Carrara goes on sale at various times of the year and older version can be gotten for free. The book I mentioned recommended a few posts up that Jim also got has a free full version of the older Carrara 6 Pro on the disk that came with it. The company that did the book also made the disk assets available for free download too for those who got the PDF version if you went to there website and looked to see if the book had any supplemental downloads.
They cam out with a 2nd edition updated to the newest version of DAZ Studio that didn't have all the free 3d stuff and free software on a disk with it.
She has a tutorial section on it. (She also has some good but old Bryce beginner tutorials you might find helpful Jim. She used to teach a course in using the progrm in the past.)
That's a really good tutorial, although it goes far beyond the relatively simple thing I do to make my bits of tree.
These two images were rendered at exactly the same time with the same camera. Having obtained them I open the colour image in Corel Photopaint, and import the black and white image as a mask, and hey presto - transparent png. I guess the import mask from disk command in Photopaint does all the more complicated stuff with channels behind the scenes.
[Image_7006] [Image_7007]
By far the more complicated part of the operation from my point of view is to arrange and shade all the bits to make one whole tree (since the free tree models I'm using that come with Vue are relatively small trees). Its very difficult at that point not to end up creating something that looks like its been made by a potter who got rather bored with making plates and decided to stack them all together while they were still wet - a stack of welded plates! LOL!
The orange background works a bit like the old blue sheet that the good old Beeb used to use behind the presenter to superimpose him/her on a background image in the days before computers were sophisticated enough to do it automatically - makes it easier to separate the tree from the background.
The reason the dead trees are not done the same way as the leafy ones, is that this time I am trying to preserve the shadows.
I render each tree twice - once with the shadow, and once without. The reason will become obvious in the following screen shots (I hope)
This is the next stage: Open the tree with the shadow in the image processor...
[Image_7016]
Turn the orange background transparent with the pick transparent colour transparency tool...
[Image_7017]
Import the shadowless image on top of the one with the shadow and turn the orange in that image transparent the same way, then use a radial transparency on the bottom shadow layer to make the shadow fade the further away from the tree it gets...
The dead tree process is a whole lot more complicated than the living tree process, which simply involves pairing the black and white mask image with the colour image and calling it done, because there is no need to combine a shadow for the living trees. The dead trees, however, tend to look like a bunch of sticks without their actual shadows to trick the eye into giving them form. Even so, I think this is probably the easiest way I have found to render suitable dead tree symbols ready for use in CC3
The software is free... everything else costs, like the skin textures, body morphs for different poses and shapes, clothing, buildings, furniture, etc. I bought some stuff when I was working. They do have items that are free.
Software is free they make the money in the content and ad on plugins which gets veery expensive. It also has a lot of free content online for it.
Daz developed as a result of Poser. The company originally made content for Poser. When one of the companies that owned Poser was in trouble and it looked like the Poser software they developed Daz Studio if Poser did die. they also bought up some of the other software that they company that owned Poser at the time had.
I found out on the DAZ forums earleir that Poser 11 will disable if not used regularly. No info on what that mean, once a week, once a month ? etc. ? And it looks like some bits in Poser no longer imports into DAZ Studio.
Lots of free content on the DAZ site during December. And they do have sales. Maybe I just to go buy a lotto ticket and hope it wins.
Comments
They cam out with a 2nd edition updated to the newest version of DAZ Studio that didn't have all the free 3d stuff and free software on a disk with it.
This is Robin Wood's homepage.
http://www.robinwood.com
She has a tutorial section on it. (She also has some good but old Bryce beginner tutorials you might find helpful Jim. She used to teach a course in using the progrm in the past.)
The alpha channel on I was think of is this one.
http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/SL-Tuts/SLPages/ChannelDiscovery.html
These two images were rendered at exactly the same time with the same camera. Having obtained them I open the colour image in Corel Photopaint, and import the black and white image as a mask, and hey presto - transparent png. I guess the import mask from disk command in Photopaint does all the more complicated stuff with channels behind the scenes.
[Image_7006] [Image_7007]
By far the more complicated part of the operation from my point of view is to arrange and shade all the bits to make one whole tree (since the free tree models I'm using that come with Vue are relatively small trees). Its very difficult at that point not to end up creating something that looks like its been made by a potter who got rather bored with making plates and decided to stack them all together while they were still wet - a stack of welded plates! LOL!
The reason the dead trees are not done the same way as the leafy ones, is that this time I am trying to preserve the shadows.
I render each tree twice - once with the shadow, and once without. The reason will become obvious in the following screen shots (I hope)
This is the next stage: Open the tree with the shadow in the image processor...
[Image_7016]
Turn the orange background transparent with the pick transparent colour transparency tool...
[Image_7017]
Import the shadowless image on top of the one with the shadow and turn the orange in that image transparent the same way, then use a radial transparency on the bottom shadow layer to make the shadow fade the further away from the tree it gets...
Sleep ? Whats that ?
I think it was something to do with those 2 hours I don't remember in the dark bit of the day.
I just use Vue, which is more about the scenery end of the virtual reality business - where you get to mess with the trees and things
Daz developed as a result of Poser. The company originally made content for Poser. When one of the companies that owned Poser was in trouble and it looked like the Poser software they developed Daz Studio if Poser did die. they also bought up some of the other software that they company that owned Poser at the time had.
Lots of free content on the DAZ site during December. And they do have sales. Maybe I just to go buy a lotto ticket and hope it wins.