Forum: Carrara

Subject: my first export attempt was not pretty

estherau opened this issue on Nov 30, 2005 ยท 16 posts

estherau posted Wed, 30 November 2005 at 5:32 AM

I created a terrain. Then I exported it as #Ds. I ticked the box for convert procedural shaders to textures, and I increased the resolution of the texture to 2000x2000, then I imported it into poser, but it just doesn't look like the original texture in carrara by a long way. Love esther

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LCBoliou posted Wed, 30 November 2005 at 1:01 PM

It is very difficult to convert procedural shaders to decent textures -- for any software application. Though it would certainly be nice if software developers could write a fine conversion filter. I'll bet it took Carrara a very long time to do the conversion?

Patrick_210 posted Wed, 30 November 2005 at 2:42 PM

Pardon me, but why would you want to render in Poser instaed of Carrara? Patrick

anastasis20 posted Wed, 30 November 2005 at 3:31 PM

In agreement with Patrick, but still have a look at the Baker plug in from Inagoni - that might be what you need. http://www.inagoni.com/comment.php?comment.news.17

estherau posted Wed, 30 November 2005 at 4:26 PM

Hi guys, I have a friend who doesn't have carrara, so I was trying to make a terrain he can use for his poser scenes. Actually it took carrara a matter of seconds to do the export. It was just a terrain with nothing else. Maybe I have done something wrong and looked at it too early, but it didn't have a spinning beachball or anything to indicate it wasn't finished. So do you think that plugin by inagoni is good? Love esther

MY ONLINE COMIC IS NOW LIVE

I aim to update it about once a month.  Oh, and it's free!

anastasis20 posted Wed, 30 November 2005 at 4:58 PM

Baker gives you a preview of the texture once it's done so that right there is a useful time saver for checking if the texture is what you want or if it needs a bit more work. Plus you can export light maps, normal maps and every other type of texture channel from Carrara (highlights, transparency etc.) I haven't actually used it for exporting any textures out to any external applications, but with the messing about I've done to learn how it works I think it looks pretty good. Let us know if you want to see a specific texture (one of the default landscapes in the browser) & I'll post an image of it so you can see for yourself.

Patrick_210 posted Wed, 30 November 2005 at 6:25 PM

You could also render a top down orthogonal view of the terrain in full light and use that for a bitmap texture in Poser. Patrick

estherau posted Thu, 01 December 2005 at 6:00 AM

Hi, okay Anastasis, could you post an image, at present I'[m only using the default landscapes that come with carrara Interesting idea Patrick, but wouldn't I need UV mapper or something? Love esther

MY ONLINE COMIC IS NOW LIVE

I aim to update it about once a month.  Oh, and it's free!

estherau posted Thu, 01 December 2005 at 6:09 AM

Hi, okay Anastasis, could you post an image, at present I'[m only using the default landscapes that come with carrara Interesting idea Patrick, but wouldn't I need UV mapper or something? Love esther

MY ONLINE COMIC IS NOW LIVE

I aim to update it about once a month.  Oh, and it's free!

Patrick_210 posted Thu, 01 December 2005 at 7:20 AM

No, just set the aspect to square and shoot straight down with the edges lined up exactly with the production frame. Then you can render at whatever resolution you like. Patrick

estherau posted Thu, 01 December 2005 at 7:40 AM

that sounds good Patrick. I'll try it - thanks. Love esther

MY ONLINE COMIC IS NOW LIVE

I aim to update it about once a month.  Oh, and it's free!

anastasis20 posted Thu, 01 December 2005 at 10:52 AM

I picked Island from C4Pro's scene wizard. As you can see the 3rd image that uses a normal map gives a much better result than the bump map version (2nd image). I'll post the maps that Baker generates below.

anastasis20 posted Thu, 01 December 2005 at 11:25 AM

(The above texture maps have been scaled down from 1024x1024 just as preview). I think the problem you might have had before is that Carrara only exports whats in the colour channel of a texture (if I'm wrong please let me know). If that is the case than you need to export a separate version with the bump map in the colour channel (greyscale/black & white) and apply that image to Poser's bump and/or displacement map channels: - Drag the Bump map channel into the colour channel. - Check that the preview shows the bump map pattern in black & white. - Export this one as something different so you don't overwrite the colour map. I'm starting to get into normal maps now - they're like bump maps on steroids. Obviously you can't use normal maps in Poser, but I hope this stuff is useful to you anyway. One more thing: I'm not 100% certain on this, but Baker doesn't seem to recognize a Terrain shaders bump mapping - the 2nd image was actually generated using Baker's light map function. Doesn't really matter to me, I think Baker is a useful plug in anyway.

estherau posted Thu, 01 December 2005 at 4:48 PM

Hi, thanks, that looks awsome. I am getting free carrara five in a few weeks, if I buy baker now for my carrara 4, will it work with carrara 5? Love esther

MY ONLINE COMIC IS NOW LIVE

I aim to update it about once a month.  Oh, and it's free!

anastasis20 posted Thu, 01 December 2005 at 5:46 PM

No, but Julien already has Carrara5 versions on his website & the serial numbers you'll get from C4 work with those.

estherau posted Thu, 01 December 2005 at 11:33 PM

aha

MY ONLINE COMIC IS NOW LIVE

I aim to update it about once a month.  Oh, and it's free!