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Wow. Is there any software you don't know how to use? ;)
Very cool. Feeling excited about branching off into more directions. It does have the unwanted side effect of slowing me down - when I already have limited time. But the hopes are that it will make my workflow work more to my advantage, allowing me to do things more efficiently and more how I envision things to look.
It's kind of difficult for me to figure out exactly what the actual price would be to get a non-subscription form of Octane going. It wouldn't bother me if this required the dongle, which is what it kinda seems like. But then to figure out whether the Carrara plugin requires a subscription or not... I haven't truly found a solution.
Would be nice if I could just grab the subscription and be done with it, but that is definitely not a doable option for me.
There are other types of subscription plans that do work in favor of someone in my position, where the plan grants x number of downloads per month, which we can keep when the subscription lapses. But to invest in something as important as a render engine workflow and have it simply not work when I need it most is absolutely out of the question. That's Adobe, and I won't have it!
Good to know that the Octane environment isolates/supports presets as you describe. If it's comprehensive, that's a major win.
re: purchasing: I've been looking into this too, and the dimensions of the current Octane seem to go something like:
- you need a base license (standalone capabilities?)
- you need an App-specific plugin
Now the main site shows both a 'rent' option (subscription - I don't do subscription either!),
and a 'buy' option, that *looks* like a rental as well, but the maintenance period is simply support and free upgrades if released in that time-period. 12mo and 24mo. With the exchange rate, it looks like it's about $800 for the base + a plugin w/ the year of maintenance.
And ... *that's* why I don't own it yet either!
But if I can save $50 per month in DS content spending... (talk about a tough row to hoe), I could pull it off with b-days and Christmas in under a year... heh. Or I could win the Lottery along with you!
I still think it's a killer option for your workflow, allowing you the creative control you know so well, with the top-notch rendering.
We can hope/plan as we get our respective productions setup and ready to render...
best,
--ms
Another consideration, ms:
I've been using Daz Studio to render things that are simply too incompatible for me to mess with in Carrara. That's how I found OctaneRender in the first place - and it works great for that.
But when I'm in Carrara, I really do treasure the Texture Room capabilities with that incredible Carrara PR engine.
One thing I love about Carrara's native PR over Octane is the vast difference in lighting possibilities.
Iray and Octane make it Uber Simple to get better looking skin, I think - Iray especially. But if I try to perform my usual atmospheric lighting and density, I don't think anything is as friendly as Carrara.
I really like Carrara's render engine. Yes, I'd love to have Octane for Carrara, but until I start getting paid for art, that number is just out of the question for me. But for me, the render engine is not what sent me to add more options to my workflow - it was figure/asset compatibility, and I even went at that with an open mind to just drop it if I didn't want the headache of pursuing the change.
Animating cameras in Daz Studio is a nightmare to me compared to the super-simple tweener adjustments and graph editor tools we have in Carrara.
What a huge difference!
So I really like to keep as much of my workflow within Carrara as possible.
It's funny how the tools used for graph editing key frames in modern filmmaker software are far more akin to Carrara's than to Daz Studio's, and DS has been claiming to be making strides in animation features and functions - yet it's still vastly behind what Carrara has had for a very long time now.
But on that note, Daz 3d developers put some nice work into that last 8.5 upgrade that I've just loved! Especially the way we now get a bounding box around key frames, and we can drag the bounding box itself to alter what the key frames ar doing. I use that a Lot!
That said, however, if I had $800 disposable cash laying around, I'd have Octane in my cart right now!
ditto, lol.
but to your earlier points, someone in here just posted some of the best Carrara rendered skins I've ever seen. (sort of a 'you gotta be kidding' moment for me).
perhaps it's another case of 'in the right hands', rather than the silver-bullet tool sort of thing.
humbling and inspiring,
--ms
Like This, you mean?
those were the ones... pretty-much mastering the medium, those shots.
(we don't need no stinkin' Octane :)
--ms
True. But if I would happen to get it, I'm fairly certain I would use it ;)
Something about these Real World Renderers - lights seem to be more constrained to the real world like behaviors, whereas our ray tracer allows us to cheat for dramatic effect, which I really like - and miss whenever I've been using Octane or Iray
It's probably just my inexperience, however. That's one topic I didn't ask for any help with - just dabbed in the dark... until it wasn't dark anymore!
it's subtle, but i did use the word 'need' on purpose.
i still 'want' Octane (oooh, more shiny!), i just don't 'want' to pay that much for it (even if it's a fair value...).
i clearly suffer from 'silver bullet' syndrom, and jonstark proves that by carving out some time (instead of browsing the store... again...) and having some smarts, the tools I already have can do most anything I want or need them to do.
me-thinks my current toolsuite is not what's holding me up, heh. but i'm actually getting some good stuff done, so not all is as dire as i make it seem. it kills me how long everything seems to take, so i complain, and seek more silver bullets.
cheers,
--ms
That was actually one of my things since I've first started all of this: I knew that chasing "photo realism" really drags my render times - something I picked up on as a Poser user. Turn down some of the render quality settings and reduce the texture map size, also opting for less of the fancy sub-surface, etc., and I could get render times a lot more manageable.
Then I bought Carrara, and went at using it the way I used Poser at first but was amazed at
Anyway,
I still carry out the tradition of going for faster renders and less photo realism.
Have I told you that the texture maps on Rosie, Dart, and most other figures I use are one quarter their original size? I also still usually render at Object Accuracy = 2, Shadow Accuracy = 4 and Anti-aliasing set to Fast?
Well then when I designed Rosie 5 I created my own quasi-SSS in the form of nested maps controlling the translucency channel of the skin and teeth, but still use those much smaller maps and the low render settings - always telling myself that I can bump things up a bit if I need to do an impactful closeup or something.
For several of my first years in Carrara, between the 'having fun with renders and animations' I was devising how I could make simple, fast lighting work with shader channels and render settings to give me a look that I was happy with, and I kinda like the simple look I've created. It's nowhere near photo realism.
This is the original Rosie 5, but with an experimental version of the hair (that fails in animations - just wiggles wildly) with my usual, simple render settings mentioned above
It's still going to be a little while before I jump in and install Bryce 7.1 Pro and learn to use it, but I've decided to begin a section about it to help get my head into gear.
Daz Zone > Bryce is a new section on my site that will grow as I learn.
For now it has a pretty decent start. I was working on it's pages as I awaited renders.
I've also started a rather fun new beginning to my "Do It In Post" section, which was always there but mostly empty. It's got a decent start going for it now too, namely the addition of the Action VFX area.
Let me know what you all think.
I've also written another short article regarding how Content has driven another piece of my story.
Rosie and the Winter Wolf tells all about the experience I had - filling a hole in my story with a side quest generated by seeing items on sale for prices even I could afford!
The original article regarding Content-driven Story was What Happened on Odysseon Station, if you haven't seen that one,
You are so prolific it is always hard for me to keep up. I will be checking out your new additions. Keep up the good work.
Thanks Diomede! :)
Ah man, thanks guys, those kind words make my day. Especially since I consider this thread: Eye Caramba https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/169816/eye-caramba-for-v4-and-m4/p1 ; to be the definitive realistic approach to eye shaders ever created, mindsong. Also the skin in those posts looks pretty freakin' incredible too.
Thanks for that link! It's awesome to have that here where we can grab it!
Jonstark, man... there really aren't enough kind words. You truly are a great inspiration, my friend!
Well now This makes me feel much better about all of this. I would say "less bad" instead, but I don't feel bad that I haven't released a movie yet. I feel as if what I've been doing over the past ten years is essential for me to get where I want to go.
It might be different if I started with a degree in 3D animation computer science, but instead I began as an over worked stone chiseler trying to learn 3D art with limited free(?) time. Thank you Rosie, my Treasure, for putting up with all of this with a smile for all this time!
Anyway, part of my learning process took a major shift - filmmaking. The 3D CG learning curve is one thing, but to all of a sudden come to realize that I don't really know the first thing about making movies hit home a few years ago.
When I went to VFX school, my eyes were opened to how many filmmaker concepts I had absolutely no clue about. During that training, however, we were given resources for further study. I saved ALL of my course material, all of the videos and links - discovering how "Green" I really am in this field.
One such resource is Ryan Connolly, more precisely his YouTube channel: Film Riot, where he takes his knowledge as a Full Sail graduate filmmaker and passes it on to the rest of us with helpful insight, entertaining skits and examples, and so on. I've spoken of him before and will do so more as we get into all of this, because he shares invaluable education on pretty much every aspect of filmmaking.
I just started watching an interview with him from Action VFX, the professional VFX stock footage creators that I use to get effects from, and within the first five minutes of that video, he explains why we's fine with the fact that he hasn't released a Feature Film yet:
Since there's so much about what I'm doing that can be learned from his channel (I certainly have, and still do), I've finally put together a litle Film Riot page within the Gallery > Inspirations section of my site
Film Riot
This video strays from topics that I normally seek out on the channel, but like to watch just because this is really interesting stuff to me. Ever see how they're filming the Disney+ Show, The Mandalorian? Here he's showing new tech that even allows budget filmmakers use a similar technique.
The short film that got me into Film Riot in the first place!
Holy wow, that projector is fantastic!
2" away from the wall? Are you kidding me? So Awesome!
New post in my filmmaker thread regarding progress on an upcoming release:
The Production
I know that there are a lot of Carrara users who prefer to reward themselves if Everything in the shot was realised in Carrara - and that's cool. In fact, I used to think that I absolutely had to do things this way, so I learned a great deal about how to get a lot done in a single render - and eventually some tricks on how to use those renders within Carrara so I could build on top of them with other rendered effects.
But for me, that was all before I decided that "if I'm going to make a movie, I should probably try and learn something about making films", so I started with a course offered by Norwich University of the Arts - VFX for Guerrilla Filmmakers, which really opened my eyes to the fact that filmmakers and VFX artists need to use any (Any) software that helps them to tell their story/realise the proper effect, etc.,
Funny that the course used the free Ecpress version of HitFilm to teach us how to perform many visual effects processes because it wasn't too long before that when a Carrara forum member (I believe it might have been Milo, followed by encouraging posts from Wendy) was talking about the release of HitFilm.
I still have HitFilm Express and have licensed myself to every version. HitFilm Express can only be installed on a single computer. But they allow us to have the newest version on one computer and an older version on another, which is really cool!!!
I saw this video while I was in VFX school. It's a video that came out before HitFilm was even released. I'm fairly certain that they didn't even have a free Express version back then. This particular effect didn't come with Express, but I absolutely had to have it, so I bought an expansion pack that included this as part of the pack. I also bought the one that comes with the lightning that we catch a small glimpse of in this video as well.
This amazing fire is a procedural effect and is incredibly versatile. As I've had my nose to the grindstone as much as possible with animating, simulating and rendering, I haven't been doing much with VFX until it comes time to do some kind of a demonstration video, so they've been kind of rushed and incomplete compared to what I'll be doing in the final product - which is fine. All things in due time.
It does bother me that my time for this has been so limited. I'd prefer to have a lot more frequency to my showing off what I'm doing, so this time I'm attempting to get enough footage (rendered material) done to be able to have more flexibility toward presenting... something.
Anyway, this older HitFilm demo was created by my HitFilm VFX instructor from the course I took at Norwich. Simon Jones was awesome to work with and fun to llearn from!!!
I really hope that this helps to show "Why" we don't need to rely on Carrara alone, and how nicely our Carrara endeavors can be enhance using tools like this.
HitFilm is (to me) like a DaVinci Resolve sort of software that uses a "Layer" approach instead of Fusion's (DaVinci Resolve's VFX Compositor) node-based system.
I love them both. I had a hard time getting into the nodes of Fusion mostly because, like I said above I wasn't to that stage yet, so I wasn't getting my practice in. Like Carrara, these tools all require practice to get better at. Well when Resolve 15 came out with Fusion built into it as a separate working page, Fusion became a lot easier for me to use. It's still nodal, but the process is streamlined with a more simplified, casual-user-friendly interface - whereas the standalone Fusion is still the high-end VFX artist studio it was in the past... only better.
So two posts up is a demo of HitFilm's Procedural Fire effect.
Let's take a look at a rather fun, cinematic tutorial using it and other effects.
Note: I do not have the 3D add-on* nor do I have the Particles add-on**, so I couldn't perform this in the same way - but I do have Carrara, so I don't really need to! ;)
* Simon uses "Ultimate", which comes with everything - no effects add-ons needed.
In this, he's using the 3D Import aspect in order to bring in the model used to create the background scene. Background scenery done in Carrara is what I do - so I don't need that.
** Simon's using the 3D Particles to make the sparks collide with and bounce off his hand. I'd be doing this directly in Carrara
Compositing animation clips together is very much like working with layers of an image in Affinity Photo. We can do a quick job that looks okay or perhaps not, or we can devote time and a good dose ove Thinking Outside the Box to make it look better and better as we work.
We always have to be mindful not to overdo it, which is easier to screw up than one might think - and it's also easy to fail to see that something just isn't right. The more we learn and practise, the more we know what works and what doesn't along with common mistakes that we need to watch out for.
The video two posts up from this one, where Simon does the Fireball in the Hand effect, shows us how to use a Tracker to lock one effect to the movement of another.
This is immensely useful, and it's the Key to being able to work in layers of video to produce a final piece of work.
Particles in Carrara is a very powerful workshop for making special visual effects. Yes, it's perhaps dated due to Carrara's older school means of working display modes not allowing us to get even close to a real time visual example until we render, but the little sparky preview in the Particles workspace can give some clues (but rarely help for what I'm trying to create), and working smaller scale until we get the proper simulations going still leaves this to be a very powerful, useful set of tools.
When this is the case and we're using Carrara particles, even if I don't render the particles with the main render, I'll at least still use the same camera, so I don't need to track anything, it just lays into the workflow.
BorisFX's recent release of the free Particle Illusion Standalone software is a real game changer.
With multitudes of presets, an artist might get everything they need for all of their work without ever having to create a single particle system. Even more, the presets (and I mean, there are a LOT of them!!!) are also very good for 'getting closer to' what we need for our custom visual effect, so we can start with a preset and simply make changes to fit our needs.
So for this, I like to create my external effects in a way that makes them as flexible as possible, so I can use them for much more than just a specific shot, as in the above Carrara example.
Once I've created the effects, I can use the same methods Simon is using to track something in my Carrara render, and attach the particle simulation to that tracker, so that everything works together as it's supposed to.
Particle Illusion is Very Real Time, and easy to work in, especially if we take the full course of free Getting Started videos. For many visual effects, I'm taking on an approach of making several completely different effect shots that can work together - making them each even more useful for more use. A good example being something like fire. I'd start by just making the fire, then another fire that's slightly different, then smoke, then another variation on the smoke, and then sparks in a few variations.
I'd still use Carrara for the glowing embers animations, and tweak their intensity and overall look and timing in PD Howler.
The point being, Using Carrara to make as many things as possible for the whole production is fine, and very doable - even if we do it all in several individual scenes that all get combined using something like HitFilm, DaVinci, Vegas, CyberLink, etc.,
I know that it can be hard to "imagine" working in this way, since it feels so much more natural, real, and easy to be able to 'see' and develop everything as it will show in the end. But it's really not.
Trying to build everything into one complete scene isn't very hard. I've spent most of my years working that way. But that's truly also part of why I haven't finished anything yet. All it really takes is to have that final render to fail or just look bad, and all of that time is now gone. Not wasted, just gone.
If it helps, try using simple primitives or planes with pictures on them to place things that would require particles or some other moving effect - just as placeholders that can be turned off at render time.
Even if we want to do everything in Carrara, it's still ultimately helpful to render moving or otherwise animated effects separately, as individual elements, and then applying them as a layer in the video software.
You'll soon discover that "Aha... I don't need to create that effect because I already rendered a few of them!" sort of moments will become more and more frequent, and truly a reason to celebrate!
And finally, if you like, Carrara can also be used as the visual compositor!
In something like HitFilm or Fusion (DaVinci Resolve), we'd be adding the fire, smoke and sparks to the main beauty pass render.
We can do that in Carrara as well - add the effect to a plane of the same dimensions as the aspect ration of the rendered effect!
My default render dimensions are 1280 x 720 (720p HD) so to scale my plane for such a shot, I go to the Motion tab, enter 12.8 and 7.2 into two of the axis. This will make my rendered effect the same dimensions, so then I can use an overall scale to resize the plane to fit the scene.
The hard part comes when we need to use volumetric effects with these planes. Transparency and Volumetric Effects don't like to intersect in any software, it seems - not just Carrara. Sometimes we can still get away with it. But sometimes, too, it may not look like there's a problem until frame 97!
To solve this, we can perform the parts that need volumetric effects ahead of time, and put those on a plane as well - even if it includes a major portion of the screen. As we start eliminating things from the scene and replacing them with planes, the renders become more and more instantaneous per frame - and this is where my main point to this post truly comes to fruition!
The more we can render lightly and efficiently, the more we can actually get done. And when renders are going fast like this, we're less likely to feel put-out to make a change and render it again if something isn't quite up to our standards.
So we're getting faster, better renders and getting more done. The more I practice this approach to things, the easier it becomes.
Yep, I'll still try and stitch together something I've carefully planned out only to discover that I made a mistake, and have to render a new element, but that's not nearly as common as just truly getting better at framing up what needs to be seen, getting the lighting set up, and shoot that render.
Let me know what you think/ how you work.
These techniques are relatively new to me - putting some of the skills I've learned in VFX class to good use. So I'm still learning new tricks for this all the time.
Wow this is such an amazing thread! Really need a few weeks to go through it! So many gems, so little time.
I like Genesis , main problems is it blows out the carrara 2.5 ? Gig limit so easily