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These are somethings I was working on in iClone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhF86BOj-pQ&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPqjUVAWVe8&feature=youtu.be
I'm not 100% sure, but I think that this was made with Carrara:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUu1YKFCgPA
iClone test -
http://youtu.be/sXUdG4oNRD4
I guess I misread a post much earlier on. I thought that you were looking for pre-made expression animation things.
It is my opinion that animating expressions is not really software sensitive. While some software applications, like iClone 5, have some nifty tools built in to help you on your way, the actual creation of expression is really up to the individual making it happen.I am totally into Star Wars - The Clone Wars.
Right from the very first episode, including the movie, their ability to express feeling in 3d just blew me away!
When I made these, most of the expressions were thrown it, sort of, simply to help round out the animation shots before I rendered them. All of these clips came before the Browser animated expressions folder I mentioned earlier - and the videos themselves are made of junk test renders. One trying out Windows Movie Maker Live, which I didn't like at all compared to the version I had in WinXP Pro, and the second was testing Sony Movie HD, which I loved using and bought it in their Platinum Suite that came with a bunch of stuff:
Quick Mimic Test on Rosie - Rosie is my main Hero. In this, I just grabbed one of the wav files that came with mimic, added it, never read the directions yet, so didn't do any adjustments at all... this was just the results of the test.
Previsual Renders - junk test renders used to test Movie Maker Live
Just a Bit of Fun - Test Renders used to test Sony Movie HD
I haven't added to my collection lately at all. I haven't been animating but creating assets and testing other things. But every now and then, I'll open up one of my characters and express them in various ways (animated - I feel that I suck at stills) and save the results, batch queue them up and render them out. See how they look.
It took a long time for scientists to finally decide upon the true amount of time that one second lasts. When I find myself trying to get an animation put together, I often start with less thought of timing, but what all of the shapes I want in the shot need to be. So I give myself and the tweeners plenty of space. This is my favorite thing about using Carrara. The timeline allows me to just grab and drag.
So then, when I do concentrate on the timing, I go to the mirror and listen to how slow a single second is on my watch as I perform my actions. When I realize how silly I'm being - the fact that I'm exaggerating and being far too slow, I find that a lot can happen in a single second of time.
But when it comes to "Do I use Carrara, Poser, DS, C4D, Maya?" That question, I feel, has more to do with which files you prefer to work with - how much you like or dislike the interface. Expression timing and animation remains to be something that we all need to work out on an individual basis depending upon the needs of our project.
Here are the aniBlocks I was talking about earlier. Even if they don't exactly fit the face morphs you're using, the at least give some timing and dial action to begin with. So then, to use the aniBlock importer for Carrara, they all end up as keyframes that you can edit to your liking ;)
All of these are by SimonWM:
Victoria Alive - Secondary body motions & musculature aniBlocks for V4
Michael Alive - Secondary body motions & musculature aniBlocks for M4
Expression and Face aniBlocks - facial expression aniBlocks for both M4 and V4
Genesis Expressions and Face aniBlocks
Genesis Alive
MORE Genesis Expressions and Face aniBlocks
I do mine by hand, but I thought about getting all of the above, from time to time, just to have some assistance in that department.
Hmmm...
It's been some time since I've actually sat and watched these, as I just did. Being an entirely uneducated animator just starting off in Carrara 8 at the time, I really kinda like what I made at that point. Especially starting from around 3:15 of Just a Bit of Fun, where she's in her martial arts routine. A lot of faces being made in there, and I recall going through and doing that, too... it was fun, and I had to check back and forth to see if the tweeners were going to mess me up - but all in all, I did her facial work really quickly, simply because of the reasons you've mentioned in your original post. After that sequence, and Rosie finally meets up with Dartan, the looks that come off of her remind me of the real Rosie in an amazing way - simply because of her facial expressions. I also always try to convey expression through body language.
I bought the Figures, Characters, and Avatars book from DAZ 3D, which is how I acquired Carrara 6 Pro, and an upgrade to 7 Pro, which got me Carrara 8 Pro free as soon as it came out - which granted me the 8 Pro beta, which is where I started in Carrara, not long ago. 2010, I believe it was. The book came with a disc with DS 2.3, Hexagon, and Carrara 6 Pro, and a whole slew of DAZ 3D's usual healthy dose of fun, useful content. I love DAZ 3D for many reasons, and they've given me more dollars worth of product than I've ever paid for, which is top-notch. That's how I got M4 and V4 and all of their great morphs and character shapes.
It was that book that really helped me to learn a lot about general animation and posing as well as framing techniques, composition, etc., which has also driven me to look back at my other art studies from when I was growing up. It all helps when it comes to trying to animate a vision. I have also studied a great deal on the internet, but it's often words from Les Pardew (author of the book) that ring in my ears as I work on my scenes.
I certainly don't claim to be professional, or even good. But I like what I do, and I've grown a lot in how to animate my heroes since those test clips that I used to make those videos. I still haven't learned mimic, but I have printed out, and read the pdf manual that came with it, which has taught me that, Carrara and mimic together are perfect for animating my individual characters, since I can very easily individualize their facial behaviors 'before' I ask mimic to make them talk.
As for the body motions, I like to use aniBlocks from GoFigure, and rip the keyframes apart, and tweak them into my own. That's when I'm not simply making the motions all myself, just keyframing everything in - which is another reason that has made Carrara my choice software. I just find animation to be easier for me to work on, and predict the outcome.
I really love this for inspiration! Watch Cripeman's presentation first, then "Painting with Fire"
Another really excellent topic put forth by the Cripeman is this:
Special Presentation: Eadward Muybridge - Grandfather of Animation
Speaking of Cripeman, he is one excellent source of Carrara optimism. So mush so, that I've started an index of all of his wonderful videos, which was the whole initial inspiration towards making the Carrara Information Manual thread.
► Cripeman's Carrara Video Tutorials Index
Carrara Community's very own Super Hero takes plenty of time from his busy life to
explore many exciting features of this amazing 3d content manipulation, modeling and animation suite
Thank you Dart for this post.
I had not seen it, I like the tutos of Cripeman, he learn to me so much, although he speaks a little quickly for a French-speaking person...
Your compil is in my favorite now...;-)
I love it myself... I'm always heading to that index and watching cool Cripeman Shows!!! :)
EVERYONE!!!!
First of all thank you very much for the insight.
I never asked a question on how I wanted to animated, the only realy issue was if I can use Carrara for my project (this was my only real question)
I was also looking for video's, shorts etc that anyone made in Carrara, just confirm my earlier question.
I think the other guy said it right " I was all over the place" I agree to a point, when everyone chimed in the decussion grew and took on its own direction
and then it became a multi disussion. I dont have a problem with how I want to animate character or facially. I say again just that if I can use Carrara for what I want it for
I am also aware and have AE and the plugins for it, I do have pros and cons (here we go lol) about post production effects, I can make them pre I would rather do so.
I am also reminded about possible render issues when doing so, etc.
Again I will keep in mind all that has been said, yet I am confused about going to C4D, etc. I would if I could of imported a stable character into it and not have to recreate it after import
thank you for the link
http://bond3d.wix.com/carrarators
Right. That's why I posted my older videos, just up a few posts from here, that show some expression animation. I just wanted to make it clear that, although there are expressions in there, I wasn't yet fully focused on doing so at the time. But I'm pretty happy with a lot of them.
Another still, this animation, thanks to Carrara, rendered out at less than a minute per frame, and the expressions from a concentrated worry to a forceful struggle of might turned out amazingly well!
Carrara can render really, really fast. When I was using Poser, I really liked its ability to render. That's not what drew me into Carrara. But in order to get my animations out, I really had to dial back the settings. Using the Carrara default setting except with a higher resolution, Carrara cranks! Most artists would never except the idea of using these settings for their work. But I have been optimizing my stuff to work with these low settings. It really helps me to get my animations done.
This helps as well I was concerned about the output and since you are "CARRARA" :-) I can go forward with the knowledge that
Thank you.....
Did you try and watch any of these? I'm just wondering if any of them help with your original post.
Not as of yet, to be honest I am taking your word on this, all this information I have seen and the stuff I found you acquired for everyone has made me feel I can go forward with using Carrara.
The above still is some new animation work that I'm putting on my table in a serious manner, just to help show more of my animation ideas, and to help with a Carrara Cafe article I'm writing about animating in Carrara.
If someone deserves the name: Carrara, I doubt that would be me. Age of Armour did that super-awesome sequence at the beginning of the Carrara Demo Reel, where the 'C' in Carrara gets cut out of the metal logo and drops to the floor. Love that! He also does the Cylons and many others in their. Then evilproducer's scen (very short, but very sweet) comes in with the airplane flying in. Dimension Theory, although has mostly gone DS now, has done some amazing things with it and McGuyver constantly blows my mind, as does bigh and many others around here.
I'm just overly enthusiastic about Carrara, is all. I can't help it though. Everything I want to do in it just seems to please the tar out of me while granting me passage to success of what I was looking for. Kinda nice, I think. I really wasn't expecting Carrara to give me this much joy. I may have had it since around 2010, but with long, hard labor hours in the hot sun for most of the year, I really didn't get a whole lot of hours with it. So I still consider myself a newbie. A very enthusiastic newbie with a good handle on what I want... but a newbie, nonetheless ;)
When I read about the headaches involved with importing Poser/DAZ 3D figures into other software, like LightWave, C4D and others and, even more so, being able to use them as expected afterwards, like conforming clothes, adding props, using the rigging without having to make a new one... (I mean... who wants to do that?) it reminds me of why I wanted Carrara so badly in the first place. The copy I saw in use was Carrara 5 Pro, where the guy had a DAZ 3D figure loaded in with clothes and hair on her, and was double-clicking on poses from his runtime, which was added to his browser! I had to excuse myself and ask him what software he was using!
Since then, using content has really expanded. Carrara's tools have expanded. All I wanted was Carrara 5 Pro - but I ended up with Carrara 8 Pro, 64 bit and I've been a happily buying PC Member ever since that day - so I have gobs of content at my disposal! DAZ 3D and all of their published artists, as well as some from Renderosity and RDNA are my asset creation department. And they work for cheap, really. Movie producers would be paying thousands for one of Stonemason's products, not the 20-40 that I get to have it for.
They also have some support animation crew that assist me from time to time, as I've linked to above.
DAZ 3D has some fine quality assurance, which has kept me happy. I love how when I grab the tip of the finger and bend it, I get what I want. It bends, without the headaches of weight mapping issues. Sounds like an "of course" type of statement? Well rigging and weight mapping may not be the most difficult things to do in this world, but they can be very time consuming. And after spending gobs of time to get things just right, you can still find issues several test runs through later. Predatron 3D sells his awesome gems for what, twenty bucks? Some are a tinge higher. But those figures have built-in animation dials that are an absolute joy to work with! And I am just excited about a goodly many more artists here as well!
So that helps me to get my animations done.
Carrara, having the absolute best import behavior for this sort of content (not including Poser or DAZ Studio) is an incredibly powerful feature for me. I would never get anything done if I had to model everything myself, then UV Map it, then texture it, then rig it.... Hey! When do I get to animate? That's why I'm here!!! LOL
Not as of yet, to be honest I am taking your word on this, all this information I have seen and the stuff I found you acquired for everyone has made me feel I can go forward with using Carrara.Awww, come on!
At least check out Just a Bit of Fun
I saw the glow on the creature, it caught my eye big time, I will saying thank you, to you forever I see (I dont mind doing it) I am sold, now I can start knowing I cant end up with a product I always thought I could have
Not as of yet, to be honest I am taking your word on this, all this information I have seen and the stuff I found you acquired for everyone has made me feel I can go forward with using Carrara.Awww, come on!
At least check out Just a Bit of Fun
I am not sure why, but fine I saw it. I told you you proved to me I can stay in C8 and make my project real. I very much enjoyed the short's and saw somethings I hope you will share with us (if you haven't already) I will now go thru the rest and see what I missed, again tyvm!!
Not as of yet, to be honest I am taking your word on this, all this information I have seen and the stuff I found you acquired for everyone has made me feel I can go forward with using Carrara.Awww, come on!
At least check out Just a Bit of Fun
Wait!, you are responsible for this!! Why in the name of (breathe, lol) did you add the music DAMMMM! lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RtId5wqb-A
BTW: you made a part one shader video and you made mention of part two (where is it?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvc4mvcDSys
So no part 2?
I'll probably write the thing up. That was my intention in the first place.
Here is an example of GTA5's realism (yes, some glitches, its a WIP):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHL8XYs1W0I&feature=c4-overview&list=UUlMEK10oWdfqx6NaNAGJtFA
Can some one tell me why certain M5 characters wont import into Carrara (Benjamin/James)
Zantac,
I don't think they are characters. They are shaders that you apply to M5. You have to have M5 loaded first. They may work on the basic Genesis figure, but I'm not sure.
I may have said it wrong, yet I am saying this due to I created the characters in DS and was able to import into iclone and other places (Maya/c4d)
In Carrara I hid the skin areas covered by clothing etc. I am finding when rendering the skin in a isolated model (female) there is a slight poke thru. How can I make the skin not show during render (I am aware of editing the morph to fix this) I wanted to see if there were other options
You could use a shader with an alpha channel. If the whole domain area is covered by the clothes, say the thigh domain is under pants and poking through, you may be able to apply it just to the thigh domain. If that is not practical, like a breast is poking through a V-neck shirt, you may be able to use the 3D paint tool to paint the offending areas to define where the alpha is applied. If you have to do that, it will probably just be quicker to adjust the mesh. I prefer to adjust the mesh of the clothing, rather than the figure.
Also, 3D paint is a Carrara Pro feature, so if you have Standard that option is closed, unless you upgrade to Pro.