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Thanks for the B compliment.
Also for letting me know I'm on the right track.
In the first example, straighten up the long strip. Carrara does like mapping things at "jaunty angles" (to my great annoyance!) and that can cause problems if you're trying to match up a patterned texture (for example) from one side to the other. You'll also notice the scale of the three islands is different. You'll need to even that up too. Generally Carrara's mapping makes small parts too big and big parts too small (another PITA!) More efficient here would be a "T" or coross shaped map (remove the seam between each "arn" and the main strip).
In the second example, think about your UV map real estate usage. Having lots of space between your islands just wastes memory, especially with larger sized maps. You could scale those squares up (= better resolution) and move them around to better utilise the space (= more efficient memory usage)
One thing that you might not have considered is orientation. Check that what is "up" on your model is also "up" on the UV map. You'll probably find that at least one of those squares is upside down or sideways. It may not matter but if your textures have a side that needs to be "up", then it will be important.
Tim, thanks for all the details. Months ago I did the T cross method just to see if I could... I didn't like it for some reason but would rather start off right.
I'm trying to imagine, wrap my head around, a side that needs to be up. Think I know exactly what you mean. Perhaps I'll create a TMap with an arrow on it for testing this. Or is there another method?
This is my first vertex model, ALTHOUGH I did cheat a bit and used the SilverKey 3D fawn for my model... posed it, de-rigged it, then twisted and tortured its head into the correct position, and then smoothed out the vertices. I made the shaft to be all one carving, and used a wood-grain shader. Doubled the end of the shaft to make the rawhide wrap handle. The spear was from one I made some time ago, but now refined using a correct flint head I did in Zbrush and faffed the binding with a texture. I would like to learn to wrap straps and laces as we see on clothing!
The original of this atlatl/spearthrower that has survived, was carved from antler (see reproduction pic and illustration right) and dated to the Azilian which is the very late palaeolithic in Spain/France, about 13kya. Farming had not yet arrived there. Only the original head survived, wood would not have. So it would have been attached to a separate shaft. I did not imitate the faun/doe giving birth or having a BM as it looks LOL.
Original is at this link: http://www.donsmaps.com/images17/masdazilIMG_0851.jpg
I am assuming that carvers were making animal themed weapons for millenia before that, likely from wood that has not survived, thinking Chauvet here with the cave art there as inspiration.
Will try to put up my scene in a few mins on the Someone Has Developed thread!
Any tips and criticism welcome... I would love to learn how to make more bits and pieces to make a model work, especially for clothing and primitive weapons. Also I had to pose it manually in my scene. Another thing to learn... pre-posing props!
Wonderful work Silene!
+1
Thank you! I read all the tips and read tuts and watch vids by so many here... I could not have learned any other way. So a huge thanks. I especially thank Dart and Diomede for coordinating and saving posts at the top for easy retrieval...then I bookmark them as I easily get lost in all the great information. And Phil, your hair tuts and products are almost the main reason I stayed with Carrara having learned about it early in your Skills videos. It's just so useful and no one has anything like Carrara's dynamic hair. For fur and primitive items, it's priceless for a realistic look that you can design any way you want!
Arrows on a bitmap will do fine.
The big advantage of the T/cross method is that at least one side will line up perfectly. It's important for patterened textures like bricks or wood - not so much with procedurals, but definitely with maps, where you don't want to see an odd looking join. (using 3d paint or Substance Painter can get around that though).
Rigging question - slide/translate in Poser, Studio, and Carrara
I have no problem setting this up for use entirely within Carrara, but I may want it useful in Poser and Studio also. I have modeled a storage compartment that includes elements with rotating doors and drawers that slide open. I have some rigging concerns. I know how to set this up in Poser so that it can be used in all three programs. This is the "runtime" organization with .pp2 files. However, I am trying to learn how to set up props in Studio using the data organization instead of runtime. I have tested making a prop with a rotating door because I have seen some tutorials. My concern is that I heard somewhere that rigging a prop in Studio to use a translate/slide instead of a rotate can cause problems. Is that true? Or is it an urban legend? If I rig it in Studio and save as a duf, it will open in Carrara, but will it also work in Poser? Or, do I have to make the pcf files? If so, how? Are there any other rigging issues that I should be asking? What about using morphs? Do I have to wait until the base mesh is opened in Studio and then use morphloader, or is there a way to get Studio to recognize morphs that are created and saved in Carrara?
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looks promising
setting up in Poser is probably the most universal way
there is a good tute on Youtube if I can find it on rigging a pizza box
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1Eet_SASa5_FRheaNjuGbQ
has some good tutes
Prop rigging in DS is dead easy, but I've never found that translate/slide still works when the model is opened in Carrara. There might be a difference between triax and general rigging (general is the kind used by Poser?), I haven't investigated. Hard body rigging in Carrara is such a PITA that I never bother - the weight map painting is utterly dreadful, and the only tools that you actually need (ie clear & fill selection / named region / shading domain) don't exist. Much simpler just to parent and constrain. (plus the absence of bones means you can still duplicate). No idea about Poser.
I don't know of a way to get a morphing Carrara prop into DS. Obj export doesn't preserve morphs. It's probably simpler to import the base mesh to DS and use MorphLoaderPro to set up the morphs.
Yes, that is what I have done recently when making a product for G3F in DS (sacrilege I know! It doesn't even work in Carrara! The morphs work but there is another aspect to it that do not translate into Carrara).
Okay I was trying to look up the short cuts over at the Carrara Cafe, but I can't log in. Its not accepting my password and no matter how many times I hit the forgot passwork button, it just keeps looping back to the log on page. I'm done.
I am trying to extrude out then stop the extrusion,then start a fresh extrusion from my stop point. But I can't figure out how to do it. I see people in video's just extruding, adding extruding adding, very quickly so I am assuming there is a shortcut or a button or something that I am missing because I can't get past the first extrusion no matter what I click. It just keeps pulling it out further instead of adding then extruding.
select what you need extruding... then hold down H on your keyboard and extrude as far as you need... stop and repeat to extrude again and again ... add infinitum
Sounds like you may have got into some kind of sticky mode. Normally you should be able to click-drag-release, click-drag-release and you'll get a fresh extrusion every time. Select another tool (e.g. Crease/Smooth, "C") and then go back to the extrusion tool, should get you going again.
I can't even get translate to work in Studio. In order to get a Daz rigged prop to work both in Studio and Carrara, I followed a tutrorial by Sicklyield. I had no trouble getting the fridge door to rotate, and to link the polygon group for the drawer to its own bone, but I don't see any options to set up the drawer to translate forward and back. I only see options for bend, rotate, twist, and scale. I solved it by creating a morph to open and close, but I would like to know how to do it right. To practice, I created a crude fridge with a door that rotates open/close and a drawer that is supposed to slide forward and back. I also created a couple of shelves, but they are supposed to remain fixed.
Here is the Sicklyield tutorial for Daz rigging of a door that opens and closes.
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Unfortunately, the Sickleyield tutorial does not include slide/translate. How is a bone converted to slide forward/back in Studio? (I used a morph below)..
Here is the bone parameters pane in Studio. See, no forward back.
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I may post a walk-through of rigging the door in Studio for use in Carrara in my screenshot thread.
Select the bone that you want to be a slider, then go to the tab menu for the properties tab and select Show Hidden Properties. The translate properties will appear dimmed, allowing you to select the gear icon and unhide them. Now you just set the slider and limits as normal.
When you're done, it's always a good practice to hide the properties you don't use.
BTW, in the Figure Setup pane, it's good practice to delete the "_5532" from the name and label before you press Create. (the number is either the vertex or poly count, don't recall which).
Thanks again, Tim. I am greatly in your debt once again. When no options for translate/slide appeared, I just assumed there were no such options. Never would have thought of "show hidden" on my own. If I understand your earlier posts, the Studio translate bone does not work correclty in Carrara? I will test it, but if so, then I should continue to include open/close for the drawer through a morph, I guess.
It may depend on the kind of rigging, but certainly with triax rigging it never seems to.
In Carrara I parent and constrain, so each drawer in my example above is a separate vertex object (actually, just one vertex object, duplicated). I export the whole group to DS, and the child objects immediately show as bones in the Figure Setup panel.
What a time saver. Will have to try that.
That's what I thought but its totally not working lol.
I will give this a try thank you! I didn't think it should be as hard as it was!
My Internet was down for a few days... "oh the horror"... so I had plenty of modeling time. I finished letter "P" which is a bit sharp looking and tried with no good result to re-model from it's template... so I moved on to a "D" which is quite simple... then back to where I'd started with a letter "A". All the letters are the same height size... of course widths vary according to which letter. I'd picked the hardest, for me, to model letters... "A, B, P and R". I didn't bother yet with the "R" which is basically a "P" with a leg and I kinda want to re-do the "P" first.
While I had the time I even modeled a simple C. I'm hoping to keep it up for a full char set... Upper, lower case as well as numbers, symbols and special chars.
Thanks Tim, I'm especially concerned with tmaps since I have a lot of shaders which use them and I'd like to use and create my own.
You might want to shut down your browser and start up again... I've experienced the same with various sites occasionally.
I'm assuming you are talking about the Dynamic Extrude button?? See my pics below for some simple explanations... if you have any questions about them let me know. BTW: what are you trying to extrude?
[Edit] If you want to do a straight extrusion another method woud be to select the poly and Add Thickness... this is also cool in some circumstances since the extruded poly(s) will be highlighted and you can repeat it in increments to your desire. Note when adding thickness multiple times the center will be hollow... a discovery I recently found out while making my letters.
What does the "h" key do. I tried it and noticed nothing different than normal Dynamic Extrude? I also tried Shift+h for "H" which acted nothing like I wanted since it was only recognizing the Shift key, I think.
H (the key on the keyboard, not cap H) is Dynamic Extrude
If you don't want to have to hold the key down, you can set preferences to turn the funtion on and saty on until you press another key or choose another tool:
Preferences - General --- Toolbar hotkeys are sticky
You can check all of the key assignments:
Preferences - Keyboard shortcuts
Then navigate to the room you want and the function type. You can set your own hotkeys for functions you often use.
Thanks That Other Persona, I have found it. I do use a few shortcuts. Unfortunately menu items that I use a lot are not listed and there is no Add button to create my own for them.