Is there any way to export Terrains(with shaders) and Plants(with leaves) in a satisfactory way to use in XSI please.
Brian

There is at least one way to export terrains and plants(trees) with leaves; whether it is a satisfactory way remains to be seen. I used a larger hardwood tree I'd designed in Carrara and thought I'd see if I could export it successfully and import it with leaves into another 3d program.

I went into the plant editor and clicked to put checkmarks in the Full Detail Mesh and Show Leaves boxes. Then, while I was still in the plant editor, I clicked on Edit in the main screen>
Convert to Other Modeler. From there a dialogue box opens and gives you the choice of using either the Primitive, or Vertex Modeler. I clicked on the Vertex Modeler...Big Mistake! Carrara locked up completely and when I went into Task manager to see what was going on, Carrara was using more and more memory until it stopped dead at 688,368K. My Task Manager even froze up, until I opened up another Task Manager Window and shut Carrara down.

I must have been feeling brave because I went right back(after doing a restart) and tried the other option, the Primitive Modeler. Everything went swimmingly it seemed. I exported the converted tree as a.obj file and it didn't take Carrara too long to do the conversion. When I looked at the .obj model I was a little shocked to see that the file size was 190MB!

I don't have XSI, or any other rendering app. on hand to test with, so I used Bryce5.1 to import the mesh to see what it would look like. After a half-hour the mesh finally imported successfully but without textures. The .obj file had a 399kb mat. file, but it was all black, so I assigned some
default Bryce materials to the various tree parts.
Here is a Carrara render of the original source tree...

Thanks.
Seems to be similar to my experiences.
Brian

And here is a Bryce render of the same tree. Even at regular render settings it took almost as long to render( I stopped it partway through the last anti-alias pass) as it did to import the tree .obj. As you can see, it is possible to export trees with leaves from Carrara, but wheter or not it will be worth it, or usable is entirely up to you. According to Bryce the converted mesh weighs in at 1,423,330 polys, but Bryce tends to turn every thing into Tri's when it converts an imported mesh. I would try exporting some of the tree presets as they aren't likely to be as heavy when you export them. HTH  Dan

I also tried exporting a terrain at default resolution with a texture map, but the import into Bryce was decidedly unlovely. The mesh wasn't bad, but the texture map was Ughh! I'm no expert, so maybe there are workarounds that will give better results. If Carrara could give better, more usable results for exporting trees and terrains it would be a "must-have" for the users of even higher end apps. Good thing I'm happy with using Carrara as my main renderer/animation app and that it handles its own plant "primitives" so efficiently.

Yes, it worries me that Vue (yuk) is used as a plugin for apps like XSI.
Brian

Vue uses billboards for trees which cuts way down on poly counts.  Maybe Carrara will have that feature one day.  Or one could model their tree in XSI.

One really good modeled tree in a scene is better than having many randomly generated and not so well modeled ones.

Quote - Vue uses billboards for trees which cuts way down on poly counts.  Maybe Carrara will have that feature one day.  Or one could model their tree in XSI.

One really good modeled tree in a scene is better than having many randomly generated and not so well modeled ones.

Not so sure about that.  Where was the last place you can recall being that had only one solitary tree?

Quote - Vue uses billboards for trees which cuts way down on poly counts.  Maybe Carrara will have that feature one day.  Or one could model their tree in XSI.

One really good modeled tree in a scene is better than having many randomly generated and not so well modeled ones.

Carrara has billboards now.
Shouldn't  be too hard to Render a tree - place the bitmap on the billboard and then replicate a forest of billboard trees.

wayne k
guam usa

Thanks Shonner and Wayne.
Yes, The Bilboards/Splats seem to be the answer.

True, it can be done manually somewhat in Carrara.

Quote - Not so sure about that.  Where was the last place you can recall being that had only one solitary tree?

Use telephoto on a tree for a tighter shot.

Quote - > Quote - Vue uses billboards for trees which cuts way down on poly counts.  Maybe Carrara will have that feature one day.  Or one could model their tree in XSI.

One really good modeled tree in a scene is better than having many randomly generated and not so well modeled ones.

Not so sure about that.  Where was the last place you can recall being that had only one solitary tree?

Just outside of Bethel Alaska where you have a sign reading you are entering Bethal National Forest with a white picket fence around a small spruce tree, after the tree there is a sign reading you are now leaving Bethal National Forest.

Hi
Is there a reason why carrara's default vegetation is emerald green, was it made that way as a starting point for editing?  Is the solution to edit the leaves or is it best to make trees from scratch or us billboards?

I think I saw a tutorial by Mark Bremmer on how to make a tree with nice leaves but it seems that it must take a long time to make everything for a scene by re-texturing all the carrara trees.  And as this seems like the sort of job done once why isn't the internet choc-a-block with ready made trees?

Keith

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/search.php?section_id=-1&query=Trees+and+plants&sort=relevancy&use_age=no&older_age=&older_units=day&newer_age=&newer_units=day&username=&section_selector%5B0%5D=-1

And thats just the free stuff----here!

I agree that the colors of the default tree shaders are way over-saturated and bright. Bryce is the same way. They end up looking like toy train set (not model railroad) trees.
A good starting point for more realistic trees would be to grab Patrick210's tree shader from either digitalpainters.net, or from polyloop,net  It's a freebie layered shader and makes good use of translucency for realistic backlighting. You could also grab HowieFarkes's terrific free snow scene from the Carrara freebie forum at DAZ. It includes his great snow-covered trees and is quite instructive if you analyze the plant editor and material settings he used to achieve his effects.

Quote - I agree that the colors of the default tree shaders are way over-saturated and bright. Bryce is the same way. They end up looking like toy train set (not model railroad) trees.
A good starting point for more realistic trees would be to grab Patrick210's tree shader from either digitalpainters.net, or from polyloop,net  It's a freebie layered shader and makes good use of translucency for realistic backlighting. You could also grab HowieFarkes's terrific free snow scene from the Carrara freebie forum at DAZ. It includes his great snow-covered trees and is quite instructive if you analyze the plant editor and material settings he used to achieve his effects.

Odd that you mention Howie Farkes.  While half awake this morning I was thinking that it must be really difficult to make a tree with snow and remembered Howie's Daz competition wining picture.

I was also wondering if anyone like  Howie had made a new set of trees.  It seems the sensible thing to do. 

Thanks to both of you I will check out your recommendations.  
Keith