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Just a quick FYI - I'm running way late today, with way to much to do, so I probably won't get to changing the submissions thread to the voting thread for another hour of so.
If you haven't submitted your entry yet, you still have some time!!
Oh jolly good, so I still have a chance, hoping I don't botch this one.
Been away attending to many hassles so I've missed a lot but I'll surely catch up with all the great tips shared here.
I've not done much more to Naeima and Probe as you would see. At some point I thought the infinite plane was not 3d enough (too flat?) so I tossed in a terrain with a mountain in the background. When I compared that with the infinite plane version, I found that the infinite plane version to feel more 3d....I guess that why it's called and infinite plane, it stretches into eternity, and eternity we all know lives in 3d space....right? ;o)
So there's my final image. I tried to scatter some rocks over the plane, but did not like the way it was turning out. From my previous Wip post, I had a night scene but now its day light, beyond that, nothing has changed. Will just go ahead and submit the darn thing...
Glad you were able to get your entry submitted!
Glad you were able to get your entry submitted!
Thanks! Close call it was!
I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who participated in this months challenge WIP thread! This was the first time I ever hosted any sort of challenge, and it was very rewarding to see the community response to the challenge! So many great and creative ideas with outstanding explanations and renders. THANKS!!!
I also wanted to publicly thanks EvilProducer for his assistance, and for letting me blatantly rip off his work for rules, etc. from the August challenge. Without his "starter kit" I don't think I would have been able to get the challenge out in a timely fashion.
I just hope that everyone enjoyed the WIP thread, and we all learned something from our own, and all the other entries!
I freely admit to plagiarizing rules from other hosts as well. I think Antara comes to mind, and a couple others.
Thanks for doing such a great job hosting this thing Dustrider! It can be a bit hard sometimes, but like all things in life that are worth doing, a little difficulty is to be expected. Ten Gallon Hats off to you sir!
Thanks evilproducer! Wow, lots more great work popped up over the past few days. Thanks also for that link to the Irradiance Map trick - that looks very useful. Definitely coming back to this thread for further study.
Wow, 19 entries, I've been away, when i get home tonight, I'll have to go through them, looks like it's going to be tough to choose.
I think it hit twenty entries!
Now that my votes are in, I want to heap a whole pile of... (wait for it) ... PRAISE on Dustrider for running such a great challenge. From the number of hits on the thread, it is obvious that the theme and the parameters generated a lot of interest. I don't just mean from people who contributed works in progress.
And EvilProducer needs to get some kind of Most Valuable Player award. EP gave each participant excellent and timely advice. I am sure that it was his tireless promotion of the challenges in the commons and elsewhere last month that helped generate interest this month.
Well done.
And I've posted this elsewhere, but it is also worth mentioning here that some of the submissions cannot be fully appreciated unless the full image is displayed.
As a Noobie I was very impressed with how the challenge was put together by Dustrider, and the level of support & backup, especially from EvilProducer but there were a number of people who helped provide some wonderful advice, many thanks to all of them.
This WIP thread is now part of my Carrara references from all of the advice given.
I thoroughly enjoyed the contest, and regardless on how the votes fall I consider everyone who participated a winner !!!!!!!
Will post a larger size image of my render after the voting is over for anyone who is interested.
Still scratching my head on who I will vote for !!!!!!!
Thanks guys. Thanks also to Dustrider for putting this thing together! It was a great success.
As Bunyip02 says, pretty much everybody that entered had some words of wisdom to impart, or a method to teach. I know I learned some things. I'm going to carefully go over Suky's anistropic shader work as I'm starting a project that will need a good brushed copper look to it.
Diomede has done a wonderful job of providing well reasoned and tested guidance on using Genesis 2 in Carrara. It's not something I can use, although I do try and follow it so that I can point people to his thread if questions come up.
Dustrider you did an excellent job hosting this challenge! It's impressive how you offered so much encouragement and advice to all. The theme was great and really inspired amazing work by all the artists. Evilproducer you deserve a lot of credit as well for offering so much advice and encouragement. I can't believe with all the helping you did that you each were able to put together not one but two sets of WIPs and submit great renders. Do you do this every month?
I'm not sure why I haven't actively participated much in the Carrara forum or other DAZ forums much over the years. It's definitely much easier to read than post and maybe I feared I didn't have much to offer since so many were advanced in 3D and Carrara. I really appreciate how welcoming you and others have been to me and other newcomers during this challenge. You clearly believe all, regardless of experience level, have something to offer. I'm definitely going to make an effort to be more active here.
Hi Suky, I'm really glad that you're going to be around more! You obviously have a better grasp of Carrara than you take credit for. Your talent is also very, very obvious! I have no doubt that you have a lot to teach all of us! The great thing about Carrara is that there's always something to learn or try, so even those of us that have used it for years still can be taught something!
As to the challenges, we all try and do this every month. What you may not want to hear is that the winner of the challenge gets the honor of hosting the next challenge. ;-)
The history of the challenge goes back over a year ago. Without trying to rehash old history or point fingers, the Carrara Discussion forum was a bit dysfunctional. There was a lot of doom and gloom and conspiracy theories about DAZ 3D, Carrara and its future, and so on. Many of us felt that the mood here scared away potential new users and threatened Carrara's future.
It was thought that we needed a way to show off Carrara's features and potential to both new users and to DAZ 3D itself, as well as to promote the Carrara PAs and to try and foster a friendlier and more positive vibe in the community. I don't recall who it was that actually suggested the challenge, but I do believe it was Headwax and one of the PAs that did a lot of the leg-work and behind-the-scenes work getting DAZ 3D on board. Headwax and others can correct my memories if needed. ;-)
The challenges have some unofficial rules that are open to interpretation. One rule that has been pretty much required is a WIP thread for obvious reasons. They're a great educational tool.
Some of the original rules were designed to allow new users to feel comfortable participating and at the same time demystify some of Carrara's lesser known, underutilized and just plain cool features. At the same time, we wanted to show DAZ that we Carrara users also used their content as well as our own creations.
One of the rules that tends to persist is to require a couple Carrara created elements along with whatever DAZ content the artist wishes to use. For instance, I hosted one challenge that required at least two items made in, or substantially altered in Carrara, and that at least one of the Carrara items had to be either a volumetric cloud or a spline object. It's open to interpretation. Dustriders requirements for this challenge is a great example.
Some challenges here at DAZ, such as the New Users monthly challenge is decided by some panel of PAs or something. We wanted to be a bit more democratic about it and allow the forum member to vote. This was meant as a way to get people not familiar with Carrara to come and take a look at what was being created, and at the same time to allow those that may have not felt comfortable entering to still feel like they contributed something. Admittedly there is a risk of favoritism, and this was discussed in the thread about starting the challenges last year. I think that so far, most people have been extremely fair about who they vote for. We've had old hands at Carrara win, and newer users win.
How the voting mechanism works is up to the host. It was originally just one vote and one honorable mention, but a lot of voters wanted to vote for more than one artist and one of the hosts obliged, but it was weighted somehow. i liked the idea, but the weighting of the votes was not for me and my meager brain cells. Other hosts have had their own take on it as well.
The theme and other requirements and exclusions are up to the host as well.
The PAs have been very generous in sponsoring these challenges as well. Our sponsors, such as RingoMonfort, PhilW, DimensionTheory, MMoir, Dartanbeck, Howie Farkes, Sadot, Infinite Skills, etc. etc. are truly a credit to the community. Apologies if you have sponsored and I omitted your name. It is most assuredly not intentional.
Sorry for rambling.
Ha ha, don't blame me :)
The Challenges are wonderful, I am always amazed by the renders that come out of them, and the sense of camaraderie that develops from them. And interestingly, the quality of the work jumps up several notches each time.
And I like how the challenges also drag people out of the woodwork who might ordinarily not post their work here.
And I also like stealing er I mean learning from other people's ideas :)
Yes learning is a big plus because if you ask 'how did you do that'? then people are always kind enough to show you how.
My hat's off to everyone who has hosted one of these challenges, my hat's off to all the participants, and my hat's off to the kind PA's (and Daz) who support us with wonderful prizes.
That's three hats - luckily I have three heads :)
Didn't you host the first one? I do seem to recall the possibility of a challenge being discussed in a thread, along with what some of the rules should be, so those aren't on you. ;-)
Oh wait! I just looked it up and we can blame Holly for this great idea! Somehow you got the honor of hosting the challenge!
Me on a golf course with a putter.
No, actually, I have some lighting/shadow catcher/ gamma questions. I posted it here because I have some questions about lighting and that played a big role in this challenge. Guess it could be in PhilW's gamma 2.2 thread.
In one file, I created an outdoor terrain setting that could be a golf course among some replicated trees, with realistic sky and a terrain shader based on some mixers and gradients. I used a spherical camera to create an image for background scenes for other files. So far so good.
In a new file, I inserted a grid to be a shadow catcher. I set the shadow catcher in the shader tree and made sure raytrace rendering was checked. Again, so far so good.
But I am having a hard time using the PhilW gamma 2.2 thing and at the same time keep the background picture from washing out. Is there another lighting trick?
Sorry ep, didn't see your reply :(
Diomede64 I think philW mentions in one of his videos that Carrara adds gamma to images, so it has to be de-gamma-ed (degammafied !?) to prevent washout. Essentially it's getting a double gamma helping. He showed steps how to do it in photoshop. I think it's in the realism rendering series.
Thanks. I will check it out. PhilW rules.
Hair and background images are the bane of the 2.2 Gamma trick. As Suky says, there are ways around it.
I obviously respect Phil, and he very clearly knows what he's doing in all things Carrara, or else his tutorials wouldn't do as well as they do, however the 2.2 Gamma setting is where I disagree with him a little. I think it can help, but it is my opinion that it is not for all scenes. This would be a good example. The extra work needed to correct the image to work in Carrara with the gamma setting, negates the value of using it in my opinion.
BTW, if you aren't going to render an alpha channel and use postwork to adjust the shadow intensity, try aiming a distant light straight down and set it so it only lights the shadow catcher. Using your image as a guide, set the color to something that would approximate the sky color and lower the intensity to around 20% to start. This will have the effect of lightening the shadows. You can adjust the intensity up or down to suit. I used that method with the Cheesecake in a Studio with a Nearly Nekkid Vicky to lighten the look of the shadows on the shadow catcher I used as the floor.
Thanks for the suggestion, EP. Here is a quick test using a variation of your suggestion. Until I get a chance to watch Phil's tutorial again (I need to pay closer attention, obviously), this looks like a good start on another effective solution.
I think soft shadows will really help this as well. Plus, they should render pretty quickly as there is not much in the scene.
Hello EP
Adjusted the hair on Vicki6 as you suggested, still need to try it in a full scene, but the results at this early stage are something that I will be paying attention to greatly in future.
Have also included a larger size render of my entry.
For my entry I was keeping my render at 1024 pixels wide, trying to get the best effect for that size that I could with my Noobie skill-set.
Hair was slightly plastic as pointed out by the evil eagle eyed EP :gulp:, if I had more time at that stage I would have adjusted the hair and a few other items.
Bricks, I went for 2 effects on the shop, top finish look at the bottom shop level, and an ordinary result for the top level.
This was achieved by adjusting the bump slider for each.
Cobble-stones I would have liked to have adjusted the bottom join between the cobble-stones to get a more natural dirt look.
Car reflection I am very happy with although I realized that not everyone would agree with it, was looking for a high gloss mirror type finish to get a chrome type look while also highlighting the scene around it, as well as allowing Vicki6 to check out her reflection as well.
Still very happy for my first serious render in Carrara, with many thanks to all of the feedback provided as well as the PhilW tutorials.
Congratulations to the winners, and all entrants of the Challenge once again !!!!!!! :-)
Since the compo closed, I've been working to complete the tower model. There are still some snags that need to be dealt with and the shaders need more work, but it's essentially there.
If there are any soft body physics experts out there, I'm struggling a bit with the flag - it either hangs very stiffly like cardboard or it explodes all over the place. Also, is there a way to "fix" it when it's finished, so I don't have to keep rerunning the simulation?
When setting up the simulation I use a Directional Force, and varies it's value during the simulation time.
When creating the flag. What I have found is that you have to create it on the floor plane, in the vertex modeller, and then flip it 90 dgr.
If the flag is created on one of the sides, it just disappear when you run the simulation, or is being stiff. (or both)
One other advantage to do it this way is that it is automatically UV-mapped.
The last thing I do before leaving the vertex modeller, is to select what is to be used as Soft Body Attach.
After the simulation has run, going trough the timeline, and find a shape of the flag that looks ok.
Select the flag in the scene browser and export it out as a .obj. (File - Export ... )
You can then import this . obj as a vertex model into your scene.
If you wish to retain an animation of the simulation, go back to the motion menu and change the motion method from physics to Keyframe. You should then have a box open where you can set the quality of the conversion. The higher the quality, the more keyframes. This works with the regular physics solver, but I assume (perhaps wrongly) that it should also work with bullet.
Another advantage to converting the simulation to keyframes, my be that 95% of the simulation looks good, but at the end, something goes horribly wrong. If you convert to keyframes, you can delete the keyframes where the simulation went bad. The other advantage is that you could run a short simulation, and then select all the keyframes and Option-Drag them further down the time line which copies the original keyframes. This is a great way to create a looping animation. The other option is to create an Animation Group with your flag and convert the animation to an NLA clip.
Sorry EP but that don't work with the modifiers (Bullet ?).
That could be nice if we could reload a script of these simulations...