Stuff I/We Learnt recently

Headwax

I'm making this thread for good ideas that have surfaced from the threads here:  Just as a repository of sorts - a kind of Wiki for me/others to leave ideas and then find them easily..

 

This one from the Fire and Water thread Carrara Challenge #23: “Fire And Water” - Voting Thread Now Closed - Daz 3D Forums

All the Challenges are listed here by the indomitable Diomede :)   Learning tips and tricks from prior Carrara Challenge WIP threads - Daz 3D Forums

 

1) what i learnt was to make WATER SPLASHES from fire!

I was looking for how to make lava the other day - found Alberto's wonderful plugin, but the stumbled acxross this piece by @stringtheory9

which was quite eye opening because he has done a wonderful job of the water splashes using the fire primitive - something I would never have thought of

2) Also stringtheory converted the ocean to a mesh so he could model a wave into  it?

 

stringtheory9 said:

Entry: 9

Title: Neptune vs. the Volcano

Artist: Stringtheory9

Products Used: M4, palm tree from somewhere.

Requirements: The ocean started as an ocean primitive which I then exported so that I could model the wave on it and then connect the chopped M4 object. Neptunes hair and staff were modeled along with the main lightning bolt, volcano, lava flow and lava ocean cliff. The fire primitive was used for the eruption, the palm tree fires and for the ocean foam and splashes (including on Neptunes hair).

WIP:
Initial concept http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1029830/#Comment_1029830

Setup and un processes render http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1045548/#Comment_1045548

Post work: I did some subtle color/levels adjustements and drew in the enhancements to the lightning bolt and flipped the image.

Backstory: Just the gods having one of those days.

 

 

feel free to add your own - just keep it simple is probably better :)

WendyLuvsCatz

oooh a cool idea I missed being posted first time around.

fire water

hair grass

terrain oceans

fountain particle bushes

what next? 

I love out of the box ideas

Headwax

WendyLuvsCatz said:

oooh a cool idea I missed being posted first time around.

fire water

hair grass

terrain oceans

fountain particle bushes

what next? 

I love out of the box ideas

 

Me too! I'm looking for lateral thinking for good hair for the Mastadon. Recently did one where he looks like he is wearing a wire brush :) Mind you there was whole heard of them so I was trying to keep the render time down.

I guess I could use transmaps ?

 

 

 

Headwax

wendy said 

fountain particle bushes

 

not sure what you mean there. I'm all ears :)

Edit sorry I read 'brushes" !! H ah  - yes the bushes was my idea :)

WendyLuvsCatz

Headwax said:

wendy said 

fountain particle bushes

 

not sure what you mean there. I'm all ears :)

I thought it was actually you who used the fountain with a surfacereplicator for shrubs 

Headwax

WendyLuvsCatz said:

Headwax said:

wendy said 

fountain particle bushes

 

not sure what you mean there. I'm all ears :)

I thought it was actually you who used the fountain with a surfacereplicator for shrubs 

 

yes sorry it was :) I need to get my reading glasses updated!!

 

Headwax

and I was rendering some snowmobiles today that fountain made good snow coming off the wheels, it's the one in the fire drop down menu

WendyLuvsCatz

in Octane the fountain loads as little clouds if you enable volumetrics

Headwax

WendyLuvsCatz said:

in Octane the fountain loads as little clouds if you enable volumetrics

 

N ow that would be handy 

 

WendyLuvsCatz

I always knew but continue to be shocked by how many awesome Carrara functions we take for granted.

the poor DAZ studio users,

they need things like https://www.daz3d.com/xtreme-reshade-for-iray-uber

and https://www.daz3d.com/abas-animated-shaders-system (by our own Alberto),

just to do basic Carrara shader operations 

Pity they cannot just use Carrara 

Richard Haseltine

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I always knew but continue to be shocked by how many awesome Carrara functions we take for granted.

the poor DAZ studio users,

they need things like https://www.daz3d.com/xtreme-reshade-for-iray-uber

or they could do their own in Shader Mixer

and https://www.daz3d.com/abas-animated-shaders-system (by our own Alberto),

or they could do their own through scripting, there are sample scripts showing how.

just to do basic Carrara shader operations 

Pity they cannot just use Carrara 

Diomede

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I always knew but continue to be shocked by how many awesome Carrara functions we take for granted.

the poor DAZ studio users,

they need things like https://www.daz3d.com/xtreme-reshade-for-iray-uber

and https://www.daz3d.com/abas-animated-shaders-system (by our own Alberto),

just to do basic Carrara shader operations 

Pity they cannot just use Carrara 

+1 - meant to work out how much it costs to convert Daz Studio to 'Carrara.'   How much is mesh grabber?  Yet it is inferior to vertex modeling in the Carrara assemble room.  How much is Ultrascatter?  (In fairness, Howie has added more functions.)  They added dynamic strand-based hair to Studio but denied users access to the creation tools so still can't really do it.  And on and on.   Users can do dynamic hair with dforce or strand based but not both.

On the other hand, my Carrara has been acting up after every Windows update.  I am halfway through finishing my Blender donut.  

WendyLuvsCatz

Richard Haseltine said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I always knew but continue to be shocked by how many awesome Carrara functions we take for granted.

the poor DAZ studio users,

they need things like https://www.daz3d.com/xtreme-reshade-for-iray-uber

or they could do their own in Shader Mixer

and https://www.daz3d.com/abas-animated-shaders-system (by our own Alberto),

or they could do their own through scripting, there are sample scripts showing how.

just to do basic Carrara shader operations 

Pity they cannot just use Carrara 

we can do it all right in the shader room in Carrara, no scripts needed 

just pointing out how blessed we are not saying it cannot be done in D|S, obviously those plugins use scripting

but I can just add some operators and transforms etc local or global and most are animatable too

one can even do UV mapping functions easily 

WendyLuvsCatz

I don't think it's so much Carrara affected by the Windows update as much as some of the things Carrara uses.

Mine has actually been working fine but I had DAZ studio spaz out on me losing chunks of my user interface mostly bits of the timeline and Animate and I think it's the openGL or openCL involved 

Carrara you do have a software option for that at least.

I did manage to fix studio too after a reboot  and some UI window closing and reloading

on the otherhand Particle Illusion crashes on my Win10 now

I also had to uninstall Hitfilm and deactivate it and move it to my Win7 to use it

so something definitely amiss

Headwax

You hit the nail on the head. Why support carrara when it does all these things? Give away studio for free then sell to the users all the things they “need” that come with carrara in built. Studio is the gift that keeps giving.... to be fair daz is a company and companies aim to make money.

 

something things i learnt the other day...

1 For better skies

Surround a landscape with a giant mainly transparent sphere. Give it a noise bump. Then, if you are using carrara’s inbuilt skies tgey willl appear much more “interesting.” When seen through this bump effect

2 For a better light cone effect:

 use a series of spotlights with cone effect turned on , the spotlights being in the same place pointing in the same direction but with and all different i tensities, falloff, angle and colour etc, plus a different gel in each cone effect section,

seen from the side, this gives a much more realistic light cone effect than just one light

 

apologies, still a victim of ipad typing

 

WendyLuvsCatz

yeah DAZ cannot do animated skies either 

Stezza

@diomede I run the very latest windows11 and Carrara has no problems.

I also only have an old version of DS installed from around 2014 ... what if it's the latest version of DS that is not playing well with Carrara? 

SileneUK

Headwax said:

something things i learnt the other day...

1 For better skies

Surround a landscape with a giant mainly transparent sphere. Give it a noise bump. Then, if you are using carrara’s inbuilt skies tgey willl appear much more “interesting.” When seen through this bump effect

What a great tip!  Thanks so much. I hate having to rely on backdrops with 2D graphics or using HDRI for my static scenes that need different viepoints.

  Silene

Headwax

Thanks SileneUK :) I just had a play again and discovered that you also need a refractive parameter to get it work. Sill me!!