Calling Fenric.

Headwax

just a heads up - the brilliant time saving Fenric has released a bundle of his work available together

http://www.daz3d.com/shader-power-tools-for-carrara

I have all of these and they are all magnificent tools to make life so much easier

also ringo's store 40 percent off for a short while

http://www.daz3d.com/ringomonfort

EddyMI3D

Hoo hoo hoo - Santa was (already) here ;-)

Steve K

head wax said:

just a heads up - the brilliant time saving Fenric has released a bundle of his work available together ...

Thanks for the heads-up. I'm a big fan of Carrara and Fenric, but I'm not sure I understand these tools. Can you give an example or two of how you typically use them? Thanks.

Dartanbeck

Steve K said:

head wax said:

just a heads up - the brilliant time saving Fenric has released a bundle of his work available together ...

Thanks for the heads-up. I'm a big fan of Carrara and Fenric, but I'm not sure I understand these tools. Can you give an example or two of how you typically use them? Thanks.The first thing to know is: Edit > Fenric
From there... BAM!

Yeah... big fan. Fenric has made my version of Carrara - for I will never use it without his plugs. Ringo, too. Thank from me too, Head Wax! :)

wetcircuit

The "shaders" show up in the shader tree...

The "action tools" are almost all under the EDIT menu in the Assembly Room...

Headwax

Steve K

to see the destructions visit Fenric's site - google "fenric carrara" - sorry can't give a direct link.

eg when you bring in a Poser human charactrer etc to Carrara it typically has a ridiclous shine/highlight, sometimes has no bump, and uses multiply in the colour parameter. Choose the Figure, hold doan the ehift key , go to edit>fenric>shader doctor, and a window will come up to allow you to set parameters for all the shaders in that figure. So for exampl enchanted forest ( http://www.daz3d.com/the-enchanted-forest) would take you half an hour to fix all the shaders. Fenrics plugin does it in a second or two.

Shader Doctor

This is a one-click solution for automatically adjusting shaders after Poser content is loaded into Carrara. This is specifically intended for the Multi-Channel Shaders created by Poser imports and will not necessarily give desireable results with Carrara native content or Genesis.

All selected items, and all child items of selected items are operated on.

Operations:

Runs the Carrara “Optimize Shader” command to remove useless shader data (such black color reflection)

Removes “multiply” from the color channel for texture maps.

Removes incorrect “add” from the alpha channel when a texture map exists.

Sets the Highlight to 15%

Copies the texture map to bump if there is no bump.

Adjusts the bump amplitude so that anything under 15% is set to 15%, and anything over 90% is set to 45%.

NEW: Hold down “shift” while starting the Shader Doctor to display a dialog box that will let you optionally specify the highlight, shininess, and bump amplitude. Check the box beside any value you wish to specify. If you leave a box un-checked, then the shader doctor will continue its standard processing for that value.

NEW: The Skin Doctor command will tune human skin textures, including eye shaders! This generates high-quality Sub-Surface scattering shaders by default, but hold down “shift” while starting the Skin Doctor to generate simpler shaders without SSS.

another one of Fenrics enables you to change the saturation, hue, light dark, etc of a texture map. This saves me heaps of time otherwise I would have to find the texture load it up on Ps, then save it out as a new texture, then find it via Carrara and apply it to the shader channel.

another plugin is selection changer - available at Fenric's store - this will save hours of work if you use carrara a lot especially in large scenes where you have everything grouped and cannot see joints etc in the instances tab as they are not collapsed... hope that helps!

Stezza

are these the same tools that are available from his website?

Shader Doctor
Skin Doctor

are there any differences to what is available on his website?

thx

Dartanbeck

Stezza said:

are these the same tools that are available from his website?

Shader Doctor
Skin Doctor

are there any differences to what is available on his website?

thx

Yes. From what he said earlier... it's a bundle of what he has available at the Den.

Fenric

Same stuff, bundled up and slightly discounted.

Selling at DAZ involves a good deal of effort. In order to be worth the while at all, I need a product package that is worth the trouble. The problem is that if I try to do it all at once it gets depressing. That is also the reason why the current DAZ offerings are a bit schizophrenic, with utility commands mixed in with shaders and tweeners in an effort to get enough content in the package to make it compelling.

So, in this new model, I make small individual components and sell them at my site. My loyal fans who want these things right away can have them, and that encourages me to keep on working. Once I have enough to make a product, I'll bundle them up for DAZ. This way, I can have far more consistent DAZ products and I don't have to go a year between releases.

Want things now? I'll have them one by one at my store as I write them.
Want things cheap? They'll eventually show up at DAZ in a bundle. Might take a while, though.

Steve K

head wax said:

Steve K

to see the destructions visit Fenric's site - google "fenric carrara" - sorry can't give a direct link.

eg ... ... ... hope that helps!

Yes, very much, many thanks.

Headwax

Steve K said:

head wax said:

Steve K

to see the destructions visit Fenric's site - google "fenric carrara" - sorry can't give a direct link.

eg ... ... ... hope that helps!

Yes, very much, many thanks.

great :)

Headwax

Calling Fenric, would you mind taking a look at this ? Please, http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/50637/

Headwax

Hi Fenric,

idea for plugin.

In shader room, when we have texture loaded, if we select the parameter with the texture (and hover mouse key over it? from memory)
we can see the directory tree of the location of the texture, but then we have to go and look for it in My Computer etc. (I use google desktop)

Is there any way to arrange it that double clicking the texture would

a) load it up in our choice of image editing program

or
b) open up the folder with the texture map in it

or
c) perhaps in the assembly room arrange a hot key so that a selected obj/model 's textures would be opened up in our image editing program??

thanks for your thoughts

regards

TangoAlpha

head wax said:

Hi Fenric,

idea for plugin.

In shader room, when we have texture loaded, if we select the parameter with the texture (and hover mouse key over it? from memory)
we can see the directory tree of the location of the texture, but then we have to go and look for it in My Computer etc. (I use google desktop)

Is there any way to arrange it that double clicking the texture would

a) load it up in our choice of image editing program

or
b) open up the folder with the texture map in it

or
c) perhaps in the assembly room arrange a hot key so that a selected obj/model 's textures would be opened up in our image editing program??

thanks for your thoughts

regards

That would be *SO* useful!

EddyMI3D

head wax said:

Hi Fenric,

idea for plugin.

In shader room, when we have texture loaded, if we select the parameter with the texture (and hover mouse key over it? from memory)
we can see the directory tree of the location of the texture, but then we have to go and look for it in My Computer etc. (I use google desktop)

Is there any way to arrange it that double clicking the texture would

a) load it up in our choice of image editing program

or
b) open up the folder with the texture map in it

or
c) perhaps in the assembly room arrange a hot key so that a selected obj/model 's textures would be opened up in our image editing program??

thanks for your thoughts

regards

I would prefer b)

Because you usually have a set of textures (diffuse, alpha, bump, highlight etc) for a certain object (area). So you have all at once.

On the other hand, there could be some different texture/material folders for just one object (e.g. a V4 with an Elite skin, Endless Eyes and fingernails from another character...)

A simple step would be, not only to show the texture filename, but the whole path below the preview image.
And the possibility to paste and copy it.

Have a nice day,
Eddy

Headwax

thanks for the feedback on that Tim and Eddy :)

Headwax

Greetings, don't know if fentic is still out there, hope so.
Woke up this morn ( lucky me) and this epiphany

Wondered if we could organise a shiort cut keyboard thingy so once you selected a figure, you could hit eg the key 'r' and have the figure's right hand selected? Etc so maybe 'h' for head, l for left hand etc, would make workflow much quicker once the shortcuts were set up

Fenric

Yes, I'm lurking around. Spring is my busiest time at work, and popping in to say "well, not strictly impossible, but enough work that I'm not interested" is not much incentive :)

This time...

Something like that would actually be possible, yes. A shortcut key that activated "quick select", which would then take the next keypress and use it... that is quite do-able, and not at all unreasonable to do. I'll look into that, it's been too long since my last release here at DAZ.

Headwax

thanks Fenric, really appreciate you considering it, your plugins have made my Carrara life so much easier, thank you .!

Fenric

And anyone who cares about toony stuff, go look at RDNA - I have re-mapped Littlefox's "STAR" to V4 :)

In the forums, Toon section.

Headwax

Hi Fenric,

 

Poser 11 has a new parameters palette window where you can drag and drop dials to commonly used parameters into a window .

Any chance we could have one in Carrara (ie can you make us one please ;) )

 

 

http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?101952-Let-s-Talk-Custom-Palettes

wgdjohn

head wax said:

idea for plugin.

In shader room, when we have texture loaded, if we select the parameter with the texture (and hover mouse key over it? from memory)
we can see the directory tree of the location of the texture, but then we have to go and look for it in My Computer etc. (I use google desktop)  [EDIT_WGD]

a) load it up in our choice of image editing program or
b) open up the folder with the texture map in it or
c) perhaps in the assembly room arrange a hot key so that a selected obj/model 's textures would be opened up in our image editing program??

head wax, Sounds like a good idea... I like "hot keys" however if they aren't used often enough they are too easy to forget unless they are simple. A feature would be nice ie; select object - press ALT and Right Click on object in assemble room. It would be nice to have  a menu item to do the same thing.

Headwax

yes I'd forgotten about this suggestion.

I think Fenric said 'no' elsewhere in another thread unfortunately.

There are so many things that would make Carrara so much easier to use if they were implemented.

Eg I mainly work with the kids and their poses, so having another window that just had that content in it would be just so d$mn handy!! :)

I think Fenric has lost faith in daz and carrara, I see him posting in the Poser forum, so poser might be blessed with his remarkable talents in the future.

 

Headwax

also forgot about this ! http://radialmenu.weebly.com/

Steve K

head wax said:

 

... There are so many things that would make Carrara so much easier to use if they were implemented. ... 

I think Fenric has lost faith in daz and carrara ...

I've also seen some Fenric posts that would support that.  Too bad, I use his Carrara plugins routinely.

wgdjohn

head wax said:

yes I'd forgotten about this suggestion.

I think Fenric said 'no' elsewhere in another thread unfortunately.

There are so many things that would make Carrara so much easier to use if they were implemented.

Yes I saw that thread. Too bad he said 'no' I've 5 of his items in my wishlist.

I've not been programming for quite some time but how about this suggestion for your idea...

Add an additional panel at the right into/after the the other panels already there. Then open/unhide the, let's call it "Shader Textures", panel after selecting the object in Assemble room or having it's shader selected in the Texture room... open the panel and select the texture you want to edit... there would also be listing and setup for your "image editing program(s) where you choose the editor of your choice... send it to your image editor, change it/save it and  you are almost done...  if the newer image does not load automatically, prefered, the program would need to update it or you could do that manually. Am I on the right track to what you are asking?

 

Headwax

wgdjohn said:

head wax said:

yes I'd forgotten about this suggestion.

I think Fenric said 'no' elsewhere in another thread unfortunately.

There are so many things that would make Carrara so much easier to use if they were implemented.

Yes I saw that thread. Too bad he said 'no' I've 5 of his items in my wishlist.

I've not been programming for quite some time but how about this suggestion for your idea...

Add an additional panel at the right into/after the the other panels already there. Then open/unhide the, let's call it "Shader Textures", panel after selecting the object in Assemble room or having it's shader selected in the Texture room... open the panel and select the texture you want to edit... there would also be listing and setup for your "image editing program(s) where you choose the editor of your choice... send it to your image editor, change it/save it and  you are almost done...  if the newer image does not load automatically, prefered, the program would need to update it or you could do that manually. Am I on the right track to what you are asking?

 

 

that's sounds exactly what we need, thank you!!!!  :)

 

wgdjohn

head wax said:

that's sounds exactly what we need, thank you!!!!  :)

Great! Thought I may have misunderstood what you wanted to do. It sounds very easy to do. My problem is I've not been doing much programming lately except on my Amiga computer and mostly in AREXX, a high level scripting based language. Your idea sounds very easy to do except for me. I'll have to take a look at the Carrara SDK to see how much help it is. Need to see what kind of learning curve is involved. I'd probably be be better to run the idea by Eric at Digital Carvers Guild who is very good at plugins for Carrara.

One thing I mentioned but didn't explain before is when the list of textures are show the program would need to note where each texture is ie; color, alpha, bump etc.

BTW: I didn't see where Fenric definetly said "no" here in "Calling Fenric", just that he wouldn't sell it at DAZ until he could include it in a bundle. If he did say "no" elsewhere I've not seen it.

wgdjohn

Fenric said:

Yes, I'm lurking around. Spring is my busiest time at work, and popping in to say "well, not strictly impossible, but enough work that I'm not interested" is not much incentive :)

This time...

Something like that would actually be possible, yes. A shortcut key that activated "quick select", which would then take the next keypress and use it... that is quite do-able, and not at all unreasonable to do. I'll look into that, it's been too long since my last release here at DAZ.

Fenric, Please let me know if you are looking into head wax's idea and I'll not proceed into getting it done. I'd hate to spend time on it if you are interested and may have started already. See my earlier comments on the idea for how I would want it incorporated.

Additional thoughts I have on the program are:

a) I'm thinking it may not be possible to add an additional panel. This might have to be incorporated into a "sub panel" of an existing one ie; "Shader Textures" in "General Tab" in Assembly Room and "Shader Textures" in Texture Room.

b) Each texture map would have a check box next to it if you wanted to load more than one into an image program such as Photoshop or PaintShopPro etc. There would also be a 2 check boxes one for "select all" and possibly one for "load as layers". The latter would likely not be needed.

Headwax

wgdjohn said:

head wax said:

that's sounds exactly what we need, thank you!!!!  :)

Great! Thought I may have misunderstood what you wanted to do. It sounds very easy to do. My problem is I've not been doing much programming lately except on my Amiga computer and mostly in AREXX, a high level scripting based language. Your idea sounds very easy to do except for me. I'll have to take a look at the Carrara SDK to see how much help it is. Need to see what kind of learning curve is involved. I'd probably be be better to run the idea by Eric at Digital Carvers Guild who is very good at plugins for Carrara.

One thing I mentioned but didn't explain before is when the list of textures are show the program would need to note where each texture is ie; color, alpha, bump etc.

BTW: I didn't see where Fenric definetly said "no" here in "Calling Fenric", just that he wouldn't sell it at DAZ until he could include it in a bundle. If he did say "no" elsewhere I've not seen it.

Hey!! I have no idea how to program... well  this stuff at least, hats off to anyone who can :) 

I think Fenric said 'no' as an aside to another converssation in another thread. I can't find it, maye if I looked, I could find it ah here it is I am wrong!! heh, second time in my life :)

He was talking about quick select!!!

 

Hey, I didn't immediately bite you all: which is my promised response to people asking for import/export plugins :D

Ok, if a couple of you think you'd not mind sending a few bucks my way, I'll see what I can do.

(And Headwax: the "quick select" ended up such a nightmare that I have given up, sorry.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

wgdjohn

head wax said:

wgdjohn said:

Hey!! I have no idea how to program... well  this stuff at least, hats off to anyone who can :) 

I think Fenric said 'no' as an aside to another converssation in another thread. I can't find it, maye if I looked, I could find it ah here it is I am wrong!! heh, second time in my life :)

He was talking about quick select!!!

Hey, I didn't immediately bite you all: which is my promised response to people asking for import/export plugins :D

Ok, if a couple of you think you'd not mind sending a few bucks my way, I'll see what I can do.

(And Headwax: the "quick select" ended up such a nightmare that I have given up, sorry.)

I thought that your option "c)" in your idea refered to "quick select", mentioned above, even though you call it "select" there. Perhaps you can explain the difference in threads and discussions to me if there is any. I think of a discussion as one, often hugh, thread but perhaphs I'm wrong. Tell me the comment you included at the end... where did you find this? I've had no luck searching this forum using some of the less common keywords in it.

Yes "Hats Off" to all programmers. I've stuggled with easy things and don't proclaim to be a good programmer in any aspect.