"Simulate Physics" button (and bonus, OBJ export!)

michaelcarter

Hi all - on a 30-day trial, trying to decide on this or C4d... I do like the price of Carrara... OSX 10.7.5, Mac pro, tons of RAM...

"Simulate Physics" button - I got a cool physics thing going first try. Clicked the top-left simulate button per the (Carrara 7 - huh??) manual included.

Good start, stuff flew around in the wireframe view. But... how do you turn it OFF? The wireframe just looped and looped endlessly, each time I got the "calculating physics" yellow progress bar, which did calculate things instantly. But the program was totally locked up. Tried clicking the button again, the space bar, command-period, the "stop" button in the animation panel. Nothing. Had to force-quit. Nothing I can find mentions turning things off.

And (maybe this should be its own thread)... I can export simple OBJ's and re-import, no problem. They won't import into anything I have. No errors given, but Blender, C4D Lite, and After Effects just act like nothing's imported. (AE crashes in fact) when I try to import a Carrara model. Only carrara like its own exports.

I can export OBJ from Blender and import back into blender, C4D and AE. Is something funky with Carrara's OBJ export?

Thanks for any advice.

Dartanbeck

I can't note on the physics, but when I export OBJ for use in creating clothing and hair to set it up in DS, it works fine. But with any program, you do have to pay attention to scale and other considerations. For me, I uniformly scale down to 1.042 % of the original mesh in Carrara, making it mostly invisible now, and then export using the Poser preset during OBJ export.
When bringing into DS, I use the Poser preset there, and it pops right in as expected - but this would not be so if I didn't scale it first.

I usually do nearly everything to everything within Carrara, so this is all I can report so far. I guess I'm saying that because, while not perfect in some ways, Carrara to me has been the blessing of a lifetime as far as animation software is concerned. I love how I can purchase DAZ 3D content instead of having t build everything myself, yet I love being able to build everything myself! I've never tried C4D but one of my Carrara buddies left for it and has only come back to say hi a few times - he really likes it.

I just saw a tutorial where the artist was using Maya, and that jut made me drool! But I do believe that I'll be using Carrara and loving it for the rest of my life. It's like it was built for what I need it to do.

dot_bat

I am having the same problem with .obj files from carrara to hexagon. hex cant read them, but carrara can. im on a mac running 10.6.8 on a mac mini

DUDU

The only button that I use to stop it is “Esc”…
If it is a very elaborate simulation (many objects to calculate), it takes time to stops, patience!
If you are pressed, “ctrl-Alt-Del” and you stop the program, it is for that I always make a safeguard before a large simulation.

michaelcarter

Thanks Dudu - esc. is the one key I didn't try, I'll give it a shot. Can't find anything in the docs.

And thanks for the OBJ notes, Dartanbeck. I'll try the scaling.

I've been using Carrara since it was Ray Dream, then through the Eovia period. It's always been a little (or a lot) buggy, but I like that 8.5 still has the very simple modeling I'm familiar with for fast stuff. I've done a lot of broadcast spots with Carrara elements keyed in. C4D is much more standardized and powerful though, but if I can do modeling and wrapping in C4D, and get that stuff into C4D Lite, I may be set. I do TV spots, corporate vids, music vids and AE's link with C4D is pretty life changing for effects without an EFX house.

I fear the next thing that will have me pulling hair out is UV wrapping and unfolding. Carrara's docs are really weak in that regard.