Carrara Envelopes

[REvans]

Hi All,

I followed the tips from Mark Bremmer's tutorial and have been able to lathe a bottle in Carrara. Very helpful! Somewhere I missed the connection between the cross section that you must draw and how it relates to the envelope. I don't understand why a cross section circle is needed to do this.

I have been trying to make a plate today and have had some rather unexpected results when I try to lathe the path from Illustrator - the path is basically a profile of a cross section of a plate from the center of the plate out to the edge.

When imported into Carrara, the imported path is lathed around a point out towards the edge of the plate profile rather than from the end of the profile which would be the center of the plate. This causes the profiles to cross the sweep path which is what the profile should be lathed around.

I have tried changing the size of the initial cross section drawn in Carrara with the oval tool. I changed the direction of the path in Illustrator i.e. filpped it top to bottom and vise versa.

Where am I going wrong?

Thanks,

Rick

[Couerl]

Hi Rick,

I had a bit of trouble with this when I read it first until I realized what was happening (what I think is happening anyway). You need a cross section to guide the sweep or lathe path. If you did a circle you'll sweep circularly around and have a nice plate (sort of except you'll have a circular hole in the middle). You could just as easily do it on a semi-square section and end up with say, an ashtray or square tupperware thing. You can't lathe a point because it has no defined "shape". So the best Carrara will do is pick one along your original line or profile to lathe around and you'll end up with some funky looking lathed thing. I know I'm going out on a limb here, but I used to think that Illustrator or Freehand would be a great "head start" for a 3d model and to some degree they can be, but in all truth I just draw in the modeler these days with much better results. If I wanted a plate in the VM, I would forget Illustrator and insert a sphere and delete half and use loop and the line tools to create the profile. I think its just better mostly, especially in Hex where line drawing is even simpler.

hth,

Steven

[ronjurman]

One thing with Carrara's spline modeler that I frequently would forget was to center my cross-section curves (Sections>GoTo, then Sections> Center), leading to oddly skewed shapes.

rj

[REvans]

Thanks for the suggestions Couerl and ronjurman, but I still have the problem. I used a circular cross-section for the first cross section and I centered it and the second cross-section as well. The path keeps getting rotated around a point toward the edge of the profile, rather than the center point of what should be a plate.

I have attached a screenshot of the problem I am experiencing.

Something that occured to me as I write this is: do I need to actually need to use a full cross-section profile rather than half which would seem to be enough to lathe the path.

I created the plate in about 8 mouse clicks in my old version of C4D V6 and imported it as a 3ds file. But I would like to know what is happening in C5.

The method of lathing by drawing the profile in C5 with the very problematic drawing module is certainly an improvment I would like to see in the near future. I admit that having used Illustrator for the last 10 years has made me biased toward the Adobe Bezier curves. Drawing in C5 is sooooo labor intensive and time consuming! I can do it, but the frustration levels incurred are almost too much to bear.

On the positive side, C5 is certainly has a lot of features which give you a lot bang for you buck.

Thanks again,

Rick

[Couerl]

I don't see a screenshot. :|

[ronjurman]

Originally Posted by REvans

Thanks for the suggestions Couerl and ronjurman, but I still have the problem. I used a circular cross-section for the first cross section and I centered it and the second cross-section as well. The path keeps getting rotated around a point toward the edge of the profile, rather than the center point of what should be a plate.

Odd. Screenshots would help, yes.

I have attached a screenshot of the problem I am experiencing.

Not showing up.

Something that occured to me as I write this is: do I need to actually need to use a full cross-section profile rather than half which would seem to be enough to lathe the path.

I created the plate in about 8 mouse clicks in my old version of C4D V6 and imported it as a 3ds file. But I would like to know what is happening in C5.

The method of lathing by drawing the profile in C5 with the very problematic drawing module is certainly an improvment I would like to see in the near future. I admit that having used Illustrator for the last 10 years has made me biased toward the Adobe Bezier curves. Drawing in C5 is sooooo labor intensive and time consuming! I can do it, but the frustration levels incurred are almost too much to bear.

Lathe is probably the wrong term for the spline modeler. By using a circular cross-section, one gets (or basically should get) the same results as lathe, but the spline modeler is actually quite a bit more flexible. Think instead of cross-sections extruded/skinned along a chosen path, in combination with a scaling envelope.

On the positive side, C5 is certainly has a lot of features which give you a lot bang for you buck.

Thanks again,

Rick

Agreed.

rj

[ronjurman]

Rick,

I presume you are trying to create something like dinner plates. I took a few minutes and created an example (two, actually). The first image is of the profile I created in Carrara's spline modeler for the plate. The next two images are renderings of two plates (front and back), the gold plate being straight from the spline editor, the blue plate being that same plate after that plate was converted to the vertex editor and then smoothed/subdivided (2 levels, I believe). (Note: The plates really are round. It's just the camera perspective and the shadows that make them appear otherwise, other than the issue noted below with one of them.)

The profile really just defines the outer edge of the plate (Geometry set to translation, and symmetrical). The circular cross-section used creates the flat closed ends/faces. If I had wanted more curvature in the plate faces, I would have made the cross-section circle smaller (possibly even very small), and the profiles would then have to be vertically extended to make up the difference. The path of the object was left untouched (shortening and modifying the profile path shortened the object path, but left it straight).

The reason for two plates in the pictures had to do with the way the spline-based plate came out with angular edges (not sure why). I upped the surface fidelity, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference, so I converted the plate to the vertex modeler and smoothed/subdivided it, with better results (although it smoothed the base edge more than I would have wanted it).

In any case, I hope this provides a little better picture of how the spline modeler works, and helps you with your plates. As for myself, I've pretty much moved over to doing most of my modeling in Hexagon, so I really don't use Carrara's spline modeler much nowadays.

hth

rj

[whkguamusa]

rj,
what level did you up the fidelity to?
For reasons known only to the ancient Raydream Studio programmers the fidelity scale in the spline modeller goes from 0 to 5000.
A change from 100% to 200 or 300% will not show much change.

wayne k
guam usa

[REvans]

It sure looked like the screenshot was indeed attached, but I will try this again.

I see my mistake now, didn't hit the upload button hard enough.

rj, your screen shots were helpful and gave me a few new ideas to try.

A question about Hexagon. Is the learning curve a steep one? I am trying to get into the vertex modeler in C5 and it is certainly challenging to say the least.

It's great to get this input from all of you. Thank you very much.

Even though I feel that the drawing module in C5 is difficult to work with, I have attached a second screenshot of a Decanter and glass created entirely in C5. I know it can be done, but the process is quite lengthy.

Thanks again, everyone!

Rick

[Couerl]

Originally Posted by REvans

A question about Hexagon. Is the learning curve a steep one? I am trying to get into the vertex modeler in C5 and it is certainly challenging to say the least.

Rick

No, not if your system can use it, make sure you have a decent video card and some ram and read the specs and run the demo and make sure.

Drawing in Hex is much simpler to do than either the VM or the spline and is really pretty far in advance of either one. Wait till they run another sale on it and snap it up. You won't be sorry.

[ronjurman]

Originally Posted by whkguamusa

rj,
what level did you up the fidelity to?
For reasons known only to the ancient Raydream Studio programmers the fidelity scale in the spline modeller goes from 0 to 5000.
A change from 100% to 200 or 300% will not show much change.

wayne k
guam usa

Wayne,

Probably only 300-400%. Unfortunately, I didn't save the Carrara file, so I can't reproduce exactly, but upping the fidelity to 1000% 'did' make a major difference on a simple cylinder, so I'm guessing that would have been the best solution. One thing I did try (before I exited the original scene) was to play with the Smoothing settings in the Assembly room, and surprisingly that also made a difference (guess I presumed that was purely for vertex models). Anyway, boosting the fidelity sounds like the far better solution. Didn't realize it went that high. Thx.

My main experience with the spline modeler actually dates back to RayDream 4 (when there was no vertex modeler). When I upgraded to Eovis'a Carrara 1.1, I was terribly disappointed that they had apparently left out any way (that I could find anyway) to set the camera perpendicular to the drawing plane once the drawing plane angle was modified from the default (making it a PITA to draw accurately). So I drifted off to polygon modeling, and have rarely gone back to the spline modeler (even though the more recent versions of Carrara have corrected this perceived shortcoming). With Hexagon, modeling became much more fun again, and I usually do most of my modeling there.

Thanks again,

rj

[REvans]

I will check Hexgon out for sure.

As a complete beginner in the realm of vertex modeling, I would like to get tutorial/book/video guidance to understanding how to work in the vertex world. Any suggestions?

Rick

[Couerl]

Originally Posted by REvans

I will check Hexgon out for sure.

As a complete beginner in the realm of vertex modeling, I would like to get tutorial/book/video guidance to understanding how to work in the vertex world. Any suggestions?

Rick

Just a lot of spare time and don't be afraid to ask questions, there's lots of talent and good help around here to be sure. If one guy doesn't have the right/best answer, someone else almost certainly will.

I'm always interested to hear how different people do things and there always seems to be a new or better way to learn out here.

From my own point of view, learning materials like books can help, but I'd just start with a lot of simple objects and learn the tools and which ones are truly the most useful. Seems to me anyway that people all want to model complex characters and things before they learn the basics and they get frustrated and wonder why the application is so "buggy", when in fact they may just not be ready to tackle such ambitious tasks.

Hex takes some getting to know, to be sure, but it's nothing you need any university degree for. ;)