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Dart, if you haven't done it already, DL AoA's trebuchet model! it is frickin' awesome! All animated using physics!
Dart, if you haven't done it already, DL AoA's trebuchet model! it is frickin' awesome! All animated using physics!Why can I not find it?
ha ha ha socratease :) I saw this last night and laughed so hard I nearly spilt the bottle of rum I was trying to open with my mother in law's teeth (she should know better to leave them lying around on the kitchen bench...)
ah what a great toy, we really need a thread on that alone, I have it but still do things the old way, silly iriot that I am ,
Just a few images posted with what settings the user used would be a great start.
I tried filling K4 mesh with cloud to make a ghost shape and it kind of worked .... :)
I'll see what I can do!
Aoa free stuff,
very kind and generous he is ! :)
http://www.ageofarmour.com/3d/free/index.php
Dart I found the
Trebuchet is a little way down the page
Not to hijack the thread, but here's the link to the trebuchet:
http://www.ageofarmour.com/3d/free/trebuchet.php
I really can't keep up with so much great work in this thread! Please keep it up, everybody! :) You are making my day every evening as I sit down to read through the thread.
:) :) :) Yep, I've been part of that traffic :) At first I thought that you've got a real NYC skyline in the background. It looks great. (Too flat for NYC though, and the full view told me I was mistaken :)...)
Really great textures on the post and signs. Perhaps a bit too clean, though?
I also really like the composition and all the horizontal lines. It really gives off this vibe of slow dreariness, so familiar to anyone who spent some time in a traffic jam...
Do you use Anything Goos? I thought the road could use some of it, or you could just paint a distribution mask for shader mixing and add a dirtier look to the edges of the road. I also think the road is too smooth :) especially the less travelled one :)
Really great idea and WIP so far.
It gets the whole Lost and Found idea in one image, plus a bonus pun!
If it were on cheezeburger.com the caption might read:
Stoopy hooman lost dis pair-a-dice.
Kitteh found dem!
For modifying content, I had to UV map the sofa from a stock indoor scene, and the Millennium Cat's arm wasn't long enough, so I stretched it in the vertex modeler.
Edit - The Cow is hiding under the cushions, it hasn't decided where it wants to appear in the scene yet...
:lol: Great interpretation. :lol: I do want to see the cheeseburger caption there :)
You still need one more created/modified item in there (unless you created the walls, the floor or the dice yourself).
Will there be fur on the cat?
Right now stylistically it sits somewhere between a realistic image (needs fur?) and a comic strip cartoon (NPR?)
And yes, bonus for the pun and the kitty happiness :).
diomede64, thank you for the helpful info on NPR!
Dartanbeck, thank you for the Replica advice. I have it, but hadn't used it yet. Are there tutorials about how to use the advanced features (moving and re-shading instances?) Is there a way to morph replicated instances separately? And also, how does the whole thing affect memory use - is it the same as replicated items using the regular replicator, or does it actually create the instance of replicated items and eat up memory with it?
evilproducer and head wax, thank you for all the helpful information and kind comments in this thread!
I have Fenric's utility for 'copying' figures (items that otherwise cannot be 'duplicated') and I know that his just gives you a second of the same - not an instance. He explains it - "It's just as if you added it to your browser and dragged one back into the scene right away". Replica is different. From the very first time you 'play with it', you'll love its elegance.
Your questions on the subject are most refreshing, however, for now my curiosity is piqued - and more so that just your questions - I want to explore the tool to its furthest. Really get into the arrays and try setting up many different styles of array, etc., test to see what sort of footprint it's making on my system resources, see what happens when I change a shader, etc.,
Sorry to babble more... but this is too related to not mention right now:
I've used the surface replicator to place instances of the creatures in the image below. Carrara's standard surface replicator. Then I clicked the button "Create" in the replicator to go against the resources warning and to actually 'place' the instances rather than a replicated image of an instance. This leaves a group filled with the instances - each instance is grayed out - but I was then able to move them freely. However, I could not freely rotate their joints. I could - but they won't actually move - but their skeleton ghostly 'stick' would move - not the mesh. If I did so to the model that I replicated, it would show the change - and would so to all replicants as well.
In comparison, I'm fairly certain, but not yet positive, that if I had Replica at that time - I could likely pose each of them separately - and I have a sneaky suspicion that memory does NOT take much of a hit at all - compared to actually loading in separate models.
One more related, but slightly less so, blurb - I have a similar suspicion that the way Carrara 8.5 beta handles duf, if you're using Genesis - and you have a lot of additional morph shapes installed, it may take some time to load into your scene. But only once. When you load in a second Genesis, even if it was saved differently, it loads nearly instantaneously. So when the developers added Genesis support - I feel as if they've done a LOT more under Carrara's already impressive hood than simply adding figure compatibility. Just two cents worth of observations.
Okay, just checked. Inagoni doesn't mention anything about memory use, but the examples on this page are really cool! The images of array use in there is exactly as it appears in Carrara and is incredibly cool - simple pick and choose and set the number(s). I forgot to mention the thing about the "Replica Deformation Modifier" - where you can add "Replica" as a modifier to a mesh - you now have a replicator as a deformation! LOL
How cool is that?!!!
Edit: And, of course, a gif example of an animated replica array! ;)
First try:
NPR does not work for me, at least for the effect I want to achieve. I use it only to get the outline.
Instead, I've switched back to Photorealistic. The idea is to change all the shaders to "Wire" pattern, using the number and the width to create a shade of grey.
A bit of post-work to get a threshold and stay in Back and white.
Not yet where I want to go, but getting close.
I still have to get rid of the moiré effect. When I look to this full resolution picture, I think I need to use thinner lines.
Anyway, I carry on tests and keep you posted of the progress :-)
ha ha ha socratease :) I saw this last night and laughed so hard I nearly spilt the bottle of rum I was trying to open with my mother in law's teeth (she should know better to leave them lying around on the kitchen bench...)
You're welcome.
And thanks!
:lol: Great interpretation. :lol: I do want to see the cheeseburger caption there :)
You still need one more created/modified item in there (unless you created the walls, the floor or the dice yourself).
Will there be fur on the cat?
Right now stylistically it sits somewhere between a realistic image (needs fur?) and a comic strip cartoon (NPR?)
And yes, bonus for the pun and the kitty happiness :).
I was thinking of using Carrara text for a caption. if it gets one. I kind of left room for on the sofa.
It was just a rough sketch type thing. I have other ideas and might have time to test them too.
Thanks and glad you liked it.
We'll see where it goes.
This is a fascinating challenge - thanks to Antara for choosing it:)
Mine is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek look at how the '70's herbally-enhanced dream of Nirvana was sacrificed on the altar of materialism - hope there are some of you old enough to remember!
The setting is G2F on stage as Earth Mother
Still much to be done - my main reason for posting was to book a spot and ask for some advice.
Firstly, the water pouring out of the jug is seriously pathetic - any hints on some settings to make it less like goo? I recall Evil doing a good hosepipe - maybe you could share thesettings?
Secondly, there are some really dramatic skies in the presets that don't show up when selecting skies under atmosphere - they can be loaded, but when as a scene is introduced, they turn a flat blue - how are these used in a scene?
Thirdly, my old banger of a computer really battles with getting out a complex scene with good settings, so I have to render in layers and ?
composite - would that be considered as post-work, even if I only layered and didn't enhance in any way, as I have had to do with the hair in the red scene?
Great renders going on here, everyone - keep it up!
Hey Roygee, great concept! I'm sure I have the scene with the water coming out of the hose. I'll dig it up and post the settings for the particles a bit later. I seem to recall I experimented quite a bit with the particle size, dispersion angle, meta-ball influence and velocity.
Right now I have to go and fix a fence in one of my pasture sections. Damned beef cow figured out how to get between the woven wire fence and the electrified strand on top. That cow is like the velociraptor in Jurrasic Park- she checks the fences systematically for weaknesses. She remembers!
Thanks, Antara for the kinds words. It seems you caught the essence of what I am trying to convey with the render - very esoteric and heady. ;)
I would be happy to post a separate thread describing the ocean terrain and shader settings once I have made the final tweaks, when I have time in a week or so. I was already working on ship "wakes" when I posted the previous WIP, and have the basics complete. (See the detailed image attached.) Adding them definitely gives the perception of the ship moving through the water. (My wakes are additional small terrains against the bow and aft of the ship.)
I don't have the Terrain Tools plug-in, but will definitely look it up! Thanks for the hint! I will be adding a few more objects in which such a tool might come in handy! :)
As for the frigate, I pulled it from a free 3D website (I have to go back and find it now to give credit for my entry). It was originally a Bryce model. Surprisingly, it was not easy to port the file to Carrara, and when I did, a lot got messed up. So most of the work was to fix problems that probably occurred in the translation. After that was a number of shader enhancements (like getting ropes to look like rope and fixing texture maps) and reduce the number of shaders. Then I had to fix problems attempting to create more realistic sails and to properly map flag texture maps. Just a ton of tweaks.
FD
Did you forget?
Cows are merely the projection into our dimension of Vast Pandimensional Hyper-Intelligent beings and their bodies are not their True Bovinity.
In fact, they commissioned, bought, and paid for The Earth billions of years ago as part of an enormous computer program to figure out The Question to The Ultimate Answer about Life, The Universe, and Everything!
Let's hope the dang Vogons don't muck this one up too...
Some progress, but more setbacks - the limitations of Nonphotorealistic rendering are evident.
The biggest hurdle is selective transparency. By that I mean being able to set the transparency for a single object or the alpha/transparency.etc. of a single shader.
On the good, I solved the problem of M3's eyelashes by simply morphing the lashes into his head (had to hurt), and I narrowed his eyebrows considerably. I did all of the morphs on the "model" level in the vertex modeler - no "content morphs" with dials. I tried to give him that Victor Mature/Sylvestor Stallone type look. The armor and ankle grieves were modeled in Carrara and will be attached to M3 hip.
On the bad, and this is really bad, I am having no success solving the problem of clouds. In the attached, I tried to create a cone for the background - with shading domains for the background "sky" and the background "unformed sea/land" The idea was to use a spot and bulb light in the corner of the cone to match the heavenly light in the original. I tried to use the replicator to clutter the sky with dusty/dirty clouds and the land/sea with spongy/muddy/sloppy water. Unfortunately, without an effective alpha channel, or transparency, everything comes out looking like rocks. Even attempts to use default clouds or fog doesn't seem to work in the non-photo renderer.
If it isn't cheating, maybe I should use the photorealistic editor to render out the background I am envisioning with clouds, etc., and then plop that into the background for nonphotorealstic renderer.
I may be able to help with the clouds. Quite some time ago in the old forums, someone posted some vertex cumulous clouds they had made, along with a shader designed for them. It does utilize SSS quite heavily for the effect. If I can find the file, I can check to see if the creator of the clouds allows redistribution. Here's an example of the clouds in a scene:
Found the file! It's on ShareCG and is still available with unrestricted use:
http://www.ShareCG.com/v/41244/view/5/3D-Model/Cumulonimbus-cloud
Anyways... What you've done here is really good. I love the shader work and the way you've created your wake to the ship.
Hmnpf... you'd think that Bryce assets wouldn't be a difficult switch... until you see how Bryce works mesh! I don't do it - but I want to... one day. It's just a really cool app, and DAZ gave us a Free copy so...
But I've printed out the Bryce 5 manual to paper years ago and I flip through it every so often, I can truly see how, while some 'obj' export assets might work just fine. But if the item was made with Bryce's - what is that... a Booleans-style modeling system? - way of manipulating one mesh by defining another... just cool. "If this is on top - you'll have a hole in the ground. Move it below and the effect will disappear" sort of thing... different, fun, and... different!
Moral of the story - I'm glad you were able to get it to work! Easier on my fragile nerves to simply give Faveral some cash in exchange for a cool model! ;)
Sorry for carrying on so... I really like what you're doing here. Truly inspiring!
Evil. Thanks so much. That cloud does render in the NPR because it doesn't rely on transparency or alpha. I'm learning a lot by examining the cloud's shader settings. Not only does it use SSS, it also uses the glow channel and displacement. I think I might be able to use those same principles to create my own. It takes forever to render in NPR, though.
For those interested, some screen shots
diomede64, first of all... you Rock! Can I say that out loud? Okay.
Doing your own morphs on the model level... after my own heart there! Bravo!
Not sure if the Daz Studio Pro CCTs work for 3rd generation figure for making clothing actually 'conform' but I think it would - if you'd like to, one day explore that option... I know those instructions are for Genesis, and Phil Wilkes tutorial in Advanced Techniques is for V4, I'm sure that using Phil's method but substituting V4 with M3, should work beautifully! If you'd like to explore options on this stuff... let me know - maybe we can work together on it.
The clouds in your preview look too small - but I could be wrong. I think even more, is that the yellow thing is too bright and washing out the clouds. But keep in mind that clouds have falloff from the bounding box - so if they're too small, they never grow inward from the falloff - if that makes sense...
So you'd want to select that yellow thing, hold the Shift key, and scale that thing up and pull it back. Give those clouds some space to form - and then make them bigger, too! ;)
Hope it helps - but I might be way off track, too. The whole conforming thing - was just an offer - since I'm starting to get into that stuff. Armor is best rigid, right? Not all bendy! lol
Very interested, Very cool!
diomede64, first of all... you Rock! Can I say that out loud? Okay.
Doing your own morphs on the model level... after my own heart there! Bravo!
Not sure if the Daz Studio Pro CCTs work for 3rd generation figure for making clothing actually 'conform' but I think it would - if you'd like to, one day explore that option... I know those instructions are for Genesis, and Phil Wilkes tutorial in Advanced Techniques is for V4, I'm sure that using Phil's method but substituting V4 with M3, should work beautifully! If you'd like to explore options on this stuff... let me know - maybe we can work together on it.
The clouds in your preview look too small - but I could be wrong. I think even more, is that the yellow thing is too bright and washing out the clouds. But keep in mind that clouds have falloff from the bounding box - so if they're too small, they never grow inward from the falloff - if that makes sense...
So you'd want to select that yellow thing, hold the Shift key, and scale that thing up and pull it back. Give those clouds some space to form - and then make them bigger, too! ;)
Hope it helps - but I might be way off track, too. The whole conforming thing - was just an offer - since I'm starting to get into that stuff. Armor is best rigid, right? Not all bendy! lol
Hey Dart, I think he said the volumetric clouds don't work in the Non-Photor real renderer (NPR), which is why I provided the link to the vertex clouds.
The other thing I think he's doing with the clothes is attaching a standard, non-rigged mesh clothing item to his character by attaching it to the hip under the animation menu. It works well except for long skirts. I could be mistaken on that one though.
Glad I could help you out!
The cloud takes awhile to render in the photo real renderer as well. ;-) For me, the displacement isn't that bad to calculate, it's the SSS.
Another interesting thing about the cloud that I noticed is that the name is "metaball object" or something like that. I'm guessing that the shape was achieved using the metaball modeler and then converting it to a vertex model. From there, the mesh was clearly cleaned up and converted to quads. Maybe I should say instead, converted to quads, then cleaned up? ;-)
Yes, that is what I'm doing. But thanks for the links on Genesis and V4 content creation, Dart. I'm sure it will be useful in the not too distant future. I second the praise for PhilW and his great tutorials. I ahve the IPad app version, but not the working files. I'll experiment with moving the cone/frame back. If I get the cloudy/murky/sloppy primordial goop objects shaded and replicated correctly, the frame will be made invisible. I think the elevation choice may be a key in the shader tab.
Yes, that is what I'm doing. But thanks for the links on Genesis and V4 content creation, Dart. I'm sure it will be useful in the not too distant future. I second the praise for PhilW and his great tutorials. I ahve the IPad app version, but not the working files. I'll experiment with moving the cone/frame back. If I get the cloudy/murky/sloppy primordial goop objects shaded and replicated correctly, the frame will be made invisible. I think the elevation choice may be a key in the shader tab.
Cool. I'm planning on really practicing heavily on this subject - and hopefully running a thread here on the subject. The CCT in Studio helps a lot, and I believe it's the later part of chapter seven on you iPhone app. I just saw that recently at Amazon. Great deal! You can just follow his instructions and make your own working files! :)
Carrara has been getting a really bad rap for not being a very good modeler as long as I've been frequenting the forum. So I sort of ignored the idea of creating models. But I've been tweaking mesh and making simple objects so easily, that I wouldn't even think anything of it - it's just another natural flow of using Carrara. Now that I'm getting back into box modeling - and now with SubD - I'm finding Carrara to be an excellent modeler. Most 3d workflow that use Z-Brush or 3d Coat, etc., include building the mesh first. I'm not sure I'll ever get into the sculpting apps, but modeling in Carrara seems pretty full-blown to me.