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Carrara Challenge 3: PARADISE LOST AND FOUND. Work In Progress (WIP) thread.

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  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,989
    edited December 1969

    Philemo wrote :

    HI,

    This is an update of my attempt to produce an engraving looking image for this challenge.

    So far, I’m heading this way :

    All objects are shaded with the pattern wire. The width of the wire is giving the shade of grey.
    Shaders has a high highlight, to give more contrast to the final picture.
    The is only one light, place roughly over the camera and pointed to the centre of the scene.

    I

    that's a fantastic effect. congrats. now with diomede's technique I wonder if we could make a hybrid of the two.'

    @Socratease : - I thought I did scaryily disturbing renders :) No sleep for me tonight!

  • SockrateaseSockratease Posts: 813
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    @Socratease : - I thought I did scaryily disturbing renders :) No sleep for me tonight!

    What is this "sleep" of which you speak?

  • SockrateaseSockratease Posts: 813
    edited December 1969

    Antara said:
    Sockratease, I'm not surprised your boss took the gif and ran with it. :) It looks pretty good already. And probably more sophisticated than what people he was showing it to were expecting.

    I am in neuroscience. But I only had to use my 2D graphic skills so far. Mostly to prepare figures for papers and posters and to train researchers to use Gimp and Photoshop.

    The fractal face looks mystifying and unsettling, especially with the eye. But your fiancée has beautiful eyes :).

    I'm looking forward to seeing the cow entry... finally! :)

    I'm not allowed in Neuroscience. I keep trying to read people's minds. Using the Braile technique!

    And yes, I love those eyes too! They give a nice contrast to a strangely fascinating fractal.

    I was a little confused by seeing entries posted in this thread with titles and all the usual entry stuff - I wasn't sure if there's be an actual entry thread because of that. I agree the entry thread should be kept free of comments until the deadline passes - then opened up for funzies. Some contests have a dedicated vote thread too - just to make vote counting easier (we need that Poll feature for things like this!).

    And... OK, fine. Ya figgerred out that I was in some sort of scientific line of work, but I still wanna know what tipped you off!

    Was it the Puns, or the Cow obsession?

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,989
    edited December 1969

    Sockratease said:
    head wax said:
    @Socratease : - I thought I did scaryily disturbing renders :) No sleep for me tonight!

    What is this "sleep" of which you speak?

    ha ha .. it's the thing I pretend to do when my wife drags me away from carrara at 3.oo am .
    I try explain to her that somewhere in the world is really 5 oclock in the evening, but she will never listen....

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    Stezza said:
    Antara, thanks for your very kind words.. I'm glad you like it..

    As for the image specs.. several lights were used with soft shadows and varying degrees of brightness and colour, the fire was a hit and miss affair till I got to where I liked it..

    The smoke are just the basic clouds found in Cararra and stretched and squished till I liked what I got. When finally finished the render took around 30 minutes to do.

    BTW, your image just blows mine away... real feeling with that atmosphere of dreamlike state, I wonder if she is dreaming about what she is reading.. though I would rather a maltese terrrier cross to a cat but that's just my preference :)

    Thank you! I am very impressed with your technique and render times here. several lights with soft shadows, sky light, smoke, fire, a bunch of trees, grass and several fully clothed M4 figures and it was still half an hour to render! Wow. That's some serious magic right there. And the most important thing, it actually looks like a render that would have taken days, because of the quality and realism.

    Did you place the lights inside the fires?

    And thank you for your comment. I think her dreams are happy, and probably more interesting than the book :).

    Jonstark said:
    Antara, I just wanted to say that I mistook your theme in the render at first; I thought it was someone who had passed on, not sleeping, which actually would also fit the contest theme as it could be interpreted as either paradise lost (for the life left behind) or paradise found (for what's to come next).

    Regardless, it's a beautiful render and it definitely grabbed me.

    Thank you!

    Ah, I knew the cat wasn't there just because I like them :). I think the cat would have been much more upset and agitated if her owner passed away, so now, I guess, the cat is there to let us know that all is well in the world and she is just sleeping :). And I think she's way too pink and full-bloodied to be dead :) But thank you for pointing out this possible interpretation to me.

    OK, fine. Ya figgerred out that I was in some sort of scientific line of work, but I still wanna know what tipped you off!

    Was it the Puns, or the Cow obsession?

    I'm afraid the answer is much more prosaic. You've mentioned an EPA inspection at the lab. :) We had ours a month ago, so it was easy to figure out :)

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Sockratease said:

    And... OK, fine. Ya figgerred out that I was in some sort of scientific line of work, but I still wanna know what tipped you off!

    Was it the Puns, or the Cow obsession?

    Maybe because you said it in another thread? ;-P

  • SockrateaseSockratease Posts: 813
    edited December 1969

    I was just curious because I was asked if I worked in the science field - but if I said all that (and I really have no idea what I say anymore - it's just too much to keep track of!) then the question was answered before it was asked, thus my confusion.

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,989
    edited December 1969

    well finally getting close to the end with this one, using Philw's excellent new Carrara product Portrait Studio, Age of Armour's (Carrara) Studio Paris and Fenric's Carrara plugins Shader Doctor and Tree Duplicate amongst others.

    Doc1.jpg
    2000 x 1350 - 2M
  • GarethGareth Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Final WIP image (just a few things changed)

    Credits:

    All objects made in Carrara's vertex modeling room-

    Girl
    Dog
    Teddy
    Horse
    Bird
    Fence
    Haystack
    Flower
    Tree
    Windmill
    Rainbow
    Foreground terrain
    Hills.

    The distant mountain was made in Carrara's terrain editor.
    The Grass is Carrara Hair.

    cgtextures.com and GIMP 2-

    One Concrete and one Fabric texture from www.cgtextures.com (highly recommend this website) and textures for the girls top, dress, bow, and teddy, haystack AND rainbow was made in GIMP 2 (also highly recommended) http://www.gimp.org/

    All objects except for the terrain are using YAToon plugin for Carrara 7 pro from Zgock (and yes, also highly recommended) http://carraracafe.com/downloads/?did=28

    :)

    WipFin1.JPG
    1874 x 992 - 493K
  • GarethGareth Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    well finally getting close to the end with this one, using Philw's excellent new Carrara product Portrait Studio, Age of Armour's (Carrara) Studio Paris and Fenric's Carrara plugins Shader Doctor and Tree Duplicate amongst others.

    So many great looking objects and details! i like how only the shopkeepers arms are in the scene, really puts you into a child's perspective. :)

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    well finally getting close to the end with this one, using Philw's excellent new Carrara product Portrait Studio, Age of Armour's (Carrara) Studio Paris and Fenric's Carrara plugins Shader Doctor and Tree Duplicate amongst others.


    Wow, another great scene and idea. I wonder what your final entries will be like :). By the way, do you own Shader Ops2, or Sparrowhawke's Edge falloff? (if not, the later is available here: http://www.sparrowhawke3d.com/Sparrowhawke3DLaboratory.html ) I am asking because I think some of the toys could benefit from a bit more velvety/plush shaders. And wither of those plug-ins will allow it. This image also looks like a great environment to unleash AnythingGoos onto :).

    But the image is already great. I agree with Gareth: the composition is perfect, and the shop owner is very appropriately there, but just out of view. And even such great image full of joy and wonder you've managed to make dark and spooky stylistically. I am amazed.

    Final WIP image (just a few things changed)

    Credits:

    All objects made in Carrara's vertex modeling room-

    Girl Dog Teddy Horse Bird Fence Haystack Flower Tree Windmill Rainbow Foreground terrain Hills.

    The distant mountain was made in Carrara's terrain editor.
    The Grass is Carrara Hair.

    cgtextures.com and GIMP 2-

    One Concrete and one Fabric texture from www.cgtextures.com (highly recommend this website) and textures for the girls top, dress, bow, and teddy, haystack AND rainbow was made in GIMP 2 (also highly recommended) http://www.gimp.org/

    All objects except for the terrain are using YAToon plugin for Carrara 7 pro from Zgock (and yes, also highly recommended) http://carraracafe.com/downloads/?did=28

    :)

    There are flowers and trees and birds and a whole windmill?!! They are not visible in the WIP, so now I can't wait to see the final image!
    And I thought all those boxes were just additional grass.... And I already love the image and composition, so now I am really curious about how it looks with all the added elements. You are a real master of suspense!

    And I very much agree with your recommendations. :)

  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    Here's my final WIP before doing some post work in Gimp. Will be titled "Aquarius" - trying to catch the spirit of the innocence of the dawning of the age of Aquarius, before we sacrificed it on the altar of materialism.

    Apart from layering the flowers and butterflies, no post work as yet.

    The figure is Genesis 2 Female - all the rest, including shaders is all mine own work :)

    Let's see - 3 types of rocks replicated, water jug, water pouring made in the VM, dynamic hair - that takes care of the 3 object requirement.

    Evilproducer kindly gave me very good settings for pouring water and it worked well - saved as a preset, but when loaded into my scene, it was totally different. After battling for hours to get it back to the original form, I gave up and mapped a water texture from CG Textures onto a bent and tapered cylinder.

    The flowers and butterflies are pics taken off the internet (public domain stuff) made into sprites and shot out of separate particles emitters.

    Any advice to improve gladly received before going to press:)

    AquariusBlueFinal.png
    800 x 600 - 695K
  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    Roygee said:
    Here's my final WIP before doing some post work in Gimp. Will be titled "Aquarius" - trying to catch the spirit of the innocence of the dawning of the age of Aquarius, before we sacrificed it on the altar of materialism.

    Apart from layering the flowers and butterflies, no post work as yet.

    The figure is Genesis 2 Female - all the rest, including shaders is all mine own work :)

    Let's see - 3 types of rocks replicated, water jug, water pouring made in the VM, dynamic hair - that takes care of the 3 object requirement.

    Evilproducer kindly gave me very good settings for pouring water and it worked well - saved as a preset, but when loaded into my scene, it was totally different. After battling for hours to get it back to the original form, I gave up and mapped a water texture from CG Textures onto a bent and tapered cylinder.

    The flowers and butterflies are pics taken off the internet (public domain stuff) made into sprites and shot out of separate particles emitters.

    Any advice to improve gladly received before going to press:)

    Great atmospheric and moody scene (not dark moody, just emotionally moody). The water looks great! In actually very surprised it was created with such a simple solution. Great job!

    As to possible improvements, I can hardly come up with any, especially since you'll be adding postwork anyway, so you are probably already planning things like splash droplets for the pouring water when it hits the water plain.

    If I really went picky with it, I would probably shift the composition a bit to place the female figure more on the left-hand-side vertical third of the image. There is an easy way to do it in Carrara: View->Production Frame...->set to 33.33333333 then View->Show Production Frame. This will create a smaller rectangle in the middle of the frame, which will denote the middle third, and it's sides would fall on the left, right, top and bottom third-lines of the image.
    Normally production frame is for title safe, but I use it as composition-aid all the time. Especially since it can be changed back and forth at any point to serve as both if need be.

    The reason why I'd want her slightly shifted is to give a greater space for water to pour out, I think it would have a stronger visual dynamic for the pouring.

    Also, did you render out all the passes? :) If you did, than in post, you might play with background a bit. Right now it darkens towards the horizon and forms a sharp-contrast line with the water line. It feels airless this way - no distance fog or haze. Might be intentional, but if not, adding some distance fog in post might be an easy fix.

    I look forward to seeing it finished. :)

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Your picture looks great so far!

    Sorry about the particle emitter settings giving you grief!

    There may be another alternative! If you look back at the Bikini Car Wash picture, the water coming out of the sponge the Asian girl is holding is something I whipped up in the Meta-Ball modeler. It used the same shader that I applied to the particle generator.

    Even if you don't want to mess with it in this picture, it's definitely a good idea to crack open the Meta-Ball modeler and play around a bit to see what kind of shapes you can come up with.

  • cdordonicdordoni Posts: 583
    edited December 1969

    evilproducer said:
    Here's my latest idea for the contest. It's still in the WIP stage. I call it The Apple, and it's supposed to be a call back to the Genesis story but with a Darwinian twist. Also, how could I not put in an homage to, 2001: A Space Odyssey? I guess I'm wondering if the obelisk is too obvious? Should I place it so that the viewer sees it, but maybe doesn't realize they see it at first?

    I'm also posting screen shots of the apple I made and the shader. I like how it came out. The colors could be a little more subtle, but I wanted to draw the eye to the apple, which is why I'm wondering about the obelisk.

    what obelisk, I thought it was an iphone?

    Great image BTW

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited August 2013

    cdordoni said:
    evilproducer said:
    Here's my latest idea for the contest. It's still in the WIP stage. I call it The Apple, and it's supposed to be a call back to the Genesis story but with a Darwinian twist. Also, how could I not put in an homage to, 2001: A Space Odyssey? I guess I'm wondering if the obelisk is too obvious? Should I place it so that the viewer sees it, but maybe doesn't realize they see it at first?

    I'm also posting screen shots of the apple I made and the shader. I like how it came out. The colors could be a little more subtle, but I wanted to draw the eye to the apple, which is why I'm wondering about the obelisk.

    what obelisk, I thought it was an iphone?

    Great image BTW

    Hmmmm..... Now I'm going to have to hide an Apple logo on it somewhere...! ;-)

    Post edited by evilproducer on
  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,989
    edited December 1969

    Gareth Davies said:
    head wax said:
    well finally getting close to the end with this one, using Philw's excellent new Carrara product Portrait Studio, Age of Armour's (Carrara) Studio Paris and Fenric's Carrara plugins Shader Doctor and Tree Duplicate amongst others.

    So many great looking objects and details! i like how only the shopkeepers arms are in the scene, really puts you into a child's perspective. :)

    thanks Gareth et Antara :)

    Gareth, you will have to start giving us all modelling lessons :)
    I grew up box modelling and carrara's lack of a knife tool drives me to extrusion :)

    Antara, thanks for those suggestions! I didn't realise sparrowhawks plugins were working with Carrara 8??
    I have anything Goos but really haven't had enough time to play with it after the first few weeks where I used it on everything. !
    I'm more inclined to do things in post or on the texture map itself as I feel I have more control.
    But If I get a chance I will have a play- thanks for suggesting that.

    BY the way you are doing a grande job Hosting this challenge, thank you!
    It's a difficult job, considering all the threads about carrara 8.5 floating around.
    Me I have to wait till the dust settles to play with 8.5 :)

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,989
    edited December 1969

    @Roygee (why do people put an @ before people's names?) Must be like San
    So

    RoygeeSan, your image is spliffingly psycho dellicaica !
    I think you really need to move butterfly 673 an inch to the left, but otherwise it is working wonderfully :)

  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    Thanks for the suggestions, Antara - you are correct on all counts:) So my ancient, uncomplaining PC is in for another long night of hard work - the render took 6 hours.:)

    EP - no, your settings worked great - just something went wrong when saving as a preset. I'll have to look into that because I really want a good water emitter in my presets. Will have to go into the meatball modeller to make some droplets for where the water hits the surface.

    Headwax - well spotted - that pesky butterfly just will not stay put - just keeps fluttering-by.

    Cheers:)

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    head wax, Yes, Sparrowhawke's plug-ins are working in Carrara 8, at least some of them. He has the special downloads version of them on his site. And I have been using my generic velvet shader which uses his Edge Falloff plug-in in Carrara 8. It's a very cool plug-in.

    AnythingGoos is also great. And I actually quite like the control I have with the settings. For a little bit of wear on the edges I sometimes just do a mixer on the diffuse channel with the same map, only I reduce the brightness of the one used for the edge to about 75% and add fractal noise to the noise channel of the AnythingGoos in the mixer.

    And thank you! :)

    Roygee, if part of what's slowing down your rendering is SSS on the female figure and the vase, then if you will be rendering out the passes, do consider adding the color you are using for SSS into the glow channel instead. (unless you are using glow for your particles, or are you rendering those on a different layer altogether?) Then in the passes just change the layer mode of your glow channel to soft light and play with its opacity. It will save you hours of rendering and will give very similar results. You can also play with ordering your fake-SSS-glow layer above and below the shadow layer to get the desired effect.
    And I commend your patience! :) 6 hours for a render... I'm too impatient these days to wait that long. Unless I can leave it overnight.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    @Roygee (why do people put an @ before people's names?) Must be like San
    So

    RoygeeSan, your image is spliffingly psycho dellicaica !
    I think you really need to move butterfly 673 an inch to the left, but otherwise it is working wonderfully :)

    The @ symbol is historically pronounced as "at." So when you type, "@ Roygee," you are directing your comment, at Roygee. It's phonetic shorthand. It's much easier to press the shift key and the two key, together, than to type the "t" after all. ;-)

  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    Many thanks for your advice, Antara - I'm really learning a lot from you :)

    No SSS at all, although I do have glow on the vase - I'll bear your advice for faking SSS in mind when I get to post work. I did something dumb like leave the default full indirect light on - when redoing, it only took an hour, with better results. Haven't had the time to play around with all the multipass layers - my priority was to get acceptable renders safely tucked away before the 8.5 Beta times out.

    Sadly, our currency chose this time to go into free-fall, so an upgrade would cost twice what it would have a week ago and I won't be able to justify this extra cost for a hobby until it gets back to normal. Such a pity - it is a real bargain in Dollar terms, but too pricey in local money :(

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    Just a quick note to let everyone know that the

    Finale Entry Thread: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/28208/

    is now open for business :). Please read the rules and post your entries. Please post any comments about the entries HERE, and NOT there. Let's keep that thread clean and for entries only, so it's easier to look them over all at once.

    Good luck everyone! :) And don't forget to post your WIP's here if you haven't yet done so, or if you've got another one to show us :).

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Okay, here's a my WIP of my second entry with hair added. I had to do a little bit of postwork on it because for some reason it came out dark. I must have changed something with my lights and forgot about it.

    Eating-apple-w-hair.jpg
    2000 x 1500 - 778K
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Roygee said:
    Thanks for the suggestions, Antara - you are correct on all counts:) So my ancient, uncomplaining PC is in for another long night of hard work - the render took 6 hours.:)

    EP - no, your settings worked great - just something went wrong when saving as a preset. I'll have to look into that because I really want a good water emitter in my presets. Will have to go into the meatball modeller to make some droplets for where the water hits the surface.

    Headwax - well spotted - that pesky butterfly just will not stay put - just keeps fluttering-by.

    Cheers:)

    I just had a thought about the particle emitter not working. In the particle emitter editor, you should be able to exclude the particles from colliding with individual objects. Try excluding the pitcher they're pouring out of from collisions with the particles and see if that helps. If my suggestion's not in time for this picture, maybe the next time.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,173
    edited December 1969

    I agree with others about liking the toon shaded version better. Great stylistic choice!

    If you’d like to submit that one as your final, I see no problem with that. This is a WIP thread and we are still far away from the deadline.

    Also not for this challenge, but I really like your NPR render of the second scene. It has a very realistic charcoal effect! Could you share more about your setup for it? What are your shaders like bump-wise and what are your settings for the NPR?

    Antara. Thanks for the kind words. Yes, I'd like to use the toon shader version of my "Two Tickets to Paradise" entry, if possible. The charcoal style render was the result of using the Nonphoto renderer. The brush was spotty and had a lot of white space. Instead of using the object color, I used a mid-gray color from the color picker. I upped the transparency setting in the brush tabs. I think you could lighten or darken the image more by shortening or lengthening the brush stroke percentage. In that image I didn't have much in the way of bump maps because it was just a quick render of an existing file, in order to demonstrate a render that could be added as one element of a black and white composite to be combined with Philemo's photoreal wires-shaded renders. Sorry I can't remember the exact settings. Traveling a lot.

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    Sure thing, you can go ahead and post your entries (the ones you choose to be final, and if you want to add some final tweaks, you are welcome to) in the entry thread here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/28208/

    For those who have already posted final entries with all the necessary information in this thread, as I promised in the rules, I offer my services in re-posting those final entries into the final entries thread. However, this measure was created for those who might be busy in this last week of the challenge, and we wouldn't want their entries be missing from the contest just because they missed the final entry thread. But to allow people to make changes up until the last minute and not to penalize those who posted their final entries early by effectively giving them less than a month to complete the challenge, I will only do the re-posting at the very end, on the deadline, right before I post "challenge closed, no more entries accepted" announcement.

    What I am trying to say in this messed up way:
    If you posted your final entry info in this thread, but still want to make some improvements or last minute changes - go ahead, and just post your really final entry into the entry thread yourself when you are done (as long as it's before deadline).

    When the deadline comes along, I'll go through entries here, and if they are not yet posted by the author in the final entry thread, I'll copy them over there.

  • StezzaStezza Posts: 8,071
    edited December 1969

    I was going to make a final adjustment to one of mine but now I can't.... Carrara 8.5 pro serial says is invalid and I can't open the program.. I've been deDaz'd! :-/

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,229
    edited December 1969

    yes, just as I was about to look into posting something finally

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    There is still a week left. And hopefully they will fix the SN issue within a day or so. I think everybody is affected, so hopefully they will make fixing it a priority.

    If the issue persists, however, please let me know whether deadline extension is in order.

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