-
Welcome to the Community Forums at HiveWire 3D! Please note that the user name you choose for our forum will be displayed to the public. Our store was closed as January 4, 2021. You can find HiveWire 3D and Lisa's Botanicals products, as well as many of our Contributing Artists, at Renderosity. This thread lists where many are now selling their products. Renderosity is generously putting products which were purchased at HiveWire 3D and are now sold at their store into customer accounts by gifting them. This is not an overnight process so please be patient, if you have already emailed them about this. If you have NOT emailed them, please see the 2nd post in this thread for instructions on what you need to do
Dawn Special Edition in Carrara?
- Thread starter LisaB
- Start date
Actually Lorraine, I own my co-op apartment. I haven't rented since 1988.
That was my thought as well Lorraine...I think I thought it because they have more high density housing then what we do. That's beginning to change and we're seeing more townhouse type buildings which have higher density but Australians as a rule seem to go for the traditional half acre block with house.
When I first moved into this building, the majority of the buildings around here were rentals. I don't know if there are any in the neighborhood that are just rentals any more, for a couple of reasons. 1) The owners want to make more money, and 2) the renters want the equity, but can't afford to, or don't want to, spend their money on a private house.
Private houses in this neighborhood cost a fortune, and it's even more expensive to own in Manhattan, where all the businesses are, and where most people work, though there you would only have tall apartment buildings, as there's really no place to put a private house.
Many folks move out to Long Island, or up to Westchester County to get away from the high cost, especially the real estate taxes they would have to pay. A good friend of mine and her husband bought a house all the way out on the Island (an hour's drive from here), because the taxes were more reasonable. I'm not sure I'd want to live out there and have to travel into Manhattan to work every day, though my friend does it. Fortunately she works the 3rd shift (midnight to 8:00am) at the same firm I used to work at, so she doesn't run into much in the way of traffic, but it still takes her 1 1/2 hours each way. I'd rather keep my apartment thank you very much.
Private houses in this neighborhood cost a fortune, and it's even more expensive to own in Manhattan, where all the businesses are, and where most people work, though there you would only have tall apartment buildings, as there's really no place to put a private house.
Many folks move out to Long Island, or up to Westchester County to get away from the high cost, especially the real estate taxes they would have to pay. A good friend of mine and her husband bought a house all the way out on the Island (an hour's drive from here), because the taxes were more reasonable. I'm not sure I'd want to live out there and have to travel into Manhattan to work every day, though my friend does it. Fortunately she works the 3rd shift (midnight to 8:00am) at the same firm I used to work at, so she doesn't run into much in the way of traffic, but it still takes her 1 1/2 hours each way. I'd rather keep my apartment thank you very much.
Yeah I don't like a long commute either, especially since I drove to work very day. Even the usual 20 minute drive took almost twice as long during rush hour morning and evening, but having to do that when your commute is already long? Not me honey, that's for sure.
We're having similar issues Lorraine...houses in my neighbourhood go for around the $400000 mark and that is the ones that haven't been maintained. Basically bought to bulldoze and put townhouses on as they can fit two onto one of our blocks. Corner blocks are even more highly sought.
I travel each day...if I'm lucky it's half an hour. If traffic is bad it can be up to and over an hour...
I travel each day...if I'm lucky it's half an hour. If traffic is bad it can be up to and over an hour...
Stezza
Dances with Bees
I downloaded the free Dusk to use the Gorilla morph in Carrara..
he seems to work fine using the DS version
see the gorilla here
he seems to work fine using the DS version
see the gorilla here
Hello everybody.
I have bought her, and unluckily Dawn Special Edition does NOT work well in Carrara 8.5. :-(
There are problems with the transparency of eyes/lashes
But with a little hacking, YES, we can make her work properly
I was thinking to write a page on my website with a recap of all this stuff and the little hacks to have DawnSE work in Carrara (maybe with some image).
Is it okay to link a URL here?
Or must I paste everything here with no link?
I have bought her, and unluckily Dawn Special Edition does NOT work well in Carrara 8.5. :-(
There are problems with the transparency of eyes/lashes
But with a little hacking, YES, we can make her work properly
I was thinking to write a page on my website with a recap of all this stuff and the little hacks to have DawnSE work in Carrara (maybe with some image).
Is it okay to link a URL here?
Or must I paste everything here with no link?
Anyway, allow me to say something, even though I do not mean to offend anyone here. I like Hivewire 3D, the people here and if I ever became good enough to sell models, this is probably where I would like to try and do it.
But as a Carrara user I find this to be a confusing situation that does not make me want to buy.
I know that your models are labeled as Poser or Daz Studio ready and they are not guaranteed to work in Carrara...
Still, as far as I know Carrara is the only other program that loads this kind of stuff.
So, even if I understand that making them work in it could often not be worth the effort, I think that a Carrara user would find useful to at least know if a product is going to work in his application of choice.
So maybe Hivewire could benefit from a "Carrara Test" of the models; if that's not possible for everything in the store (like the CA products), at least it should be for the Hivewire owned ones like Dawn.
Just my two cents
But as a Carrara user I find this to be a confusing situation that does not make me want to buy.
I know that your models are labeled as Poser or Daz Studio ready and they are not guaranteed to work in Carrara...
Still, as far as I know Carrara is the only other program that loads this kind of stuff.
So, even if I understand that making them work in it could often not be worth the effort, I think that a Carrara user would find useful to at least know if a product is going to work in his application of choice.
So maybe Hivewire could benefit from a "Carrara Test" of the models; if that's not possible for everything in the store (like the CA products), at least it should be for the Hivewire owned ones like Dawn.
Just my two cents
Lorraine
The Wicked Witch of the North
Yes it is ok, so long as a link is not taking a user to something outside our TOS (no nudity etc). So link away
It might be a good idea to put your link in the Resources tutorial thread too, it would be easier to find than buried in this thread.Dawn & Dusk in Carrara
In my experience:
- Carrara can use them
- but with some flaws
- that you can more or less solve with some hacking
I suspect that these flaws are just due to Carrara's misunderstanding of few parameter settings in these models' .duf files or something similar, so I hope that Hivewire 3D can easily solve them in some upcoming update.
In the meanwhile, I'll write here the workarounds I have found.
My tests were done under this setup: Carrara 8.5 Pro (64-bit) running on Windows 10 Home edition.
So, do Dawn and Dusk work in Carrara? And how?
Well, as far as I know...
I tested the following characters: Dawn SR2 (the original Dawn character), Dawn SE (Special Edition) and Dusk.
Hivewire's people models come in 2 flavours: Poser and Daz Studio.
While Poser versions do load in Carrara, when you try to apply some pose they seem to break apart.
Therefore, we'll use the Daz Studio (DS) versions. Once the DS versions' files are unzipped in a directory, we'll add this to Carrara as a content runtime/folder.
Since we are going to use the DS versions, in Carrara's browser we do not choose "Add Runtime..." (this is for Poser stuff); we choose instead "Add Folder..." and then specify that the kind of files to display here is "Content".
Now we can access the content of this directory from the "Content" tab in Carrara's browser.
Let's load a character: Dusk (but the same goes for Dawn).
He appears in the main view. In the Instances tab we see him with this hierarchy:
Dusk --> Dusk --> Actor --> Hip --> ...
We can move him around in 3D space when "Dusk" is selected, but to use his bones for posing (e.g. with the rotate tool) we need to select "Actor".
To apply clothing, hair, MATs or a preset pose, drop them on the figure in the main view or on "Dusk" in the Instance Tab (not the outer "Dusk container"; the inner "Dusk" which directly contains "Actor").
Selecting different parts as "Dusk/Dawn", "Actor", "Head", gives us access to various parameters of the character.
Applying MATs to clothing ahd hair is probably easier by dropping them on their item in the Instance tab than in the main view.
Main issues I found:
Dawn SE has the biggest issue: she loads with wrong transparency of eyes/lashes, thus she looks like she has something covering her eyes.
You can try to fix this by selecting in the instance tab DawnSE --> Dawn --> Actor.
Now go to Carrara's Texture Room: to the right you'll see the Shading Domains for the model.
Double click "Eyelashes_Large" to open its settings; on the left find the "Alpha" channel; set it to "Value (0-100%)" and check it is 0,00%.
Double click "Cornea" and repeat the same process.
Double click "Eyelashes"; on the left find the "Alpha" channel; this time set it to "Texture Map"; click the little folder icon to load the file "DawnSELash.jpg". It is located here (inside the directory you are using for these Dawn and Dusk models):
Runtime --> Textures --> Hivewire 3D --> DawnSE.
Go back to Carrara's Assemble Room: your Dawn SE should render properly.
You can now save this fixed Dawn SE in Carrara' browser or in a normal Carrara (.car) file, so that next time you can start with an already working Dawn SE instead of having to fix her again.
Dawn SE has 3Delight and Iray MATs (Dawn --> MATs --> 3Delight/Iray): use Iray because the other version wipes the MAT out leaving the character darkened.
Dawn SR2 takes her MATs for eyes and makeup properly; you can find them in Dawn --> MATs.
Dusk has AoA SSS and UBER SSS MATs: use UBER because the other version wipes the MAT out leaving the character darkened.
Dawn Heroine Hair has 3Delight and Iray MATs: use 3Delight ones because they look better (Iray has probably some problems with transparencies).
Dawn ponytail hair: I load it on dawn, move her and save the file. But when I open the file again the hair is replaced by a cube [I get this message on opening: an object description is missing in the file. Do you wish to continue (a cube will replace the missing object)?].
I also cannot set different MATs on the hair.
Dusk Briefs seem to be alright when loaded in the main view, but disappear inside Dusk when you render.
Do not worry: they are just too small; get access to the brief's parameters by selecting in the instance tab DuskBriefs --> Actor.
Set parameters like this (or whatever works for you):
LoosenAll = 0.05; LoosenFront = 0.2; LoosenPelvicFloor = 0.8
Now they should render properly.
In my experience:
- Carrara can use them
- but with some flaws
- that you can more or less solve with some hacking
I suspect that these flaws are just due to Carrara's misunderstanding of few parameter settings in these models' .duf files or something similar, so I hope that Hivewire 3D can easily solve them in some upcoming update.
In the meanwhile, I'll write here the workarounds I have found.
My tests were done under this setup: Carrara 8.5 Pro (64-bit) running on Windows 10 Home edition.
So, do Dawn and Dusk work in Carrara? And how?
Well, as far as I know...
I tested the following characters: Dawn SR2 (the original Dawn character), Dawn SE (Special Edition) and Dusk.
Hivewire's people models come in 2 flavours: Poser and Daz Studio.
While Poser versions do load in Carrara, when you try to apply some pose they seem to break apart.
Therefore, we'll use the Daz Studio (DS) versions. Once the DS versions' files are unzipped in a directory, we'll add this to Carrara as a content runtime/folder.
Since we are going to use the DS versions, in Carrara's browser we do not choose "Add Runtime..." (this is for Poser stuff); we choose instead "Add Folder..." and then specify that the kind of files to display here is "Content".
Now we can access the content of this directory from the "Content" tab in Carrara's browser.
Let's load a character: Dusk (but the same goes for Dawn).
He appears in the main view. In the Instances tab we see him with this hierarchy:
Dusk --> Dusk --> Actor --> Hip --> ...
We can move him around in 3D space when "Dusk" is selected, but to use his bones for posing (e.g. with the rotate tool) we need to select "Actor".
To apply clothing, hair, MATs or a preset pose, drop them on the figure in the main view or on "Dusk" in the Instance Tab (not the outer "Dusk container"; the inner "Dusk" which directly contains "Actor").
Selecting different parts as "Dusk/Dawn", "Actor", "Head", gives us access to various parameters of the character.
Applying MATs to clothing ahd hair is probably easier by dropping them on their item in the Instance tab than in the main view.
Main issues I found:
Dawn SE has the biggest issue: she loads with wrong transparency of eyes/lashes, thus she looks like she has something covering her eyes.
You can try to fix this by selecting in the instance tab DawnSE --> Dawn --> Actor.
Now go to Carrara's Texture Room: to the right you'll see the Shading Domains for the model.
Double click "Eyelashes_Large" to open its settings; on the left find the "Alpha" channel; set it to "Value (0-100%)" and check it is 0,00%.
Double click "Cornea" and repeat the same process.
Double click "Eyelashes"; on the left find the "Alpha" channel; this time set it to "Texture Map"; click the little folder icon to load the file "DawnSELash.jpg". It is located here (inside the directory you are using for these Dawn and Dusk models):
Runtime --> Textures --> Hivewire 3D --> DawnSE.
Go back to Carrara's Assemble Room: your Dawn SE should render properly.
You can now save this fixed Dawn SE in Carrara' browser or in a normal Carrara (.car) file, so that next time you can start with an already working Dawn SE instead of having to fix her again.
Dawn SE has 3Delight and Iray MATs (Dawn --> MATs --> 3Delight/Iray): use Iray because the other version wipes the MAT out leaving the character darkened.
Dawn SR2 takes her MATs for eyes and makeup properly; you can find them in Dawn --> MATs.
Dusk has AoA SSS and UBER SSS MATs: use UBER because the other version wipes the MAT out leaving the character darkened.
Dawn Heroine Hair has 3Delight and Iray MATs: use 3Delight ones because they look better (Iray has probably some problems with transparencies).
Dawn ponytail hair: I load it on dawn, move her and save the file. But when I open the file again the hair is replaced by a cube [I get this message on opening: an object description is missing in the file. Do you wish to continue (a cube will replace the missing object)?].
I also cannot set different MATs on the hair.
Dusk Briefs seem to be alright when loaded in the main view, but disappear inside Dusk when you render.
Do not worry: they are just too small; get access to the brief's parameters by selecting in the instance tab DuskBriefs --> Actor.
Set parameters like this (or whatever works for you):
LoosenAll = 0.05; LoosenFront = 0.2; LoosenPelvicFloor = 0.8
Now they should render properly.