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Has quite a bit of very useful info, well worth bookmarking.
My Workflow for Genesis and Genesis 2 Characters
Recently saw DarbyO'Gill and he Little People. Inspired to create a leprechaun character. Thought it might be a good point of departure to share my workflow for this sort of custom character. For a Genesis+ character that I intend to use often, I typically save the character as a Daz Studio preset (scene subset) and the conforming clothes and hair as presets (wearable presets) in the Daz Studio content folder. That holds down the claim on disc space, I believe, and the figure gets any morphs that I add, unlike a figure saved to the Carrara obj browser, which have their available morphs frozen at the time of saving. I get the skin shader the way I want for Carrara, and then save a global shader to Carrara's browser. Do the same for the clothing and hair. When I start a project, I load the figure from the preset tray, drag and drop the global skin shader, load the clothing and hair from the preset folder, and drag global shaders to each. There are some exceptions, for example if I am using Carrara dynamic hair and it has not been converted to an obj, or if a clothing item is intended for VWD.
Here is an example using G2M to make a leprechaun.
Here are some screenshots of
- my Daz Content Library Presets folder for the G2M Leprechaun
- My Carrara object bowser for the corresponding OBJs.
Two versions of the Hair/Beard
There are two versions of the hair/beard. One is Carrara dynamic hair. The other was converted to an OBJ woth Philemo's plugi, then made a conforming figure for G2M using Studio's transfer utility. The obj is better if I want to use the toon filter or th NPR render engine.
Here is the untextured obj version of the hair/beard
Workflow VWD on multiple characters in complex scene
Invite suggestions. Here is one way I've tried to deal with multiple drapes on my custom folks in the same image. Pose and drape and each figure separately. Save the pose as an NLA clip. Convert the draped cloth to a primitive and then back to a vertex object. Create an empty correction morph for the draped converted cloth. Save the converted draped object. Repeat for each figure.
Start a new scene. Load each figure and load its pose clip in ts NLA track. Load each saved draped obj cloth. Use animaiton menu to attach each cloth to its figure's skeleton. Arrange scene. If need to makepose adjustments, crate a new NLA track for that figure and create a new editible pose clip. Default is override mode so the new NLA clip will override the existing. Adjust figure pose, attached cloth should follow. If there is minor poke through, use the vertex modeler in posed position to adjust (which is why te empty morph was created).
Ted, I like your leprechaun more than Floyd
Thank you I included Floyd for reference to scale.
+1 on that.
though I don't have Floyd ( sorry Floyd )
awesome work as usual @Diomede_Carrara
thanks for that work flow :)
a few questions for my addled brain :)
Q: why do you make the obj a primitif and then back to a vertex object?
Q: when ypu attach obj as a figure - how do you go with the fall off zones etc?
Q: often my VWD cloth is full of ugly tris which show in the render - even if I smooth it - but increasing subdivison doent help, if subdividing too much before sim VWD spits the dummy ;)
Q: In VWD I have a simmed cloth but I want to adjust it by doing a still drape - not animated drape - at that frame - I think it always wants to do frame 1? any clues on getting it to do the still drape at a certain frame
I did a lot of multifigure images for the hugo ball show. I just did them individually with a four second animation
then joined them up in one scene and rendered out a still at the four second mark.
ps love the leprechaun too :)
Thanks for the comments on the leprechaun. Wil use in the Its Raining Men event.
I like that is creates a new static prop that can be loaded in a single frame, edited, and attached to a skeleton.
I make sure to create one morph zone and one empty morph. Sometmes, it is best to correct problems using the morph, sometimes with the weightbrush alloff zones. Just case by case.
I select the objec and then use the untriangulate function most of the time. It doesn't fix all problems, but it helps. Morphs are preserved even with untriangulate.
Here is the same G2M leprechaun but I've used Genesis instead of Genesis 8 to shape the Darby O'Gill character. Simpler for carrara. Millenium cat with the real fur product. Checking my libraries for a barn or hayloft for the setting.
kitteh render put sheldon's kitty song in my head
Thanks Diomede, cheers ;)
NLA clips, or use Studio as a plugin to create and save poses? Have been experimenting with the latter recently. Workds for characters created from full bodymorphs of geneis figures, but not convenient for my custom Carrara-rigged characters. Never have gotten Wendy's FBX export and reimport to work.
maybe Wendy can give us a simple example
A Little Frustration with Replicators for a Forest - suggestions welcome
Trying to create pieces to replicate a forest. To ensure undergrowth, I tried placing the tree on a small terrain, duplicating and replicating some foliage around the base, and saving the group to my browser. Experiencing a couple of frustrations.
1) For some reason, my saved small terrain will not preserve the "local" setting that I have for one of my blenders. It keeps getting reset to global when loaded in a new scene no matter how many times I save the local.
2) The edge of the small terrain is visible if the large terrain has steep portions, or I have to make the the small terrain more steep than I would like.
err, strange about the shader, what if you save it out to objects then reimport?
the small terrains, I would convert them to mesh then add thickness perhaps? bit clunky maybe - or you could duplicate the small terrain, expand it a bit then make it invisable, and use it as a replicating base for a bunch of leaves that would camouflage the edge
alternatively where those small terrains are - get rid of them and add a fairly discrete displacement map to the big terrain - and also use that same displacement map to generate where the trees and leaves will appear, should be a lot smoother?
for the leaf scatter I just did this.... takes 3 minutes ..
insert your terrain
duplicate it and rename it then convert it to a vertex model
select the polys around the base of the tree... invert selection then delete.. add a surface replicator and add your leaves to it using the polys as the surface.. hide the surface so only the leaves appear in the render
Render....
Thanks for the suggestions, guys. Focusing on the big terrain and combining a displacemen map with the replicator placement map may be the way to go. Stezza and I think alike. That leaf placement is how I placed the grass around the base of my tree. What I am doing works fine as long as the terrain dos not transition too quickly. The problem is that using the slope parameter in the replicator can prevent placing a tree ON a steep slope, but it can't prevent placing a tree NEAR a steep slope. Here is an example of my approach working fine because the slope changes relatively smoothly. M4 is there for scale. The tree is relatively tall (50 feet). I've replicated the tree wit its smaller terrain and bushes base on a larger 500 by 500 terrain The hot point is high enough along the trunk that no edges can be seen.
Here are some screenshots of the workflow. Maybe something can come up in an intermediate step.
- I created a small uneven terrain with zero edges.
- I used a shader mixer with an alpha map set to elevation to get rid of the bottom square corners.
- I placed the large tree (50 feet) on the small terrain.
- I used the plant modeler to make a couple of smaller bushes to place around the base of the tree. (M4 for scale)
Similar to Stezza's leaves, I replicated some long grass and wildflowers around the base of the tree. I duplicated the small terrain, reduced its resolution, and converted it to a vertex object. I deleted the polygons where the tree and bushes were. I also deleted the crater polygons. I replicated a few different grass plants on the augmented small terrain copy. The result from a couple of angles.
The combined tree, bushes, and grass was saved to the object browser. I then loaded a larger terrain and replicated this combined tree element.
I would not just replicate this tree on a terrain by itself. I intend to combine with a variety of similar elements to create forests, parks, and similar. All of the shaders right now are procedural. It will look better with better shaders.
Decorating a tree with tinsel
Here is one workflow for decorating a Christmas tree with tinsel. I use the vertex room curve polyline tool and Phlemo's hair-to-mesh conversion plugin.
more
mmm that curve tool looks fun for maybe drawing on clothes on figures too.
Cool idea. Also, it would be one option for a mummy's bandages or a captive's ropes or similar.
Some Thoughts on Rigging in Carrara and in Studio for Use in Carrara
Have been working with more of my silly toon figures. In this case, the placement of the head where the chin overlaps the chest causes some rigging issues. I intend to use in Carrara, but rigging in Studio has some advantages (and challenges).
Here is the base model, which will be morphed and props added to make various character. When I rigged in Carrara, the initial bone placements resulted in problems where the chin overaped the chest.
Here it is rigged in Studio, where it is easier to control the initial assignment of polygons to bones, and then loaded in Carrara. I have selected the waist bone when loaded in Carrara so you can see the rotation circles (X, Y, Z) are correct for the selected joint.
Unfortunately, rigging in Studio creates its own challenges. For example, I forgot to delete the root bone. More importantly, the chest bone is not vertical, by which I mean the rotation circles are not aligned correctly.
The Hands rigged pretty well.
Here is an interesting tip. The eyes are rigged to bones. However, being flat, I don't want to rotate the eyes. Instead, I just want to slide the Iris/Pupil over the white area. If rigged in Studio and loaded in Carrara, you can unlock/unconstrain the polygons from the bone so they can be translated. Uncheck the box for protected/constraint.