - really looking forward to what you come up with in the NPR - and I hope you PM me with the details of how you do it ;)

    diomede64 that's an amazing image you have dug up. Could be a case for a lot of post work. Interesting the tonal range is quite high - so there are no really dark shadows. My first thought would be to have no lights, then crank up the ambient to the max, then slowly tune that and add lights where necessary. Of course turning up the ambient is a bad thing and should be avoided usually !

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,987
    edited December 1969

    I just wanted to say the theme for this contest seems really fun, a lot of potential for interpretation as to what you consider paradise to be. Also a lot of potential use for Carrara's plant features if you ask me, maybe I'm the only one that considers paradise to be full of trees and plants <_<</p>

    Anyway, I'm sorry to the winners of the last round for not having prizes out yet, I was a bit confused as to whether or not I was handing them out. I've got quite a bit going on right now so please give me some time to get things uploaded and sorted (that Monterey set in particular will take some time to get up lol).

    I'm very sorry to have not told you DimensionTheory. Big apologies! I don't know how to add a blushing icon. Oops

    There is no hurry, I am sure the winners are patient knowing the delights that await them at the end of their patience.

    thank you once again for your generosity.
    I'm looking forward to seeing what wonderous images the winner produce with your works.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,168
    edited December 1969

    Sockratease. Thanks for posting the sample NPRs. How fun! Any suggestions for settings?
    Head Wax, thanks for the tips on ambient. I'll experiment.

    As seen in the attached, I have a LONG way to go! I'm using the sample as inspiration - I'm not just going to try to reproduce it (at least not for the challenge).

    Just to confirm the rules about content. In the attached, I've used DAZ Michael 3 and the wings from Poser 6. Now as I understand it, that is OK as long as everything is credited. Furthermore, if I use the 3D paint feature in Carrara to substantially repaint the wings, then the painting of the wings would count towards the 3 required self creations. Similarly, if I substantially Morph/texture M3, that would count toward the 3.

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  • Design AcrobatDesign Acrobat Posts: 459
    edited December 1969

    I have an image in mind, but Wendy is not answering her door or her phone and I cannot get my pair of dice that I lost at her place.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,202
    edited August 2013

    ⚂⚃

    EDIT. my Android unicode die not showing on Chrome at least

    Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    ⚂⚃

    :lol:

    Here's a couple screen shots of what I'm working on. I've built a highway segment with shading domains. The shaders are just placeholder at the moment.


    I can't tell you what the image is going to be at this point, because it's going to be a visual joke. Trying to describe it would be giving away the joke, and also it would lose something in the translation from image to text.

    I'll post more stuff with the scene as I progress....

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  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited August 2013

    diomede64 said:
    Sockratease. Thanks for posting the sample NPRs. How fun! Any suggestions for settings?
    Head Wax, thanks for the tips on ambient. I'll experiment.

    As seen in the attached, I have a LONG way to go! I'm using the sample as inspiration - I'm not just going to try to reproduce it (at least not for the challenge).

    Just to confirm the rules about content. In the attached, I've used DAZ Michael 3 and the wings from Poser 6. Now as I understand it, that is OK as long as everything is credited. Furthermore, if I use the 3D paint feature in Carrara to substantially repaint the wings, then the painting of the wings would count towards the 3 required self creations. Similarly, if I substantially Morph/texture M3, that would count toward the 3.

    That's a very impressive start! I especially like how the background got rendered: it has a similar tonal variations palette to the image you are inspired by.

    You've inspired me to go experiment with NPR, so now working on my own entry has been delayed... and I'm just playing with the renderer... this will take some time... :roll:

    Rules:
    Yes, all content allowed as long as you credit it. (That include any character morphs, poses or textures you are using.)

    First of all, if you are using NPR and will be altering the renderer settings by adding, say, your own brushes, or creating your own presets with non-default values, I would count that as your 3 original/modified items.

    3D-painting of wings = +1 original/modified item.

    Morphing M3 will count as long as the morphing is done at least partially using your own morphs (not just dialling morph values of the figure or character injections). In the vortex modeller you can add morphs to the figure's subgroups (like head, neck, etc.) And you can then edit the morph you added, sculpt the model to your liking, validate the morph to end the editing, and that would become your own Carrara-created morph.

    Adding such morph(s) on the content models will count towards +1 original/modified item (+1 for each model to which you are adding the morphs).

    (Sorry for being so specific about morph-adding process, I'm not trying to suggest that you don't know how to do it, I'm just trying to make my answers about rules relevant to all possible viewers of this thread, including completely new Carrara users, if they happen to find this thread and wish to participate)

    If you add morphs to M3, then re-texturing M3 will not get you another +1 to the original/modified items count, because it's still the same item: M3.

    But you can create special shaders for his hair or clothing objects or spear. The shaders will count as +1 if you create your own textures, or procedural shader with your own values for the procedural parameters (not the defaults that come in when you select a type or preset), or if you create a complex shader with mixed layers, or mixed channels.

    Does this make things clearer or more confusing?

    Post edited by Antara on
  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    I love the NPR Engine!

    Here's a couple from a hopefully longer series called "Kamen Rider Gets A New Ride" (Toldja I liked Japanese Monster stuff!)

    The real goal started an effort to make NPR Fire.

    Very interesting results. It somehow looks like you are using different brushes for different objects... is that the case? Or are those just different brushes for different layers?

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,987
    edited December 1969

    diomedes wrote:

    As seen in the attached, I have a LONG way to go! I’m using the sample as inspiration - I’m not just going to try to reproduce it (at least not for the challenge).

    well it's a wonderfull start, the rainbow colours on the wings are intriguing me,

    evilproducer, I am getting ready to see what you come up with, I am sitting down and have put my coffee in a safe place so I don't spill it :)

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    UPDATES:

    I have updated the original post with the announcement about our great sponsor this month: Age of Armour has donated amazing and extremely generous prizes for the challenge.

    I also amended the rules to include the requirement that all images be specially created for this challenge and previously unpublished. I think it's already been understood from the WIP requirement, but just in case and to prevent any future misunderstandings, I added it as an official rule.

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,987
    edited December 1969

    Age of Armour !

    yippee! :)

    I'm, blessed to have Age of Armour's Studio Paris.

    http://www.daz3d.com/studio-paris

    Amazing work he does - and it's packed full of models to use in other places.
    Everything shuts and opens and its wonderful representation of a real studio.
    I'd love to have one like that in real life :)

    Oddly enough a great coincidence that it's Eugène Delacroix' Studio , the same artist diomedes' is taking inspiration from.

    I just discovered that AoA also has some free addons for the set. http://www.ageofarmour.com/3d/free/studio-paris-freebies.html

  • zgockzgock Posts: 23
    edited December 1969

    WIP:Custom Anime Head for Genesis(Modeled with Carrara/Hexagon 50%/50%) And some YATooned Custom Shaders
    I think Hair is probably to replace

    diomede64 said:
    I think I'd like to experiment with non-photorealistic, but also non-toon. Perhaps something along the lines of the attached image of St Michael and Lucifer. Any pointers to tutorials, etc. in addition to the following at carrara cafe?

    http://carraracafe.com/non-photorealistic-rendering-npr/

    edit - the image is not a WIP, it is a classic found at
    http://www.eugenedelacroix.org/St-Michael-defeats-the-Devil.html

    I love NPR too.
    You can use YAToon for NPR Assistant Shader. YAToon's color breaking assists NPR.
    There is my NPR render with YAToon 1.1

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  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,987
    edited December 1969

    zgock wrote :

    WIP:Custom Anime Head for Genesis(Modeled with Carrara/Hexagon 50%/50%) And some YATooned Custom Shaders
    I think Hair is probably to replace

    I'm really looking forward to learning from watching you. My aim is to produce work that looks like illustration - so Yatoon will come in really handy for me when I get a chance to play with it some more.

  • DimensionTheoryDimensionTheory Posts: 434
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    I'm very sorry to have not told you DimensionTheory. Big apologies! I don't know how to add a blushing icon. Oops

    It's not your fault lol, no worries! I'd assumed you answered my question when we were talking about sponsorship so I kinda went on thinking I didn't have to worry about it, good thing I decided to double check :)

  • SockrateaseSockratease Posts: 813
    edited December 1969

    Wow, more than a few questions / comments on those couple NPR renders!

    Thanks to those who liked them.

    This question seems to cover all the others too, so I'll answer it, and if I missed something, feel free to ask for more info.

    Antara said:
    I love the NPR Engine!

    Here's a couple from a hopefully longer series called "Kamen Rider Gets A New Ride" (Toldja I liked Japanese Monster stuff!)

    The real goal started an effort to make NPR Fire.

    Very interesting results. It somehow looks like you are using different brushes for different objects... is that the case? Or are those just different brushes for different layers?

    These were both single layer and single pass renders, no postwork or layers were needed.

    I was frustrated with the way NPR handles things like fire, transparencies/alpha, and effects - so tried to get around them.

    Couldn't make anything work for alpha /transparency or effects - but found a silly work-around for fire.

    That is not Carrara fire. Joe Mamma would like this technique because I took a picture of fire (HA! - Using photos to make NonPhotoReal stuff!) (The irony is not lost on me) and brought it into PhotoStudio 5.

    Then cut out the background so it was just fire and nothing else. Save it out as a png, jpg with black background, and greyscale.

    I used the greyscale as a terrain height map and got an ugly terrain whose contours kind of matched the fire. A little.

    Then converted the terrain to a vertex object and trimmed off the flat square ground plane surrounding the raised bits.

    Then gave it a simple "Box" UV map and used the png for color.

    It rendered quite nicely for NPR fire considering Carrara's native fire wont render at all!

    The jpg wound up being useless - it was just in case I needed it for other reasons (the png had alpha and thought it could be a mask, but trimming the model was easier than expected, so I fed the jpg to my cats - they love eating computer files!) (how else could I lose so many?).

    The fire looking so different in both renders, despite being the same obj file, comes from it's angle. It had stupid high peaks and would look silly in a realistic render - but that works to advantage in NPR. The first one is facing the camera and the second one is angled slightly away. The simple techniques often are the best.

    As for the "different brushes" look - I was experimenting to see what NPR responds to, and does not respond to. Turns out the bump channel is a major player with NPR. I set some objects to very smooth and others outrageously high. The big yellow bird has the bump set as high as possible, and I even used a multiply operator on the bump map (I think it was the 10,000% cranked all the way up) and it got a nice organic look.

    As usual, the background was a fractal, and it rendered out nicely as an abstract splash of colors.

    I think that covers it.

    Gotta dig around for more of these type renders. I know I have quite a few NPR's in the pile which the cats never got to...

  • VarselVarsel Posts: 574
    edited December 1969

    Those NPR renderings are gone be interesting to follow.
    Maybe I can finally learn to use NPR.

    So I have started on an idea. Always been fascinated by the Emerald City, and the legend of Shangri-La.
    So I thought I should combine them....

    So with the help of ArchiTools I have begun the construction work, to build the City. Starting with a tower.
    I really hope this count as modified in Carrara.:cheese:
    I spent to much time on this. It's probably to detailed.
    But once I started to understand ArchiTools, and got results, it just started to grow....

    And I can put all those LowREZ Lorenzo'es and Loretta that I have, to good use.

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  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,168
    edited December 1969

    Wow, more than a few questions / comments on those couple NPR renders!

    As for the "different brushes" look - I was experimenting to see what NPR responds to, and does not respond to. Turns out the bump channel is a major player with NPR. I set some objects to very smooth and others outrageously high. The big yellow bird has the bump set as high as possible, and I even used a multiply operator on the bump map (I think it was the 10,000% cranked all the way up) and it got a nice organic look.

    .

    Thanks for the great advice. I need all I can get. I think I'm in over my head. I'm still just working through the basics - such as the lack of a light-through-transparency setting for standard NPRs. And ZGOCK, thanks for posting the YAToon renders. Even though I will ultimately be going for a non-toon look, the plugin might still have very helpful features.

    And, the rules are more clear, not less - for me.

    After a closer look, I think the "Judy" figure from P5 might actually be the closest base model for St Michael. (seriously, look at the original). It doesn't matter too much, and I might stick to a Michael character, because I plan to use Carrara's ability to make changes to the base model in the vertex modeling room, rather than use dial morphs.

    Just wondering out loud - I think the final render should look like a fresco or something similar. Suppose I plan to make a ceiling or a wall to host the final render. I'm wondering whether a multi-pass render could be used to generate a layer that then could be used in the displacement channel of the ceiling or wall to give a sense of depth. Has anyone tried something along those lines?

    Finally, should the angels or the devils be riding the cows?

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,168
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    Age of Armour !

    yippee! :)

    I'm, blessed to have Age of Armour's Studio Paris.

    http://www.daz3d.com/studio-paris

    Amazing work he does - and it's packed full of models to use in other places.
    Everything shuts and opens and its wonderful representation of a real studio.
    I'd love to have one like that in real life :)

    Oddly enough a great coincidence that it's Eugène Delacroix' Studio , the same artist diomedes' is taking inspiration from.

    I just discovered that AoA also has some free addons for the set. http://www.ageofarmour.com/3d/free/studio-paris-freebies.html

    Amazing. I wonder if Age of Armor has already the Delacroix' Paradise Lost image as a MAT for one of his props. If I buy that ahead of time, can I use it as one of my content pieces? Just kidding. I'll slog through with my own efforts.

    For anyone else leaning towards Milton, the full poem, abstracts, and other classic illustrations can be found at www.paradiselost.org

  • SockrateaseSockratease Posts: 813
    edited December 1969

    diomede64 said:
    Finally, should the angels or the devils be riding the cows?

    Neither.

    The Cows should be riding BOTH!

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,168
    edited December 1969

    OK, last post before I go on vacation. Might get to play with Carrara a little bit if there are some rainy days, but don't think I will generally have internet access. Everyone not doing NPR can have the thread back (insert smiley here).

    Just doing some tests with the NPR rendering parameters. There isn't much in the manual, but I was interested to see that the object mesh might affect the brush size. Higher density mesh objects appear to get smaller brush strokes. The manual uses the word "triangles." Do they mean something akin to polygon? Anyway, I did a test with some basic vertex objects. See image. The left side contains low density objects, but the objects on the right side (plane, cube, sphere, and cone) have all been subdivided a couple of times. Otherwise, the lighting and the settings are the same. I think you can see some differences, especially on the sphere and in the shadows on the plane.

    Good luck everyone. I love what Manstan, Varsel and Head Wax have started, and I'm afraid to think what will ultimately replace EvilProducer's roads.

    NPR_Low_Hi_side_by_side.jpg
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  • araneldonaraneldon Posts: 712
    edited December 1969

    diomede64 said:
    Higher density mesh objects appear to get smaller brush strokes. The manual uses the word "triangles." Do they mean something akin to polygon?

    Yes.
  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,987
    edited December 1969

    diomede64 said:
    OK, last post before I go on vacation. Might get to play with Carrara a little bit if there are some rainy days, but don't think I will generally have internet access. Everyone not doing NPR can have the thread back (insert smiley here).

    Just doing some tests with the NPR rendering parameters. There isn't much in the manual, but I was interested to see that the object mesh might affect the brush size. Higher density mesh objects appear to get smaller brush strokes. The manual uses the word "triangles." Do they mean something akin to polygon? Anyway, I did a test with some basic vertex objects. See image. The left side contains low density objects, but the objects on the right side (plane, cube, sphere, and cone) have all been subdivided a couple of times. Otherwise, the lighting and the settings are the same. I think you can see some differences, especially on the sphere and in the shadows on the plane.

    Good luck everyone. I love what Manstan, Varsel and Head Wax have started, and I'm afraid to think what will ultimately replace EvilProducer's roads.

    nice work diomede64, and a good find on the mesh density! avagoodoliday :)

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,987
    edited December 1969

    So with the help of ArchiTools I have begun the construction work, to build the City. Starting with a tower

    Varsel, as holly used to say TUTORIAL! TUTORIAL!

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Been working on the shaders for the road (in between getting modded. ;-) )

    I'm rendering a test with an atmosphere to see how my shaders look. I used color gradients in a mixer with the mixer being the elevation function. The grass portion used a green gradient with Grass from the environment functions, and the shoulders used a yellow/brown gradient and the Rock from the environment functions.

    I'll post a screen shot of the shader tree when I post the render with the sky.

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  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Here's the test render, or in other words, my road test. ;-)

    I'm posting the shader tree as well. My intention is to try and use Carrara's hair system for grass using the elevation function to drive placement, and the color gradient that I used for the grass to color the hair.

    If that doesn't come out how I want, I'll use the elevation function to drive the distribution of replicated grass objects.

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  • VarselVarsel Posts: 574
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    So with the help of ArchiTools I have begun the construction work, to build the City. Starting with a tower

    Varsel, as holly used to say TUTORIAL! TUTORIAL!

    Eeh.... :bug:

    I did find some tutorial over at the creator of this plug-in http://www.inagoni.com/
    I'm not sure if I am able to create anything better than those.

    But if there is anything special, I can of course do my best to explain.

    So every Emerald City does have a city wall, with a big city gate, but being a Shangri-La city, this one doesn't have any doors..
    The terrain was just a placeholder, and has been deleted already.Have to make a new and better one.

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  • zgockzgock Posts: 23
    edited December 1969

    WIP:Painting Sun-Tan Line with 3D Paint. then apply it.
    Posing and Change Hair.Finally I choose Sadie's Hair.(3du's Hair has good matching with my HairLight Shader)
    Add SSS to Skin.And Render with bit Sky Light and Soft Shadow.
    Used the function "OverDraw" of YAToon2.0 for eyes and eyebrows to penetrate the hair

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  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    Ok, I am very much behind, because I spent most of the day away from the computer, and there are so many interesting topics and impressives WIP's here (in just one day!!! you all are doing such great work here, I am very much impressed :ohh: ) so I have a lot of ground to cover, but I will try to keep things in order...

    zgock said:
    WIP:Custom Anime Head for Genesis(Modeled with Carrara/Hexagon 50%/50%) And some YATooned Custom Shaders
    I think Hair is probably to replace

    I love NPR too.
    You can use YAToon for NPR Assistant Shader. YAToon's color breaking assists NPR.
    There is my NPR render with YAToon 1.1

    zgock, nice WIP, I like the smoothness of the YAToon render. If you can, please share what settings you have used for both images: the YAToon settings and the NPR settings, if you remember - what brush and what settings are on the NPR and on the YAToon that's being combined with NPR. How did you achieve the color breaking?
    And what settings are on your WIP to make it so smooth looking?

    And while we are on the subject:

    zgock said:
    WIP:Painting Sun-Tan Line with 3D Paint. then apply it.
    Posing and Change Hair.Finally I choose Sadie's Hair.(3du's Hair has good matching with my HairLight Shader)
    Add SSS to Skin.And Render with bit Sky Light and Soft Shadow.
    Used the function "OverDraw" of YAToon2.0 for eyes and eyebrows to penetrate the hair

    Great 3d-painting! And I really love how the hair got rendered.
    I have a question though, might be OFF-topic, but I've been wanting to ask:

    How would you set up YAToon (and possibly NPR) to get something similar to a traditional anime background? Say, a road, a tree and a house. Whould the settings be similar or very different for all 3 and what would be the best way to light such a scene for a sunlit look?


    Wow, more than a few questions / comments on those couple NPR renders!

    Thanks to those who liked them.

    This question seems to cover all the others too, so I'll answer it, and if I missed something, feel free to ask for more info.

    These were both single layer and single pass renders, no postwork or layers were needed.

    I was frustrated with the way NPR handles things like fire, transparencies/alpha, and effects - so tried to get around them.

    Couldn't make anything work for alpha /transparency or effects - but found a silly work-around for fire.

    That is not Carrara fire. Joe Mamma would like this technique because I took a picture of fire (HA! - Using photos to make NonPhotoReal stuff!) (The irony is not lost on me) and brought it into PhotoStudio 5.

    Then cut out the background so it was just fire and nothing else. Save it out as a png, jpg with black background, and greyscale.
    I used the greyscale as a terrain height map and got an ugly terrain whose contours kind of matched the fire. A little.
    Then converted the terrain to a vertex object and trimmed off the flat square ground plane surrounding the raised bits.
    Then gave it a simple "Box" UV map and used the png for color.

    It rendered quite nicely for NPR fire considering Carrara's native fire wont render at all!

    The jpg wound up being useless - it was just in case I needed it for other reasons (the png had alpha and thought it could be a mask, but trimming the model was easier than expected, so I fed the jpg to my cats - they love eating computer files!) (how else could I lose so many?).

    The fire looking so different in both renders, despite being the same obj file, comes from it's angle. It had stupid high peaks and would look silly in a realistic render - but that works to advantage in NPR. The first one is facing the camera and the second one is angled slightly away. The simple techniques often are the best.

    As for the "different brushes" look - I was experimenting to see what NPR responds to, and does not respond to. Turns out the bump channel is a major player with NPR. I set some objects to very smooth and others outrageously high. The big yellow bird has the bump set as high as possible, and I even used a multiply operator on the bump map (I think it was the 10,000% cranked all the way up) and it got a nice organic look.

    As usual, the background was a fractal, and it rendered out nicely as an abstract splash of colors.

    I think that covers it.

    Gotta dig around for more of these type renders. I know I have quite a few NPR's in the pile which the cats never got to...

    Your fire solution is pure genius! On so many levels!

    I really like the idea of creating the mesh out of a BW photo or map. I can see that being handy for a much wider range of applications. Totally brilliant idea!!! I'm not good at modelling at all, so this is just the type of solution I might find actually doable... And then you can use boolean functions to create a single symmetrical object out of the 2 halfs created from such terrains.... I'll have to try it some time... And I can use stamp-type brushes for the original terrain maps... So much potential!

    And thank you so much for the bump tip. I was getting very tiny brush size and smooth looking results on my items with bump and kept thinking it's due to polygon sampling, so I kept decimating them, with little to no difference.

    Also, are these images done with just diffuse layers? Have you played with good ways of combining different layers?

    Those NPR renderings are gone be interesting to follow.
    Maybe I can finally learn to use NPR.

    So I have started on an idea. Always been fascinated by the Emerald City, and the legend of Shangri-La.
    So I thought I should combine them....

    So with the help of ArchiTools I have begun the construction work, to build the City. Starting with a tower.
    I really hope this count as modified in Carrara.:cheese:
    I spent to much time on this. It's probably to detailed.
    But once I started to understand ArchiTools, and got results, it just started to grow....

    And I can put all those LowREZ Lorenzo'es and Loretta that I have, to good use.

    I am curious about your idea and look forward to seeing it progress. I already like the architectural style you are going with.

    Of course it counts as one of the 3 items! The items must be either created OR modified, so creating them with ArchiTools of course counts as creating them, and thus any such item automatically goes towards your final original/modified item count.

    I've heard that texturing the models created with ArchiTools can be difficult after doors and windows get introduced, are you encountering that difficulty at all? Did you have to re-UV-map your models after creating? Yours look perfectly UV-mapped and shaded.

    Also, covering your next post: I really like the concept of no gate doors, just the wall and the entrance. Somehow it feels more like paradise to me than the traditional concept of the doors of heaven.

    Thanks for the great advice. I need all I can get. I think I'm in over my head. I'm still just working through the basics - such as the lack of a light-through-transparency setting for standard NPRs. And ZGOCK, thanks for posting the YAToon renders. Even though I will ultimately be going for a non-toon look, the plugin might still have very helpful features.

    And, the rules are more clear, not less - for me.

    After a closer look, I think the "Judy" figure from P5 might actually be the closest base model for St Michael. (seriously, look at the original). It doesn't matter too much, and I might stick to a Michael character, because I plan to use Carrara's ability to make changes to the base model in the vertex modeling room, rather than use dial morphs.

    Just wondering out loud - I think the final render should look like a fresco or something similar. Suppose I plan to make a ceiling or a wall to host the final render. I'm wondering whether a multi-pass render could be used to generate a layer that then could be used in the displacement channel of the ceiling or wall to give a sense of depth. Has anyone tried something along those lines?

    I am glad the rules are clearer. And have a fun vacation! Now, for the time you get back ;-) :

    About NPR:

    I am finding very interesting results with rendering the shadow layer only. I might venture a guess that you might get a more painting-like result by rendering a few shadow passes with different light sources and overlapping them, say, with the background layer rendered separately. Also I found that rendering shadow on white paper is better if you want to use it on multiply setting later, and I rendered the highlights on the black paper to use it with Screen or lighten settings. This way I don't have to bother with masks in PS. And just using these 2 layer gives me an interestingly drawn result (Attached).

    I also found that
    - using a custom brush with random criss cross straight grey lines which fade away at the edges give me a good "sketch" like effect. (Attached)
    - using transparency above 50% (80% in attached image) nicely builds up the shadows through brush stroke overlaps.
    - mesh smoothing counts as subdivision for the purpose of polygon/brush size of NPR.

    (And yes, I did render over 20 of them to test things out...)


    Here's the test render, or in other words, my road test. ;-)

    I'm posting the shader tree as well. My intention is to try and use Carrara's hair system for grass using the elevation function to drive placement, and the color gradient that I used for the grass to color the hair.

    If that doesn't come out how I want, I'll use the elevation function to drive the distribution of replicated grass objects.

    Great work on the road! I like the elevation shader and the hair idea. I don't see any reason for it not to work. I've done similar things before.

    Does core Carrara have the possibility to bake shaders? I have the plug-in that does that, so the shader can be exported as a map and then used in the hair shader.
    But I think you can also just use the same elevation-driven gradient in your hair shader.
    I find maps more convenient though, because I can easily reduce their brightness and use a less bright version for the root color. This adds a more natural dense-grass shadows to the hair grass. But you can probably have the same effect by multiplying your gradient by a value in the root portion of the hair shader. Although I wonder how this would affect render speed: will a procedural shader be faster or longer to render?

    (Attached image is not a WIP, just an old scene I decided to use as my guinea pig for NPR renders)
    Also it's 2:30 AM, so I'm sorry if I'm less then fully coherent here... hope what I'm saying still makes sense.


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  • zgockzgock Posts: 23
    edited December 1969

    Antara said:

    zgock, nice WIP, I like the smoothness of the YAToon render. If you can, please share what settings you have used for both images: the YAToon settings and the NPR settings, if you remember - what brush and what settings are on the NPR and on the YAToon that's being combined with NPR. How did you achieve the color breaking?
    And what settings are on your WIP to make it so smooth looking?

    thanks.

    YAToon Settings of WIP1&2 are almost Same.
    Based on My YAToon Tutorial Shader and set Shadow Softness to 50%ish.
    and add a bit Specular Softness(you should adjust this value with your lighting)
    and set Shadow Shader to Simple Red Color Shader.

    and added SSS with dark brown.

    In WIP2, I add Skylight 60%ish and ambient to 0%
    (WIP1 was ambient 10%)

    Posted NPR Render was rendered with C6 about 4 years ago. so I forget settings sorry.
    but I can Render new NPR Image in nearly setting.
    please gimme a sec.

    How would you set up YAToon (and possibly NPR) to get something similar to a traditional anime background? Say, a road, a tree and a house. Whould the settings be similar or very different for all 3 and what would be the best way to light such a scene for a sunlit look?


    Next Step is Adding Background to WIP2. Maybe I can show you settings you need.
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    Screenshot_2.png
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    Screenshot_1.png
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