Thought I'd start a random render thread. Nothing serious. Till Saturday I have some work in a gallery here in oz. Edition of 10. Has been a good response. 60 by 50 cm on fancy German or Dutch  water colour paper, pigment print. "The New Faith." 

Very nice. I'll have to look around for a few random renders - I know I have a few. 

It will be fun to see what turns up in this thread!

It is nice to see something done that is such art, as opposed to animation or illustration. Eyecatching!

Thank you Mark, looking forward to that . ,,!

Thanks Sueposer. The show is called Pattern Observation.  Though I am a painter, I was invited to show as a digital artist. I was also invited to participate in an en plein air event a few months ago - as a digital artist! Pretty strange sitting outside with my laptop ....

its tis good to see our work being gradually accepted here by other more traditional artists. 

Thank you Mark, looking forward to that . ,,!

Thanks Sueposer. The show is called Pattern Observation.  Though I am a painter, I was invited to show as a digital artist. I was also invited to participate in an en plein air event a few months ago - as a digital artist! Pretty strange sitting outside with my laptop ....

its tis good to see our work being gradually accepted here by other more traditional artists. 

So nice you said it twice. Heh, heh.

Really like the image, by the way. You've got a style I really like.

Ha ha ! Yes I am twigger happy ! Thanks for liking that ! ;) 

Double plus good.

---

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My Freestuff and Gallery at ShareCG

 Thanks Eldritch !

 

 

 Something else, a poster for a show  from a few years ago. I ended up doing a painting of this, took 3 months... gah!

You're very talented, and I don't toss such things around lightly. I hesitate to make blanket judgements but in general there seems to be a pretty high level of talent and/or vision in the Carrara community, comparatively speaking that is. Just something I've noticed.

---

W10 Pro, HP Envy X360 Laptop, Intel Core i7-10510U, NVIDIA GeForce MX250, Intel UHD, 16 GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM, 1 TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD

Mudbox 2022, Adobe PS CC, Poser Pro 11.3, Blender 2.9, Wings3D 2.2.5

My Freestuff and Gallery at ShareCG

 Thank you, that's very kind. I am lucky enough to be a painter who came to three d work about 12 years ago. I've been working with a ny agent for about three years who is very very hard to please, doing mainly wordless kids books (I do the images over and over and over ;) until she is happy so I get lots of practice) So far she hasn't been able to sell any as they are bit 'unusual.' I've been rejected by all the best NY publishers so far - their one common critique is that my work looks too CG , sadly. So I will sit down for a month or two soon and look at other working methods (within Carrara).

 

Carrara users, yes they are in the main highly intelligent and some are fabulous artists. I'm not sure why, maybe because Carrara is such a good package that people can take a commercial product and bash it around till it is their own. Of course you can build stuff in Carrara if you want - so all sorts of people are attracted to the software.

I think it's versatility might be it's death knell as far as Daz future development for various reasons. ;)

 

 

 

I'm sure you will figure something out headwax. Your images look far less CG than most, so I think you are going in the right direction.

I came across an application a while back that generates brushstrokes from an image based on user input at different places on the image, rather than applying a "canned" effect to the entire image: 
http://www.gertrudisgraphics.com/help/gmx-photopainter-styles

I don't think that making your work look more like paintings is the answer. What interested me about this application is the kind of control it allows.

The Non-Photorealistc renderer in Carrara, while it does have quite a few parameters, is applying those to the entire image, so you can't say hey can you do a bit more or less of an effect on this face (or eye or nose or whatever)

 thanks cjd! I'll check out that link, appreciated. ;)

I have corel painter 2015 and it has a cloning thing with different media, but I haven't really seen any good examples of resulting work that I would be happy to have my name on!

All the so called tutors don't really seem to be doing quality work as far as I can see. I need to look at how to isolate part (via selection) of my 3d render within the cloning process so I can have the advantage of being able to use eg the object index pass to make the post work easier .

 

cheers :)

 

 

 

 Oh I really should say that I started this thread to show how Carrara can be used in the 'real' world to make imagery. Whatever the real world is....

Last Chrissie I was commissioned by the Council (actually by a company that was commissioned by our council) to do some Christmas work (banners and an advent calendar) to try and attract people to our cbd. This one of the banners.. The small crowd behind is part of the crowd that came to the 'opening'  . The first  image is a small part of  the window display. ;)

 

@EldritchCeller - and now I have the Eurythmics 1984 going through my head: Double plus good, double plus un-good...

@Headwax - really nice. 'Real World', why the hell would anybody be interested in that? I'm quite happy in my own, manicured world, thank you very much. :D

 Ha ha yes, last time I visited the real world it was reasonably colourless, smelt bad and left really big holes in my wallet  ;)

 

 

 

 there's a poster for a show I was in at a local church. The Uniting Church bought my work which was 8o cm by 180 ??? It was going to cost close to two thousand dollars to have it framed so I am glad they did. They will install in a chapel - not sure where.

Super work. I had no idea. Thanks for sharing. 

Pleasure! It's my job to talk myself up ! ;) thanks for looking.  Cheers 

Oh, I forgot to say I'm really looking forward to seeing what other people do with Carrara, in the 'real' world ;) 

Nice work headwax. 

[ Denis ]

| Coreldraw X6 | Moi v2 | Carrara 8.5 Pro | Cinema 4D R15 Prime | Lightwave 3D 11.6 |
| Intel i7-4700MQ | GeForce GTX 765M 2GB |

Very impressive, much more professional than most renders I see.  The "Nightmares" render reminds me of a famous painting I've been trying to work into a medieval animation (the painting itself, a royalty free version):

http://www.wga.hu/art/b/bosch/3garden/wings/20right.jpg

 Thank you Spaceland!

 

Thanks Steve K. The Garden of Earthly Delights. Yes it's a delight, and Bosch's work certainly influenced this one. More specifically I visited the Cathedral at Albi a few years ago and on the back walls their are horrific scenes of hell and torture. The idea was that the Catholics of the time were trying to subdue the local peasant population by showing them images of what would happen if they weren;t good etc (eg give a tithe to the church) It could have been just after the Catholics exterminated  the Cathars from memory. .Ah here is a link http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/albi-cathedral  and http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/albi-cathedral/photos/xti_0553p

 

My work is called Vandals at the Gates. The city where I live has an ongoing battle between property developers, football supporters and the Arts. So here we have musicians (later became painters when I painted the image) in the image being tortured by the bad guys. Last year a few Chinese people came into my studio at remarked on the painting that it reminded them of one of their Folk Stories. The identified the King Devil as the Hero...........

 

 

love looking at the works of Headwax :-)

Find my Facebook Page Here -- or me on Twitter

 Thanks Wonga,!  they were just hanging round I thought I should bang my drum for a while :) I hope everything is okay for you, somethings about life are crappy.

yes crappy, but inevitable but with such great art to look at it gives one an inner healing effect

keep 'em coming :-) 

Find my Facebook Page Here -- or me on Twitter

 thanks Wonga, charm will get you everywhere!, now lets see where is my other 10 terabyte hard drive ;)

My carrara work had a small mention in out city's major paper's art review section today. Better than none at all ;) 

Superb work, very impressive !

I'm dazzled by the shaders in the first picture.

Your art deserves to be recognized !

thanks Dudu!!! I do my best ;) I sold another digital work today (that first render) through  the gallery, so Im stoked!

headwax, 

I'm curious, do you mean you sold a print (reproduction)?

Do you create a certain number of prints and issue numbers (kind of like limited editions)?

Or do you sell the rights to the image as well?

Hi, these ones are editions of ten. I'm still finding my way around the pricing structure. For paintings ii is easier because I've been doing them for a long time, and you know what the ceiling is (in my city) for people being able to afford them, and also what the demand is.  For these digital works I never know we there people will want them or buy them. I usually manage to sell 1 or two when I show. For example I did a very poignant and timely political one last year and sold most of the ten. But I've also done 'the death of goldilocks' ... Little girl lying dead at the feet of the three bears (after the original story) and people have bought copies. My Santa Clause project I offered to sell the rights to the company but it would have been about 14000 and they balked so we did a one use fee, which ended up being much better for me .... If I get off my bottom and sell the works this year in a gallery. I'm using an expensive printer to printer in Sydney but the quality is like what you see on the monitor! Amazing! 

I thought about selling prints in the early 90's. My work was (is) more or less abstract, and I received feedback about "limited interest". I don't have your perseverance though, so I did not pursue it. I did get an image published in Computer Artist in '94 (or '95?) but that's about as far as I got.

That's great about computer artist! :) To sell work, it's about giving people what they want, not what we think they should want. Its hard to get into people's head spaces. For my paintings I paint parochial scenes of my city. People identify with them. Last show we just pulled down I sold 16 of 24 works. The guy showing in the same gallery this week has beautiful paintings of Paris and Tokyo, but not beautiful enough to sell here in Oz. He has sold one.... but if he went to a tourist hotel in Paris etc he'd probably do much better. Abstract work is harder to sell, where as figurative work, given the right audience, is a bit easier I think.

Importnatly you can never judge the artistic value of an artwork by whether it sells or not so keep at it if that is your passion.

The only proviso is, that if you want to sell work, you need to give people something they want - t hey might want it as a perceived investment, because it reminds them of a place or a time or a person, or they might buy it because they feel sorry for you! (happens to me).

I've had one lady (a stranger) cry over one of my paintings in a gallery a few years ago  (a landscape) because it reminded her of her grand daughter - so I gave her the painting. Ever since she and her partner have been talking me up to various gallery owners (hasnt worked yet ;)  But I think there is karma in art in some ways.

Another lady got in touch with me about that first image in the thread and told me she cried when she saw it because it reminded her of her singing in a church when she was 12. So people react to artworks in different ways....

"To sell work, it's about giving people what they want, not what we think they should want."

"Importnatly you can never judge the artistic value of an artwork by whether it sells or not so keep at it if that is your passion."

It is difficult to find an in between ground I think.

yes, so right!  I've been to plenty of galleries where the work is beautiful and not very expensive and nothing has sold. Makes the artist very despondent. Art is a luxury, and often that is the first luxury to go when people arent so affluent. If I stopped selling work, then I would...... ? dont know. Oh, when my work doesnt sell then I paint on thinner canvases so more fit in the cupboard!! Who needs clothes ? ;)

sorry to sound preachy, as you know you cant edit after a while .! My house is full to the rafters of unsold work.

spent the last few weeks working on a new technique, lots of render passes combined with toon pro, toon three and textures copied to  the glow channel .... then worked up in painter 15 ... now to retrace my steps :) that's always the hard part

Like it. You need to start taking notes. You know we're both getting to that age where if you don't write it down you'll never remember how you did it. Heh, heh.

sorry to sound preachy, as you know you cant edit after a while .! My house is full to the rafters of unsold work.

I did not take it that way, thanks for relating your experience. I understand about extending effort and time where there may be limited or no return, but if one measures actions solely by the return, there seems little purpose in anything. Besides, "return" can be many things, not just money of course. Experience and learning are huge returns, in my opinion.

That image has a soft warm feel, its very painterly.

Like it. You need to start taking notes. You know we're both getting to that age where if you don't write it down you'll never remember how you did it. Heh, heh.

I'm wondering if using a screen recording application might be helpful for trying to remember how you did something. Note taking is ideal in many ways, but its also disruptive. Some of the codecs make relatively small video files, particularly for recording applications, where typically very little actually changes from frame to frame.

Like it. You need to start taking notes. You know we're both getting to that age where if you don't write it down you'll never remember how you did it. Heh, heh.

I'm wondering if using a screen recording application might be helpful for trying to remember how you did something. Note taking is ideal in many ways, but its also disruptive.Some of the codecs make relatively small video files, particularly for recording applications, where typically very little actually changes from frame to frame.

I've considered screen recording as well, but for me at least, stopping to write things down makes me actually think about what I just did. Besides, I spend so much time doodling around to find just the right approach I'd quickly fill up my hard drive. :)

thanks cjd and books by david ;) Ah, old age shall not weary us, just make us .... what was I saying?

great idea on the screen capture cjd, thank you.

I'll look into that. So far I have been doing it over and over and seeing what works, it's like walking around in a forest with a torch that has a 6 degree arc of light and hard edges and an eight foot range ;) and a lousy battery...

Hmmm. I guess I won't be buying any Australian flashlights...or batteries. I don't know what the heck you're doing out in a forest with your computer anyway. Especially with such a lousy flashlight.

 heh, sorry I just realised that it was a wind up flash light ... no wonder it was so dim :) talking about sharks , here's my board with an image half done in carrara (rest in ps) , putting the teeth on was a mistake because it's usually the last thing I look at before I paddle out. It was printed at 150 dpi so unfortunately it lost a lot of detail, especially in the darks . Live and learn :) Hmm, pic wont upload oh well :)

 

 

 hmm 

 

 

 

 

 

oddly enough copy and paste worked!

Oooooo! Cool!

 thanks David, :)

 now unrelated, I had a great discovery yesterday about transmapped hair, you know that it gets screwed up in coverage, object and  depth pass etc ? in relation to being able to select it for post work, well I discovered that a diffuse texture pass of the character against a dark back ground gives the cleanest selection chance - I think it gives a much cleaner selection area than even an ordinary pass ? have to double check on that

Hmmmm. Interesting.

 yes, could be talking through my hat

I've been doing illustration renders and finally found a great style after a year or two of experimenting. and it was all in front of me all the time!!

gah :)  the beauty is you can just use one light to render out the shadows, it makes lighting so much easier and the renders super fast.

ahh the drop bears, yes they are very dangerous, most australians have scars on the back of their necks from the little devils - of course they are not so prevalent these days and most have moved away from the cities ..... (the drop bears not the australians)  

 yes, could be talking through my hat

I was wondering. You did sound kind of muffled there for a bit. Heh, heh

ha ha :) those hats come in hamby er handy

here is an example. c an c so far is the shadow needs to bleed more :) and the hand looks out of contact with the dog. Any other clues that it is not traditional hand done are welcome - eg the hard line on the boy's jaw? I just introduced filter forge into the work flow

@headwax – that image is awesome! I'm not sure that you want much of a bleed on the shadow. If anything, an irregular increase in density near the edges of the shadow would look like a traditional wet-on-dry painting technique. It would be visually cohesive with the rest of the look that easy and free, but has precise detail too. 

When I got into this business, I used to work in airbrush and watercolor...I really miss the watercolor.

Thanks Mark :) that's a good point about the density at the edge thank you. It's so long since I've done water colours I'd forgotten about that, the way the pigment builds up at the edge must be meniscus related ?  Water colour gives so many accidents ... I guess that's why it's hard to emulate, happy accidents sometimes, not so happy other times, thank you for the positive response!  :) 

I believe the edge is darker when using that technique because the edge dries first and then the surface tension of the water pulls the pigment that direction as it dries faster on the edge.

BTW, I don't know if you use Photoshop, but there are some fantastic natural media brushes from Kyle Webster. You can check out his work and brushes: http://www.kyletwebster.com

I do a bunch of visual chameleon work so I'm always keeping my tool set varied.

Thanks Mark, that makes sense.  Those brushes look pretty handy, I'll check them out, so thanks for  that link too.

cheers!

Thanks for this fascinating thread and for the wonderful images shown.  For me as a Scot, it's impossible to imagine Christmas celebrations in the sunshine!  (Actually, this summer in particular it's almost impossible to remember what sunshine is!).

In spending your time creating art, you're living what was almost always my dream.  Except I could never handle the concept of bringing my visions to life and then letting someone else take them away!  Even if they did pay!  So I worked at other things, never really finding the time (or, in truth, the tranquillity) to get anything much done. But I could never pass an art shop without buying something.  I would tell myself: 'if I buy that fifteen-page pad of acrylic/oil/watercolour paper, I can make a quick painting every night for a fortnight.  Then I'll have done something.  Guess what?  I have enough art material in all mediums to supply a school and I spend my free time on the computer trying to master 3d stuff.

Strangely, I don't feel too driven to make 'works of art' in 3d.  Rather, working in 3d is an inexhaustible visual stimulus whether it results in a clay render or an animation in full colour.  I sometimes wonder whether some income from 3d is possible.  In that regard I ponder over the possibilities of 3d printing. 

 Pleasure Grimhilda,.....

ah we only dream of a white Christmas here :) My family is of Scottish and Irish descent (via Scotland) so we are displaced in Oz, strangers in a strange land, even after a few generations ;) But we don't tell the locals that!

My day job is boring and almost well paid, so I only work three days a week. I always wanted to do books, and to tell stories, so using my 'art' in the process gives me a chance to tell them with the tools at hand. The money part is an epiphenomenon , in that if the 'art' makes money, then you have more money/time to make art.

My house is also full of art materials. You can never have too many tubes of paint, pads of paper, canvases! ;) Even if they are still unused when you shuffle off the coil.

The problem I find is that modern architects put too many windows in houses. If there were more walls then there would be more space for paintings. !

3d Printing is pretty exciting. Making kinematic sculptures would be somewhere I would like to go with the process. 

 

Another use for Carrara - a few years ago made some kids blocks for a charity, you combined them to make silly characters ;)

 this was the packaging :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

just more images of the blocks themselves

 

 

 

This is to cool!

 thanks Mark! A mispent adulthood is something I aspire to. ;)

Heh, heh. Fun stuff.

giving children nightmares :)

One for daz challenge ! 

Make that two....

I think I like the top pic better. I mean the one on the bottom is just not as vivid. It's lacking emotion. The bottom pic is just boring, but that top one...Wow!! Amazing. I'd chuck the bottom one and go with the top image.

Heh, heh. :)

Make that two....

"NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our four... "

Good render, can we see the final animation?  I tried my hand at biplane dogfights in this one (starts ~4:00):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK39GLUGwWg

Fun video, Steve K. :)

And you're right...No one expects the Spanish Inquisition. Bwahahahahaha!

I think I like the top pic better. I mean the one on the bottom is just not as vivid. It's lacking emotion. The bottom pic is just boring, but that top one...Wow!! Amazing. I'd chuck the bottom one and go with the top image.

Heh, heh. :)

hah yes I agree!! and none does expect the spanish inquisition ;)

Make that two....

"NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our four... "

Good render, can we see the final animation?  I tried my hand at biplane dogfights in this one (starts ~4:00):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK39GLUGwWg

great job on the dog fight! and some of those cloud effects are superb. An animation from me? Ah, I used to do them but they took so loooooooooooooooooong to do! :) My wife hardly talks to me as it is, so doing them would 'cure' my marriage....

 An animation from me? Ah, I used to do them but they took so loooooooooooooooooong to do! :) My wife hardly talks to me as it is, so doing them would 'cure' my marriage....

Your still images are head and shoulders above almost everybody else, so I understand.  Still, if you enter the 48 Hour Film contest, you only have ... lemme check the rules, here ... 48 hours!  So then it doesn't take so long, problem solved.   That animation with the dogfight was done in 48 hours, although I admit I used a bunch of "pieces" I had worked up earlier.  Its hard to tell what's fair when the live action teams have the real world, including pre-approved locations (signed permits required), actors who have signed releases, props and costumes ready and waiting, etc. I was on one live action team, we did an entire practice video with the same actors, location, props, etc.  I don't lose a lot of sleep over it since there are always a handful of live action teams, with dozens of team members each, who are way better than the other several dozen teams.  They get the prizes, we are in the several dozen "other" teams.  But a good time is had by all.

 Here's my very first fractal (all done in C).  Made this a about five years ago.  It's random!

 

-Kix

 Here's another one.

 

-Kix

 Here's my latest Tie Fighter model.

 

-Kix

 Here's a render of my Viper model I made during development.

 

-Kix

"NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! 

And "NOBODY" expects a parakeet to say "NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNavxvvN9QI

 Here's another development render for my Star Destroyer Model.

 

-Kix

Cool images, Kixum. :) Love the Viper. Always loved that show.

great job on the dog fight! and some of those cloud effects are superb. 

Thanks.  I think you're seeing the very nice Terra Sphere 1 by coflek-gnorg (I also have Terra sphere III which is a 360 cityscape).  Both are much easier than creating the surrounding "world" from scratch.:

http://renderosity.com/mod/bcs/?ViewProduct=98766

 Here's my latest Tie Fighter model.

Very nice.  Are you selling this model?  I don't see it here at Renderosity.

I haven't put my Star Wars models up for sale.  Lucasarts copyright issues.

-Kix

Nicely done modeling on the ships Kixum.

[ Denis ]

| Coreldraw X6 | Moi v2 | Carrara 8.5 Pro | Cinema 4D R15 Prime | Lightwave 3D 11.6 |
| Intel i7-4700MQ | GeForce GTX 765M 2GB |

great job on the dog fight! and some of those cloud effects are superb. 

Thanks.  I think you're seeing the very nice Terra Sphere 1 by coflek-gnorg (I also have Terra sphere III which is a 360 cityscape).  Both are much easier than creating the surrounding "world" from scratch.:

http://renderosity.com/mod/bcs/?ViewProduct=98766

 

thanks for that Link, it may come in handy, I always to forget to look around the shop here!

:)

 Kixum they are some amazing models, never realised there were so many talented people lurking here !

Now to throw some dirt on them ;)  

 Here's a random render (just a weird concept study I did yesterday).

 

-Kix

nice work, the cones add a lot of substance - that model is pretty amazing btw

Sweet, Kix. 

 Another test render.

 

-Kix

Looks surreal, very stealth ! ;)