I dont have much time to answer most of your questions but I can definitely answer one of them.

It is always best to render out to image sequences using any 3D program. Crashes happen, so do power failures. Recovering a broken AVI or QT can be impossible depending on the circumstances.

Render to image sequences. After you have finished with the last frame, create a new scene in Carrara. Import the image sequence and put it in the background. Make sure your rendering size matches the resolution of the original rendered images. Turn off antialiasing and render it out.

This provides you with a ton of options as far as compression, file type, etc. is concerned. It also allows you to preview your animation prior to finish to spot any problems. Just open the images that have rendered and check them.

Rendering 2-3 minutes all at once in any program is a bit much. You are probably going to have camera moves, cuts, etc. It would be pretty boring to have 2-3 minutes of straight animation without some camera moves or some cuts. Save yourself the headache of trying to do it all at once. Break the project up into managable bites. It is best to decide early on which shots are continuous and which can be isolated. You can assemble them later in the cheapest of video editors for post production. Think ahead and you can save yourself a lot of time and headaches.

 

Add me to the list of those who would like a transcript. I have a normal job during the day, internet is accesible, but I dont want to be caught attending a live chat session.

 

Sorry to hear of your troubles. Good luck with tracking down/solving the problem. I like the image BTW!!

As far as the batch que is concerned. It is a good idea to use that option for anything taking more than a couple of hours. You never know when you are going to need that computer for something else.

I have a couple of dedicated render boxes. 4200+ X2's. But even with them being dedicated, there are times where one client takes precedence over another. If I need to shut a render down, then I dont lose anything.

Power outage is another thing to consider unless you have a dedicated UPS, but with a long outage it might not matter. The batch que is your friend. If you only have one computer, the batch que is even more advantageous.

Best of luck!!

 

I have seen a few people ask about animating volumetric clouds in C5. I am not sure if it is common knowledge so I will go ahead and explain the method I use.

 

You can access the properties for the volumetric clouds in the sequencer. From there you can create keyframes for the master object. You have access to most everything from the cloud modeling interface. Size in miles in X, Y, & Z. Opacity, phase (which I discovered is the silver lining), brightness, etc.

 

You can create some amazingly interesting animations doing this. For instance I created one where a cloud was seemingly blowing towards the camera. As it approached it got bigger and thicker. As it was doing this all kinds of small details popped up and little tendrils formed and then turned into detailed sections of the cloud.

 

It is very interesting to just take a cloud and watch it grow in size (miles setting, not just scaling it. Or have its opacity increase. It just appears as a whispy cloud then suddenly gets more intense and detailed.

 

Again, not sure if everyone already knew this. But since I have seen it asked so many times I thought I would point it out.

 

Donnie

Thanks for all the information Veritas!! I will try and digest it now and see how it goes.

Donnie

 

Uncheck where it says Align object to normal.

 

Veritas, I have been really impressed with your work with regard to the NPR feature. I was curious if you would ever consider doing a tutorial for the rest of us? I see a lot of potential with the NPR. Especially with the architectural rendering I do. Sometimes the client wants a more sketched look. This in addition to full global illumination of course. Carrara has worked great for me recently as an architectural rendering tool using the global illumination. But my clents have expressed an interest in simpler less costly looks too. For use when they just need a representation of the house, etc, for illustration purposes.

BTW, for any one reading, the new Ambient occlusion works great in many instances for architectural stuff. You dont get the color bleads that full global illumination gives you, but you do get some very nice soft diffuse shadows that work well. In fact with the exception of my most demanding two clients, most of my architectural clients are perfectly happy with the ambient occlusion rendering. After some initial setup to get the lighting correct, it can be a real time saver and it really can look good.

Back on topic. I have tried messing with the NPR but with not much luck. You are getting some clean looking output. Just curious what your settings generally tend to be. BTW if you dont have time to throw together a tutorial I fully understand, barely have time myself to even take the time to comment on your excellent work. But perhaps you could take one of the stock Carrara objects and use your settings and then upload the file so I can get a look at what you are doing differently than me? Maybe a simple object and perhaps at the same time a more faceted object so I can see the difference the settings have on different types of objects?

Thanks very much Veritas,

Donnie

You switch back to Assembly by selecting the Hand icon at the top of the screen. The hand is Assembly. The wrench is the Modeler, etc. Each one switches you to that part or room of the program.

When you start Carrara you have to either hit New from the menu or go to the Scene Wizard where you can pick from ready made scenes. The modeling tools will not show up if you make a new scene and dont insert an object. Start a new scene. At this point you are in Assembly.  Now go to the top menus and select "Insert Vertex Object" When you do, the modeling room will automatically open. From there you can access the modeling tools. They are not available unless you insert an object. Either spline or vertex.

If you insert a terrain you are also switched to the modeling room. But it is context sensitive. You are now in the modeler for terrains. You need to switch back to Assembly, insert either a vertex or spline object. From there you will see the tools.

Good luck!!

Donnie

C5 Pro works great as it is. No need to replace it just because DAZ now holds the reins. :) Of course I am sure you mean the future of Carrara, which I am worried about as well. I still model in Lightwave, I have yet to make the jump to any of the newer modeling packages.

C5 Pro is an excellent product. The development team in my opinion has done a great job over the past couple of years. To see it end would be a shame. Though I am sure we will know more tomorrow, indications are that the development team will stay on and still maintain development of Carrara. I sure hope so. Changing apps is not easy. I attempted it with Carrara at version 3. Only now have I made the complete transition. I like Carrara and it has some great features that Lightwave doesnt have. More importantly, I just have more fun using Carrara than I did in 7 years of using Lightwave.

The only experience I have with any DAZ product is Bryce and that was years ago, back before Corel got it. It would be easy to point to the fate of Bryce and be real sad about the future of Carrara. Bryce was pretty much dead when DAZ took over. Here we have the full development team staying on, from initial reports anyway.

Other than that, my experience with DAZ is zero. So I guess I will wait and see. But I still have a $400 upgrade for Lightwave to take advantage of if things dont pan out. For now, Carrara suits my  needs perfectly, hopefully it will continue to do so and the development team will still keep adding the amazing new features.

C5 Pro XP Home CPU: P4 2.8C Northwood Ram: 1 Gig 3200 Mobo: Abit IC7 Video: 6800GT 17 Sec

Depending on how much toon rendering you will be doing, you might want to explore the toon renderer included with Carrara. It may fill your needs, if not then you will be able to decide if you want the more powerful DCG Toon. The DCG toon plugin is better as indicated by the tests that Kixum posted, however, if your needs are like mine (sparse) you may get by with the included toon renderer. Yes as others have mentioned, Carrara plugins are inexpensive.

GrantH has offer very good advice. In contrast though, I like the Vertex Modeler a lot now. I do not do a lot of character modeling though. If that were the case I think I might augment it with Hexagon. To put it another way, the VM is now good enough that I can get results quickly and easyily. Something that didnt happen with C3 Studio--for me. I have seen great work with the original VM, just none by me. ;) But now I really like it. Although I still prefer the workflow in Lightwave's Modeler. Mainly for the layers functions. No need to hide selections, just place them on another layer. Very useful feature. Anyway, I guarantee you will be impressed with the rendering in Carrara. Even without using Global Illumination the output is very good. Good luck.

Dont know what is up with the text formatting on that post. That picture is just a quick test using a plane and displacement mapping.

I had a project that I did in Lightwave a couple of years back. Lots of water--realistic ocean water with swells. Displacement mapping is probably the best way in Lightwave. I just did a quick test in Carrara. There are a couple of ways as pointed out already. One is with terrain. A good way is with the fractal generator. Then in Assembly scale the terrain down in Z. That worked pretty good. The other way is with a plane and displacement. Use a fractal noise or turbulence in the displacement channel. Make sure you use extra subdivision in the options. The powerful thing about this method is that you can use the "transform" tab and animate the texture center easily. This will cause the texture to animate upwards, or downwards creating rolling waves that form and then collapse. I have not tested it too extensively yet in Carrara, other than a quick 120x90 movie. But it appears to work identically to Lightwave in that manner. A little tweaking and it should be very easy to create rolling waves. In Carrara displacement mapping is done at surface level as opposed to geometry level in Lightwave. But I would also point out that Carrara's way of doing it at the surface level gives more options and control. Because in Lightwave you have to use a highly subdivided mesh to start with before applying a displacement map. Carrara allows you to adjust the subdivision from within the shader itself. Wish I had more time to experiment. I have a "hot" project for a client I am working on at the moment. YAY!! I get to use Carrara. But once I finish it I would like to experiment some more and post what I have come up with.