Some New 3D Desktop Images I made...

[Shyguy]

Well, got around to playing with some of Carrara 3D Basics 2 tonight, Carrara & Hexagon 2 are some of the easiest yet still complex 3D graphics & Animation apps out there, both run insanely smooth on the dual core, better than they did on the Athlon X2 system... with 2GB's of RAM, Intel Core 2 Duo E6400, & 160GB SATA 8MB cache per disk RAID 0 disk space, & a 320MB Geforce 8800GTS for Rendering, these apps fly to say the least.

well, using one of the stock "scenes" (supposed to be a sphere for some earth textures), decided to add some Lava special effects texture to the sphere, then added Fire to the image using a Sphere shape for the flames instead of the cube shape for the effects, so it was more spread out around the planet...

obviously don't know my stuff LOL as you can see by my explanations :D

But anyways, rendered one image at 1280x960 for a widescreen image, & re-rendered at 1280x1024 for normal desktops...

this is what I got so far...

Normal Screen: http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/BlueFireHellPlanet.jpg

Wide Screen: http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/BlueFireHellPlanetWideScreen.jpg


Will add more eventually when I mess with this stuff more, & start using Hexagon, Bryce & some others apps with this...

[Paul W]

Ooooh.... that's cool!

[Shyguy]

thanks, trying to add a model of some spaceship from another program, but having a hell of a time trying to get the right textures & lighting added to it. got it positioned right, & all that, just getting it to be rendered to the image properly the way I want it LOL... but oh well.

I tried to get a model I have of the USS Reliant from Star Trek Wrath of Khan converted from its Lightwave 3D format to something usable, but when I try to export it to another format Carrara can use, It gives me some crap about too many vertices or polygons or other junk when converting to the "lesser" formats such as DXF or 3DS or others... bugs me, cause I really wanted to use it & some other Star Trek & Babylon 5 Ship Models I have...

will deal with this later...

[Win2Kuser]

Now thats pretty smart!

Would be nicer at 1440x900 widescreen res though as thats what most widescreen lcd's seem to run at these days :thumb:

Any chance of putting some stars around the background? Would make it look a whole lot more realistic...

[Shyguy]

till I can figure out how to do that, yeah, otherwise I could take the rendered images & edit them in photoshop somehow... possibly render the starships in Lightwave or compatible program & make an image, & transpose or whatever its called into the image as a layer or something, do same thing with stars etc etc...

rendering it in that widescreen res, shouldn't take more than a minute or two :D

let me see if I can do that quick :)



LOL, wouldn't you know it, its not so simple after all... had to post a question about the max supported Resolutions for Carrara 3D Basics 2 over on DAZ's forums :rolleyes:

[Win2Kuser]

Isn't that typical :lol:

I can remember playing with povray years ago, it would take something like an hour to render a 800x600 res of a couple of glass balls :)

How things have changed...

[Shyguy]

LOL, yeah, here's how long it takes the 1280x1024 version to render, as well as the render settings...

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/Carrara3Doutputscreens.jpg


Nice thing is, till the 27th Daz has a special for platinum club members to get Carrara 5 for $87 or so, normally priced at $250, 3D Basics 2 is supposedly based on Carrara 3 or a modified version of Carrara 4, but 5 is supposed to be a huge step up in performance & features, & even is considered superior in terrain/landscape rendering than Bryce 6 is, does better with HDRI & other features, as well as includes some particle effects Basics 2 doesn't have... not sure, may go for it before end of month, wait a couple months on the Quad Core price drop purchase, unless I can get my X2 rig sold to the kid at work soon :D

[Shyguy]

Yep, 1280x1024 is max res that Basics 2 can render at, so 1440x900 is out of the question?

what would be the next best res below 1280, that could be scaled up to 1440x900 or equivalent ratio using the stretch feature for desktop backgrounds (Stretch, Center, Tile)

[Paul W]

I use 1280x720.

720 is the standard HD resolution... at least until 1080p takes over.

[Shyguy]

behold... 1280x720 :D

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/BlueFireHellPlanetWideScreen720.jpg

seems it rendered with less "space" above the object & more below it at that res, but thats fine, one can arrange their icons at bottom of screen, or later I can add stuff to lower part of pic.

[Win2Kuser]

hmm, that still doesn't quite look right when stretched to the default 1440x900 resolution. A direct comparison at 8:5 ratio would be 1280x800, that will scale up perfectly to 1440x900.

Still needs some stars too :)

[Shyguy]

Now that should work :D

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/BlueFireHellPlanetWideScreen1280x80.jpg

will have to add stars later when I get around to it. :D

[Shyguy]

well, now I have something I can make custom Hi-res/dpi images with :D

This past week Daz had a nice sale on a bunch of older "physical" products, CD versions, OEM, Boxed etc, bought a few items I already have, but "older" revisions/versions, so had some hard copy's for later if needed, or if someone I know needs some etc...

anyways, week before that I think, They had another sale, $1.99 on different Items Members voted on, I picked up Carrara 3D Express for $1.99, & a bunch of other stuff, came out to like $500+ easily, but only paid maybe like $50-60 tops... also part of that sale was that new members & old alike, got a free 50% coupon on certain Items at Daz as long as not resell, $1.99 items or 3rd Party etc... so I just bought last night the $118 Upgrade (Platinum Club Price) from 3D Express to Carrara 6 Standard, with 50% off, plus a $5 voucher I still had, plus the Platinum Club Discount...

here's what it cost me...

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/HellofDazDiscount.jpg

anyways, got it installed this afternoon, & was able to load up my one image project from Carrara 3D Basics 2 with ease...

in that one I was limited to average Resolutions really not much bigger than 1280x1024 & depending on the dimensions, 72dpi for high res's dropped the image down to 1024x768 & could render 90dpi, etc etc...

but found in C6 I could set it to 1600x1200 & 300dpi :eek:

plus a crap load more options etc etc... I'm not sure what the max res is, but at those settings it took my Intel E6400 almost 10 minutes to render :eek: (Think I will be upgrading to Quad Core soon instead of 45nm Core 2 Duo's)... though I could see about figuring out how to set up the network render function to speed things up, using the X2 system & if I kept the E6400 & built a small system around it too?

anyways, here's the newest Higher res image, looks the same pretty much, but when rendering it, it just seemed a bit more vivid/crisper in colors etc...

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/BlueFireHi-Res300dpi.jpg


Now If I can just figure out how to edit/modify the Lightwave 3D models & import/add them? LOL

[Shyguy]

Some new ones, I edited (added some rendered 3D Stills to backgrounds)...

quoted from my post on my gaming clans site...

downloaded some free models, rendered them, & then used Photoshop to add images to some backgrounds, no where near professional quality, as models are lacking decals, & other textures, as well as no "special effects" added to it, but still kind of cool :D

This ones, still a work in progress, as soon as I get some more models downloaded & rendered, will add more to this one, as well as use some of the photoshop filters & plugins down the road for some special effects stuff...

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/PIA01322_downsizedwithWarlock_1600x.jpg




BEWARE DIAL UP OR SLOWER BROADBAND, THIS ONE IS HUGE!!! (3200x2400 resolution) http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/PIA01322_downsizedwithWarlock.jpg




This ones fine, its only 1024x768, (original background is that res, images added are only 800x600, but overall images is still 1024x768)

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/b5artemis01_and_Thunderbolts.jpg





actual rendered images I used in Photoshop to add to backgrounds...

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/WarlockJPEG.jpg

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/B5Thunderbolt1.jpg

[Shyguy]

Another New One I just pumped out in the last 2 hours (learning how to add textures/shaders to models parts)

MUCH better than my previous ones, 1600x1200, 720dpi rendered model, 1+MB file...

took a Babylon 5 Minbari WhiteStar Model, added a new texture/shader, changed the gun ports texture a bit, added a Clear smooth Plastic Texture to the Windows on the bridge, & added the same 6000x6000 backdrop I used on the other ones, when saved file, I renamed this one the FireStar Class :lol: :D

InterStellar Alliance FireStar Class... http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/B5IAFireStarClass.jpg







Edit: now learned how to make some textures/shaders give a more glow look, quick rendered this image doing that to the ships windows & Deflector Dish...

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/NCC1701-AQuickrender.jpg

[Shyguy]

made my first quick, basic animation tonight... copied from one of my posts on another forums...

Well tried some REALLY quick animation crap with the camera angles, simply zoom in a bit & rotate the camera, its only 4 Seconds long, WMV format is 600+KB in size, but in full AVI format its 55MB's :eek: & thats at a mere 512x385 @ 72dpi resolution, some of the enhanced qaulity settings turned off too...

put it this way, it took 7 minutes to render 96 frames of video, for 4 seconds of viewing LOL... doing the math, I calculate it will take 1-3/4 hours to render 60 seconds worth of video :eek:

at that resolution, jack up the lighting effects, quality settings, & use some really "flashy" textures & Shaders & watch that time frame grow exponentially LOL

anyways, here's the 4 second clip :D


FirstAnimationrender.avi.WMV (http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/934621_pdirx/FirstAnimationrender.avi.WMV)

[rick222]

Well i think you should made a wallpaper having resolution of 1280x720...

[Shyguy]

Why? My Desktop is only 1600x1200 & I don't have any Widescreen "High Def" displays.


But for the hell of it, I just rendered that image in 1280 x 720...

but since I'm not totally done with it, waiting till I am for multiple rendered sizes of it.

[roadtech]

Nice work dude...:tup3:

[Shyguy]

need a Quad core for sure... maybe two LOL, really jacked up the lighting settings in the rendering part & on a E6400@2.13GHz, & 3GB DDR2 800 with a RAID 0 drive setup, & a 320MB 8800GTS, just rendering a still image, it brought my system to its knees last night... took about 5 seconds or more to type out a single character in a forum reply box while it was rendering & that was with MSN, BOINC, Dnet, & a few other apps shut down :eek:

[Shyguy]

Some new Images I worked on this morning (found some more working models I had downloaded several years ago), still working more on them right now, later on also use Photoshop to add some special effects...

but for now, if Anyone wants to use any of them for Backgrounds, they should be fine for that...

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/Vorcha1.jpg

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/VorchaRenegadeEscape.jpg

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/VorchaRenegadeJemHadarAmbush.jpg


have a 1600x1200 version of the last one, but its one of the ones that will be getting the special effects added to it, as well as some more additional stuff in the scene.

[Shyguy]

Another quick one I pumped out...

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/VorchaRenegadeJemHadarBoardingparty.jpg

[Shyguy]

Couple more edited versions, one using Rendered Cloud Filter from Paint.NET, another using the Supernova Lighting Filter from GIMP...

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/VorchaRenegadeJemHadarBoardingpa-1.jpg

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/VorchaRenegadeJemHadarBoardingpa-2.jpg

[Shyguy]

One more I edited in GIMP with some Lens Flares & other Lighting Effects, along with some Motion Blur on one of the NCC-1701A Renders I did...

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/NCC1701-ASuperNovaEscape.jpg


needed something to do at 2:30AM in morning waiting for my laundry to dry from first batch, so I can stuff my work clothes in the dryer before needing to be up by 6:45AM to get ready for work LOL...

this is what I ended up doing :D

[Shyguy]

testing to see what the max resolutions I can render at was...

don't know what the max is, but so far managed to hit 6400x3200 with no troubles... rendered the following image in about 5 minutes with AA set to Best & Object/Shadow Accuracy set to .5 pixels... also Full Ray Tracing enabled & Maximum Ray Depth set 25 (farthest the slider will go, but you can type in higher numbers if you want)

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a117/ShazMX6/CardassianGalor6400x3200.jpg

on my screen the Photobucket Preview/downsize image is only at 10% of the full size :eek: :eek: :eek: (doing the math that comes out to about a 20MP image LOL )