O.K.-- I've brought M3 into C5 as a CRZ file- HOW do I DELETE in Carrara 5 these objects COMPLETELY from existence?

The C5 NPR renderer SEES these- even if they are "transparent"-- so they have to be completely removed from the mesh to render correctly (without being BLACK BLOBS) in NPR...

The trick I always use is to open the figure in the Vertex Room>Selection>Select by Shading Domain>Delete. You may have to delete twice: once for the polys and once for the edges. Mark

...still doesn't work for me!

I've pulled up the bar at the bottom and what I can delete are only the SHADERS- when I render it- the objects are still there- just no longer BLACK- they are white or grey- but still there...

When I go into the Properties tab it doesn't list the eyebrows, eyelashes, etc.- unless I go back into the Shader Domains- and that is like what I said above- the shaders can be deleted- but NOT the objects!

I would REALLY LIKE to see someone prove to me that this can be done with M3 by rendering with the NPR setting. If these objects are REALLY GONE- that will prove this can be done- and not just removing shaders only...

O.K.- I got some help with how to convert M3 to a vertex model... but it LOST all the morphs- he became just basic M3 again...

This is just too frustrating! I'm giving up on the Mil Figures with NPR in Carrara. Maybe a future version will fix these issues. Other 3D models and meshes still work well in NPR renders- so I'm happy with that- but Mil Figures... NO.

Adjusting the M3 figure in Carrara is possible. However, as you can see, there is some additional work to be done if you truly want to use NPR exclusively on your image. A work-around is to use NPR and Wireframe Pro from DCG and then combine the results in a 2D image application - Wireframe pro to get the outlines and NPR to do the fill.

Here is an NPR render and Wireframe Pro overlay.

Attached Link: http://www.informatix.co.uk/piranesi/gallery.shtml

Thanks Mark-

The NPR stuff I'm doing in Carrara is more "painterly"-  you can get some really great effects once you get a "handle" on the brushes.-- I've arrived at a similiar "post-Production" method- which involves running the brush effects, and then doing a Photo-Realistic render- and using Photoshop's History Brush to paint through- and paint OUT, the black blobs...

I've explored using UV Mapper Pro, Morphs in Poser, bringing in M3 as a native Cz2 file, tranposer Pzz file, CAR file, converting to vertix, etc... and it's not worth the trouble. Unfortunately nothing I've tried or seen does what I wanted- so I'm going with the Photoshop method as that is where I am the most comfortable anyway in the way I work on art projects.

My other Carrara NPR tests with cars, buildings, animals, etc have been really great as far as I'm concerned- the brushes are amazingly like watercolors, oils or acrylic painting effects- especially because they are actually painted in 3D- the brush strokes conform to the figures like how artists really paint- unlike all the other 2D painting filter effects.

I only wish that the Eovia software team could expand upon these NPR effects even further. I am hoping they will be supporting a file export for Piranesi in the future. However- I am able to get some "Piranesi" type renders out of the Carrara NPR feature already...

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

Did you try making them not visible. If you are using a layers list instead of shader domains I could see this being more difficult. Using transposer is how you usually end up with Layers List. Again I don't use NPR, but I will see about this.

Just looked. Since it is shader domains rather than objects it does look limiting. However, I don't know what I am doing with npr either. By all means go request these things in the bug tracker over at daz.

ren_mem - One other issue about Mil People I did not mention- which is a problem- is that their heads are much higher resolution (mesh-wise) than their bodies. This causes the brushes to look out of scale as they go from the head to the body. This might be fixable if the vertix transformation makes the Mil-Mesh one single scale- but I haven't tried that yet.

What I'm looking at, which would apply to Architectural projects as well, is probably trying to use the older P4 characters- since their lower mesh detail might actually be an advantage with NPR brush EFX. This is something I will be experimenting with and will post some tests in the future...

dbigers- glad to hear you are interested in the Architectural uses for Carrara. While I have been a long-time Vue user and it makes great realistic plants and ecosystems- the NPR EFX actually work better, I've found, on more simple plant meshs- so Carrara actually makes a great software platform for doing NPR Illustrations. I'm not knocking Carrara's realism- but I just haven't spent any time at all exploring it yet as I am so completely overwhelmed with Carrara's NPR EFX at this time. It is EXACTLY what I've been looking for- a really good and easy to use NPR-Illustration platform.

And like you said- you can also so very realistic global illumination and ambient occlusion rendering with Carrara- so that also lends itself to very nice merge-blends in Photoshop- with each effect filling out an area in a project illustration. I'm doing experiements now in Photoshop and you get the best of both worlds in a finished render.

As far as a tutorial- I will try to put something together in the near future. The MAIN PROBLEM I've found with saving my brush settings is that they often do NOT transfer over to another scene that well. The reason is that mesh scales, lighting and even the camera lense- seems to greatly affect the way the brushes look. The brushes need to be re-scaled for nearly every new scene I make. I have discovered. It will be hard to make a single brush setting that someone can load- and have it render the same way on someone else's computer- unless they are working on the same scene.

Plus- people need to get some experience using the NPR brushes themselves before anyone can send them a brush setting. But- having said that- there are some nice brushes in the stock Carrara 5 set. Really very good, in fact. Whoever designed this for Eovia really did an excellent job and certainly understood how art is created. I would really love to speak with that person if they are still around at Eovia...

Resources to get started with Carrara NPR- besure to read the Carrara NPR section starting on page 562 of the Carrara 5 manual!  This section actually covers the brush controls really well. But it will not make as much sense until you have played around with them first. Then when you re-read it - it will all start to make more sense. Also- check in the Carrara 5 "Misc" files - in the C5 browser- there is a couple of sample NPR scenes that you can load and play around with...

Also- Davide Tosches, from Rome, Italy has sent me some of his brushes- and he said that he would make them available again- either in some Free Stuff area at Renderosity or over at DAZ. Hopefully this will be happening very soon- and I will post about this when he makes these available.

Here's some other brush info:

Brushes can be any size, even gray-scale, but keeping them a uniform size- like the original Carrara brushes, has advantages when you want to scale them at exactly 100%- which can look nice for artistic control...

I've taken brushes from my Photoshop Impressionist filter set and also from Piranesi, a high-end 3D paint software I own. Any brush can be CAPTURED from Photoshop or Painter by making the brush impression and then saving it as a square JPG (but they don't HAVE to be square...)

You can even use bump maps from your 3D software programs and very bizarre geometric designs- and they will all work as brushes as long as you save them as JPG's...

Here's an example of how to set up new brush directories in Carrara:

You can add your own brush libraries by editing the "Wizard.txt" file in the brush strokes directory-- as:

{
fold "DataStrokesDrawing"
fold "DataStrokesGeometric"
fold "DataStrokesPaint"
fold "DataStrokesToxeDigitals"
fold "DataStrokesToxeFurs"
fold "DataStrokesToxeGeometrics"
fold "DataStrokesToxeNaturals"
}

The bottom four are Davide Tosches that he sent me via email. What I did is just copy his four directories in with the others- edited the Wizard.txt- CAREFULLY copying EXACTLY how the original directories looked syntax-wise...

That's all for now. I'll post some more stuff about this and further experiements in the near future...

BTW- anyone interested in trying a full 30 day working demo of Piranesi can get it HERE:

http://www.informatix.co.uk/piranesi/piranesi_downloads.shtml

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

Donnie

 

...if nothing else- you can find some more nice brushes in the Piranesi demo!

Plus- the Piranesi gallery renders are good targets to aim at. I look at them and think: How could I do this with the Carrara NPR brushes?

Another interesting idea that Piranesi employs are people cut-outs. I think that this is something that could be tried in Carrara- there are some cut-outs included with the Piranesi demo materials.Somewhere I saw some Carrara examples of how 2D images were made into 3D cutouts. These would work nicely for Architectural renders...

Actually- I just had an interesting idea to try! You can take Poser characters and Z-Flatten them!You can, of course, do this in Carrara as well--- so you could have Z-Flattened people, trees, etc- and they would look very "artsy" for a sketch style render with NPR brushes!  --I'll have to go an try this!

One more tip about Architectural NPR renders in Carrara- I have found that using the "U" option (part of the U-V controls) is a good one for buildings as the brush strokes follow the actual front face of the buildings-- this is of course different than the "H" option- which brushes horizontally but does not follow the mesh coordinates...

Well, I have seen little on the NPR...docs or work so having someone with an interest in it will be a good thng.