Well sort of new... Some of you know I have a new machine...but to re-cap:

My old 32 bit machine would not render Howie Farkes scenes at all.... BUT now I can render HUGE 150 dpi images of Stoney Creek with my new high end graphics computer with win7 64 bit!!  (thrilled I don't even have to buy the "pro" version. Mine is 8.1 and I do NOT use DS, or even Poser.... and IF I use poser with it, that will be in the FAR future.... I have a lot to learn! (I add my characters via photoshop).

Carrara took about 3 hours at "Best" aa to do this:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2553850
... I am so so so happy and don't need to upgrade Carrara to the "Pro" because the 32 bit works super fine! wooo hoooo!! runs around dancing in delight  (oh and that one is actually HALF the size of the original that has a link under that image)  :)

BUT because I don't know to ask "Help" the right way...I am coming to you all...

1. Is there any way to lock the SUN to the camera, so that when I move the camera around in Howie's scenes, I will still get optimal lighting? (if that makes any sense?).   I also had tried some years ago, when I first bought Carrara and Howie's scenes to MOVE THE SUN... that resulted in really awful lighting... so either his lighting is limited to the views as he presents them, or I am uneducated. :)  It's ok, be honest!

2. Is there any way to save "camera presets" for a view I like? (like in poser) or is it just better to save the SCENE FILE like I have been doing?

3. and MOST IMPORTANT... is there any way to make the "assembly room"  show in SHADED 3D instead of wire frame, so I know where the heck my camera is looking without having to do dozens of test renders?

Actually, instead of using the "test render" icon thingy...I have been doing a whole scene render with NO AA on, at Howie's original scene file size...that takes about a minute on my new machine... BUT it would be so much easier for modifying the scene and/or moving my camera to be able to see in "shaded" preview.

Oh and if you can explain to my dyslexic brain with pictures it helps! (either screen caps or very descriptive words).

Thanks for your patience!

Lyne

Lyne

I'm sure Stan and Books can get you squared away a bit better than I, but here goes anyway.

1. I believe you can lock the camera to the sun, but that wouldn't get the results it sounds like you're looking for. I think Howie's scenes are meant to capture a moment in time, so I wouldn't recommend moving the sun around. 

I have had luck finding lots of great shots in Howie's scenes by moving the camera. Just like in nature, some shots are better than others.

1. I think you can set Camera Presets, but I don't know how. I usually get a camera to the place I want it, then I create a new camera and place it elswhere.

2. YES! There is a way to change from wireframe. Look near the top Right hand side of your screen. Look directly under the HAND. You will see some icons. You should see a wirframe box, then a shaded box, then a Circle. Click on the circle. This should give you items in shaded 3D. If you want to see textures closer to the real thing, click on the very first circle. CAUTION using the first circle will slow down your machine and could cause a crash, especially with Howie's scenes.

Hope this helps.

P.S. I'm doing this from memory, so I don't have Carrara in front of me, but I should be close.

Hi Lyne, welcom to carrara, I am still having great fun with Pumpkin, thankyou!

Juat an aside, no need to render on best aa settings, - not many can  tell the difference, well I cant :)

the camera presets... go up to the top left where you can choose  your camera, click on it you get a drop down menu which lets you save the camera position

sorry no pics as I am rendering

Wow! Thanks .... I am now in desparate need to find out how NOT to show shaded! LOL! I opened up Vally Alpina...and it's default is IN shaded mode and I keep crashing trying to move the camera... lesson learned!!

but THANK YOU, now I know how to get it OUT of that and back to wire frame... soooo maybe to change INTO shaded to "check things" is ok, but DON'T try to move! heheeee!

and will make notes on camera.... choose a camera... hmmm.

Thanks! Stay tuned! LOL!

;)

I run the assembly room in gouraud, but have no issues with textured; 64 bit 8 gig ;)

I also use the directors camera a lot to line up the sun/lights.

Oooo, Stan, thanks for the hdri link. Love me some free hdri's. :)

Quote - Hi Lyne, welcom to carrara, I am still having great fun with Pumpkin, thankyou!

Juat an aside, no need to render on best aa settings, - not many can  tell the difference, well I cant :)

 

headwax's is right. You don't need to render on Best. In most instances you can get very good results with rendering set on Good. You might need to set it to .05 for dynamic hair, but in most instances a setting of 1 will do just fine.

For most renders, it's difficult to tell the difference between a render with Best aa and a render done with Good aa.

oh THANK YOU for the screen captures to SHOW me the camera menus... that will be great to learn and impliment!

oh.. so maybe the 8.5 PRO IS written WELL as a 64 bit program and makes the difference??  Howie's scenes DO crash if I try to move in any view above bounding boxes. Hmmm. I did try out switching from bounding boxes to shaded and back to check where my camera movements landed me, and that worked well for me....

So... IS there a difference, opinions please?  My machine sure is more than enough, it sounds like... but as well as Carrara 8 is written, perhaps it is still limited by it's 32 bit version... I was very unsure of DAZ's programers abilty to RE-WRITE Carrara into 64 bit, and not just "port" it over, in a manner of speaking. After spending such a bundle on the machine itself I am being VERY cautious about buying software now.

And now I am going to ask a very "dumb" question... just what ARE/is HDRI .... lights? and if so... still... what does it mean exactly? I know there is such a thing in Poser but I never really understood that lighting concept/type.

and FYI... I honestly don't see me EVER using human figures IN Carrara... just moving around a scene and learning about "shaders" and lighting is about all I can handle... at least at this stage. :)

Thanks SO much for your opinions and help !!!

Lyne

IMHO, there is a huge difference using the 64bit version of Carrara. Howie's scenes seem to be much happier. Howies scenes are pretty resource intensive, and as I recall, you had to be farily careful with what you did to keep under the RAM limits in a 32 bit environment (but my memory could be wrong).

I've done some projects where Carrara was consuming over 12Gb of RAM, that's not something that you can do with the 32bit version. Carrar Pro 8.5 has been quite stable for me, others may have different experiences.

HDRI stands for High Dynamic Range Image. HDRI's can be used just for lighting, just for a background environmenet, or for both. It's basically the same as IBL in Poser. Basically, light intensity (the brightness of each pixel) information in the HDR Image is translated to a light source in Carrara. So if there is sunlight in an image, it will typically be the brightest light source in your scene. I really like the soft lighting you get with HDRI. They are also great to provide something for reflective materials to reflect. I used an HDRI both for base lighting and for reflections in this image: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2130745

Hope this helps!

Quote - ..

And now I am going to ask a very "dumb" question... just what ARE/is HDRI .... lights? and if so... still... what does it mean exactly? I know there is such a thing in Poser but I never really understood that lighting concept/type.

...

Lyne

HDRI is High-dynamic-range imaging.  They can be used both for background and global illumination. 

Download one of the free ones and click on the Scene in the instances tab.  Select background and tell it HDRI and load the image.  You will not see anything until you render.

In the render room, check sky light and indirect light and the HDRI will illumiate the scene with no other lights.

ncamp

Its odd with the pricing on the upgrade.  also its on sale at this time, and subject to the plat club discount I think it might be about 59.95 but you have to put it into the card to see.  The plat club discount can be got for one month which would save more than it cost for the initial.

Interactive Renderer settings (up arrow right before the shading options) are good its normally light map or you can set it up to see what the scene lights are.

Also without buying you can get the first module of videos still is some good intro info

http://www.infiniteskills.com/training/learning-carrara-8.html

http://www.infiniteskills.com/training/learning-carrara-8-5.html

http://www.infiniteskills.com/training/carrara-realism-rendering.html  (goes through some lighting and rendering settings)

http://www.infiniteskills.com/training/advanced_carrara_techniques.html

I got busy but haven't forgotteon for the hive horse shader.  I got one just tweeking, the rest will be follow through but I was deciding on specular, vs regular highlighting.

Hi guys! I just bought Carrara 8.5 Pro... and it cost me $85 ! Yay! (I'm NOT a plat. club member and do not plan to be). 

this after trying and failing to render Howie's Vally Alpina...obviously it ran out of resources...I was trying to do a 2600x2000 pixels at 72 dpi... and it croaked... so went to buy the Pro...

QUESTION: I had two downloads - one the exe for win 64 bit (assume it's the main program) AND the "render node" for same... WHAT IS A RENDER NODE???

Also It said it was  part of a "bundle" (the pro version package) that was only 149 mb (for the main program exe) ... and the download Link for native content was TINY... ??  I DON'T USE ANY GENASIS stuff.. nor any figures... AND I did BACK UP my CONTENT from my Carrara 8, before uninstalling and eradicating it... (all my Howie stuff).... all I really want is native content and that too was in my BACK UP files... so not sure how/what else I need to download.

I will not install anything until I hear from you all about what is that 'render node' exe that is about 57 mb.

THANKS so much for you on-going help and explanations!! While I mainly want to use Howie's scenes, I would like to try some of "my own" by using the "scene files" that look like starter scenes, from my version 8 library... :)

Lyne

PS... I am thinking I should install Pro on my MAIN drive...it's smaller but it's a SOLID STATE drive...one of those new fangled drives made of RAM... go figure!?!? rather then my secondary TB drive that is "only" an SATA drive ?  I want to do this right, to help it render Howie's heavy scenes the easiest!!

and Xerxes0002  - thank you for those links to help me learn!!!

I would not install the application to the Solid State drive myself.  The program is quick to load from a sata.  Some things require going into the preset directory (like the leaf data for Howies stuff) within carrara and no reason to fill up your fast drive with that.  I have a seperate runtime that I keep other things in that are carrara related such as shaders, carrara obj/models, backgrouns etc.

I also have a nice link that walks through the changes to poser shaders when they are loaded in Carrara.  There is a nice little utility that does this for you called Shader Doctor but its fairly straight forward.

Exercise 4 - Fixing Poser shaders (part 1 and part 2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7ViS7YW1KI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jD7yHQOblE

OK... the sata it is... but still WHAT IS THE "RENDER NODE. EXE" ?  I need to know if that is part of the program or just for someone with more than one computer to help with the render load??

Thanks! :)

EDIT.. never mind, I got too anxious and I "googled it"... good old google.. and I found this:

This installer is exclusive to the 'Pro' version of Carrara 7 Pro. It is the network client. Render Node enables you to render a Carrara 7 Pro scene over two or more computers. This 'farming' of your computers can greatly increase render speed.

If you have two or more computers connected by a network, then you can use Render Node. If you are only working with one computer or if you do not wish to do network rendering, do not install Render Node.

It was in the DAZ manual something or other thread for Carrara 7...but assume it applies to all cararras...

THE ODD THING is I don't have a content installer in my DAZ downloads, but lots of pictures for "what is in this bundle"... oh well... I'll just copy back in, my Carrrara 8 content... so I think I am good to go...wish me luck!!! I want to render Valley Alpina! :)

Yeek!  Installed...started a render of "Sprucedale" - the one with the trail beside the water... I found the cameras that Howie set (from your help)....and so am asking it to do a landscape, 2600X2000 at 72 dpi and BEST aa... and yes I CAN tell the difference, and especially if I want to enlarge the scene further in photoshop, Best AA is...well.. best for that! LOL! 

My first shock of surprise came when the render "squares" ...uh... WERN'T! I mean it's so fast, over sky, it just did it with NO squares! wow! Then when I could open my email FAST... and now COMING HERE to let you know of my excitement, IE opened up fast...I guess that is because it's 64 bit, huh?!  wow more!

It says start was at 6:30 pm and est. end is 9 pm (of course it has not hit the water yet- and wanting my water very SMOOTH is another reason for Best AA) and so it may be longer than 9... I am recooperating from a fall, so gonna just go veg out with TV and pray I don't come back to it hours later to read "an error has occured".... I have been so burned even with a 32 bit Carrara on my old 32 bit machine, I will beleive it when I see it...

But this is really exciting!! Hope springs eternal! LOL!

Exporting for enlargment? 96 dpi. People can change my opinion on this, but renders do seem crisper, more vibrent at 96dpi.

Also note, scroll down on the render settings and you can change the bit size of your render squares. This seems helpful with hair and high aa. Mine is set to 64 for no other reason then it seems logical, 64bit system and all lol

I went from an intelsingle and 2gig to an i3 and 4 gig to an i5 and 8 gig in a year; that acer fried in about 8 months, never buy another. It was freaking astonishing how fast water rendered with the i5 and 8 gig

I want a render farm of i7s with 16gig

Quote - Yeek!  Installed...started a render of "Sprucedale" - the one with the trail beside the water... I found the cameras that Howie set (from your help)....and so am asking it to do a landscape, 2600X2000 at 72 dpi and BEST aa... and yes I CAN tell the difference, and especially if I want to enlarge the scene further in photoshop, Best AA is...well.. best for that! LOL! 

I render everything at 72dpi just because I'm too absent minded to remember to change it. I really only ever use Best AA for dynamic hair. It makes a big difference there.

I use a program from Onone software called Perfect Resize for enlargements. I've taken a 1200x1500 image and enlearged it to 4800x6000 with no artifacts. I had the result printed and it was crystal clear. The printer even commented on the size and how clear it was.

:)

96 dpi? interesting....how did you come to this? Because when I did some renders at 150 dpi, photoshop shows it at only 100 dpi ?!  Odd...

and "bucket size"- those render sqares.. it seems to resize itself when I ask for larger dpi or over all size... I wil have to look for that setting...I've heard of using 32 on a 32 bit machine and 64 on a 64 bit for POSER rendering...must be something to this...

And thanks for the onone- Perfect Resize... will look that up!

FYI... my render ended up taking 3 hours 35 minutes at those settings I gave it, and it's GORGEOUS! YAY!

Since I don't have a render farm, and only one machine for every use...I hate tying up my machine that much... I also was told that Smith Micro has an enlarging software program...forgot it's name tho and it's hard to find on thier site...

DPI only really comes into play for the most part when printing.  though you can do DPI for screen its going to vary based on things on how the manufacturer set that up.  Retina display for example on an Ipad higher DPI over the same inches.

if your screen is set at 72dpi then a 1000x1000 with a 72dpi is going to look the same as a 1000x1000 96dpi because the program is simply going to display a 1000 pixels the same way.  if you render an image at 10" x 10" at 72 dpi then that is 720x720, at 96dpi then it is 960x960. 

It comes into play when printing more.  people start talking whats the acceptable level the eye can see.  Some people can see the difference between 100-150dpi vs 300dpi some can't, some 200dpi looks printed about the same as 360dpi.  It also depends on whats being printed, the types of edges and colors.  I know a person who paints on an ipad with an app that supports a max of 4096x4096 (he didn't paint this one that high) who made a nice larger than 16x20 print by enlarging using software from OnOne (that resize that was mentioned above in fact) that retains the edging and essense instead of pixallating it.

As for photoshop when you take off the resample image (resizing the actual image) and start playing with dpi it simply changes the inches size and not the pixel size because its all related.  10" x 10" at 100 dpi is 1000x1000, change without resizing to 200dpi and it becomes 5" x 5" at 200dpi but is still 1000x1000

Books by David , so perfect resize works, ? I had a go with one recently , free trial, and it just came out pixelated as it would have without the software, I better check out which one is used .... Someone had given me a 5 mb image they wanted used as a poster...... 

here is a thread of the lion and the print.

http://procreate.si/forums/index.php?topic=74.0  I hope that helps.  I haven't used it yet, though my wife bought the suite.  I was wanting snapseed but the tools they have look interesting I just haven't tried them yet.

So take the resize knowlege based on that thread :/

Quote - Books by David , so perfect resize works, ? I had a go with one recently , free trial, and it just came out pixelated as it would have without the software, I better check out which one is used .... Someone had given me a 5 mb image they wanted used as a poster...... 

Well, it's worked for me so far. I've had images as large as 3 ft. by 5 ft printed and they came out beautifully. I've tried .jpgs at about 600x750 and the larger they get the worse they look, but the quality wasn't great to start with, so I think it all comes down to the quality of the original image.

After a quick read of the article xerxes references above, I think it says the same thing.

There are also several adustable settings in Perfect Resize that can effect the quality of the final image (for good or bad).

Thanks David, I'm presently working on a tryptich 24inch wide by 30 inch high by three and will probably make it one image and I was hoping to get some clouds in the background taken with my 12 meg camera, so will have a look. thanks for the heads up!

cheers from here :) 

Quote - here is a thread of the lion and the print.

http://procreate.si/forums/index.php?topic=74.0  I hope that helps.  I haven't used it yet, though my wife bought the suite.  I was wanting snapseed but the tools they have look interesting I just haven't tried them yet.

So take the resize knowlege based on that thread :/

Thanks for that! I'm sorry I completely missed this post! gah

Quote - Thanks David, I'm presently working on a tryptich 24inch wide by 30 inch high by three and will probably make it one image and I was hoping to get some clouds in the background taken with my 12 meg camera, so will have a look. thanks for the heads up!

cheers from here :) 

Good luck.

Ha ha thanks, yes that is the 30 day trial I have used. I just ran it through my clouds from 1600 by 3732 and upped it to 9259 by 21597 and unfortunately it looks exactly the same as when I increase the size via photoshop. So currently I am smart blurring then will take it into a hdr program to sharpen it, might work :)

Lyne, I don't think anyone answered yet what a Render Node is.

This is so you can build a 'render farm' of more than one computer.  So if you have another computer that you want to help you render something, you put the Render Node on the other computer, make sure the 2 computers are communicating able to see each other on the network, and then you can set it up to network render with 2 computers (or 3 or 4 our however many extra computers you have hanging around) instead of just relying on you main computer.

For example, my main laptop is an i7, so it renders with 8 cores.  But I have an older backup laptop that runs with an i5, which renders with 4 cores.  So if I set them up on a batch render to render together, that means I have 12 cores rendering at once (the cores from the render node aren't colored, they are all gray, but who cares, it's 4 extra cores cutting the render time).

I set this up to test it when I got my new laptop, haven't used it since but it worked fine.

here is a nice PDF of Carrara links

http://carraracafe.com/downloads/?did=40

Quote - Ha ha thanks, yes that is the 30 day trial I have used. I just ran it through my clouds from 1600 by 3732 and upped it to 9259 by 21597 and unfortunately it looks exactly the same as when I increase the size via photoshop. So currently I am smart blurring then will take it into a hdr program to sharpen it, might work :)

That's too bad. I'm at a loss. The program has always worked well for me.

probably my choice of image? too many soft edges in clouds?

Quote - probably my choice of image? too many soft edges in clouds?

Sounds like those clouds need to lose some weight. Getting a bit puffy there. :)

me too!

Aren't we all.

Attached Link: Centaur ladies in Carrara

warning! BIG IMAGE!!!  a 2 mb jpg!

What I did was render a 2600 x 2000 at BEST aa, 72 dpi...and then enlarged it 50% more in photoshop.... and this is what I got! :)

I tried the trail versions of PhotoZoom (as I heard good thingsa bout it, when it was still owned by SmithMicro) and what a DOG! blah.  I decided that I am working 'too large' for the net  - wittness this pic... LOL!  so will stick to how I do it now...

and of course the figures were put in, in post.

Lyne, that is excellent!

Very nice, Lyne. :)

Superb ! but the clothes are not welcome in this case...

Nicely done!

Quote - Superb ! but the clothes are not welcome in this case...

LOL! Well that is not me... I think the Mother's bra fits the "world" nicely, but your right the little girl's are maybe too modern...

I did a real bad thing... I save a 23 layer psd and it then refused to open... so despite loosing the psd totally (dumb me) I did have the flattened tiff... LESSON LEARNED!

I'm working on the mysterious Father now, to be placed in Howie's fantastic mountain creekside path!  He won't have any clothes of course. :)

And thanks for the compliments! Overall it was a really great learning experience! I LOVE Carrara! :)

Quote - I did a real bad thing... I save a 23 layer psd and it then refused to open... so despite loosing the psd totally (dumb me) I did have the flattened tiff... LESSON LEARNED!

Yeah. been there and done that.

You never realise you've done something bad until it's past too late.

I always try to save multiple versions of things. That practise has saved my skin more than once.

Wonderful image Lyne! sorry about the flattened tif :(