Forum: Carrara


Subject: Question: landscapes and forground

jamesd1 opened this issue on Jun 30, 2007 ยท 8 posts


nomuse posted Sun, 01 July 2007 at 3:49 PM

Have to say that as a former Bryce user I find the presets in Carrara range from disappointing to WTF? That said, it doesn't take too long in tinkering to make them nicer. Of course by the time you put in enough nodes to make it properly lively you've ramped up render times to Brycian levels! On the other, I've noticed particularly in the lighting and environmental effects that most of the options go very far out of "zero" position when clicked. Which is to say; hit global illumination and your entire scene is darkened to compensate. Hit skylight or caustics and it is not; those effects are added on top. And in practically all of them, a full render is the only way to see what is actually going to happen. Something like the light sphere preview is basically fiction -- the preview shot will have nothing to do with what renders (regardless of what preview options you use.) Not complaining -- although consistency would be nice -- but basically means the advice is to turn on all the stuff you are going to be using for the final render and start doing test renders early on. It is counter-productive to tweak results with any of the settings turned down or off. Oh, back to the top of the page; typical landscape trick is to use several terrains; some number for background elements, and a completely different one for the foreground elements. And then to really get depth effects, add some more stuff between the camera and the subject. Carrara is a scaled universe and effects like mist and fog look best with real distances in there. That said, you can use a lot of forced perspective.