Thanks!

I kind of got an answer. I think you can - mine just got rejected because I used a 3D program to block it out before painting it and the rules for the 2D contest now state that you can't use any 3D software at all, unlike prior years (if that was a rule in the past it obviously wasn't enforced at all last year).

So that was my fault for not fully reading the rules.

Can you only enter in one category this year?

I already submitted something to the 3D category and when I try to submit to the 2D category it says I have already submitted an entry.

Wonga posted at 5:38PM Sun, 17 September 2017 - #4314223

mmmm tried again

same story!

It's that "attach file" button. That's never been there before on the 3D contest and I think it is what's causing the problems. I had no idea what was supposed to be attached there, so I added my image file on both the "Image" and the "File" lines and it finally took it. Make sure your image and thumbnail are both at exactly 72dpi too - my thumbnail somehow got saved at 72.009 dpi and it kept getting rejected.

I think I ran into that crash. I was plugging an object info node into a color ramp to add some random color to some particles and it froze and crashed. Fortunately I am kind of psychotic about saving frequently and only lost about five minutes of work. The problem didn't recur though so maybe it's not actually the bug.

Also, I think the slow load time and laggy interface must have been because of some add-on, or combination of them. I restored back to factory defaults and then reinstalled just the half dozen or so add-ons I actually use on regular basis and both problems went away.

The new features look great but it's slow as heck on my computer. Previous versions of Blender opened in seconds, this one takes up to 40 seconds to open and every bit of the interface is laggy. I don't like the fact that they seem to have gotten rid of zip downloads too - all I was able to find was the .msi installer.

Also - how lazy have I become, that 40 seconds seems like forever. My first PC back in the early 80's could take 3-4 minutes to start up, now 40 seconds is frustrating. :)

MistyLaraPrincess posted at 7:23PM Mon, 24 July 2017 - #4310631

its annoying.

already have notice popups by my tray.

can i please turn it off.the feedback thing? its a click hazard.

LOL - I said almost that exact same thing in the Blender forum! :)

Can I submit feedback that I find the feedback button really distracting and annoying? :)

I submitted yet another ticket over at DAZ asking if they were ever again going to make the SDK available again and the response was that no active development of Carrara was going on or being supported and that were not going to allocated the resources to make the SDK available. It was the most blunt response I've gotten - I think they are sick of me asking.

Still, I'll continue to actively use Carrara as long as it's possible to do so. It's just got too many cool and convenient features.

incantrix posted at 5:27PM Mon, 17 July 2017 - #4310002

.... My main point with it is why is a single input into a mix shader adjusting the strength of that input. When to me it is designed to mix 2 inputs together to give a combined output...

Incantrix

Ah. I think that is because the mix shader treats the empty input as if it was black, or zero, and mixing that into whatever is in the other input. I could be wrong, but I think that is what is going on. :)

I don't understand what this node setup is doing at all. You are mixing a glossy shader's BSDF into the roughness input, which should be expecting a value of 0 to 1. What exactly does that do? I think that in your setup, only the bottom chain (starting with the texture) is actually affecting the roughness at all.

I have to confess that I'm a little worried about that eventuality as well - that at some point it simply won't run anymore. That's why I've been learning Blender (I seem to be one of the few people who really liked the interface once I understood the basic logic of it) even though there are still tons of things that are just more fun to do in Carrara. :)

On the positive side, even though official Carrara development appears to be at a standstill, there does seem to be a mini-renaissance in community plugin development lately with free plugins for triplanar shader projection, genuine distance-squared falloff for spot and point lights, and conversion of Carrara dynamic hair to exportable polygon-based hair all being released in the last couple months.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that that happened before with one of the daily builds. Are you using the most recent official release?

I would try re-downloading from https://www.blender.org/download/

I would just select some vertices in edit mode and use proportional editing to move them down a bit to make a rough indent. You probably don't need it to be exactly form fitting. :)

You could also try using dynamic paint (just google and you'll find tons of video examples) to either create a displacement map or actual displacement, but I think the proportional editing route is probably better in this case.

Another option might be to bake an AO map and use that to create a displacement map - it won't help much with making a morph but might look good enough to use depending on your purpose.

Awesome - congrats Phil!

I am far from an expert modeler, but this is not a good model. Not only is it all tris for no reason at all, but every single face is overlapping at least one other face. It's also got six different materials on it (although maybe that is intentional?) and the UV map is bizarrely far off the UV space grid (which doesn't really hurt anything, but looks strange) and has quite a few overlaps in it as well.

If you are really intent on using this model for some reason, then I would remove doubles (when I downloaded your model and did this it removed 77 vertices! that's a ton in such a simple model), then convert tris to quads as RobynsVeil suggested above, then recalculate the normals and THEN just move the top vertices down like keppel said.

Honestly, if all you want is a simple T shape I would think it would be faster to just model one from scratch..

Here's a better view of it in Blender for anyone who didn't want to copy and paste the links above into their browser.