DAZ Carrara 8 Pro

I use Daz Carrara 8 Pro to create scenes by building true three-dimensional objects with the software’s easy to use and intuitive modelling tools. The software allows me to apply colours and textures to these objects, giving them realistic properties such as transparency and reflection.

The software allows me to light the scene in any way I see fit to enhance realism and depth. In a more time intensive approach, as the scene develops, I can also create animations of these objects. 

Carrara 8 Pro is a versatile piece of software, capable of producing realistic skies with clouds, landscapes, oceans and realistic hair and fur, all of which can be produced as a still image or made into an animation. 

A physics engine, can realistically calculate the real world behaviour of objects, such as for example, calculating how a row of dominos might fall or how bricks in a wall might travel if an object were to crash through it.

It is capable of using content provided by its maker Daz 3D which includes several human and animal figures, all of which can be posed and animated. 

Ultimately Carrara 8 Pro is my main tool in creating my work with its powerful rendering engines capable of incredibly realistic art and illustrations. I have been using Carrara since version 2.

SmithMicro Poser 10

Poser is a complete 3D figure design and animation solution, having a diverse collection of ready to use 3D human and animal models that can be incorporated into Carrara 8. Poser has realistic hair growing and styling like Carrara, clothing and dynamic cloth which drapes, waves and billows in an animation in response to physical forces such as gravity. It is designed for output to the web, print and video projects as is Carrara, either as stills or animation. 

Poser’s power lies in its ability to quickly pose a figure and to create dynamic facial expressions. If you want your model to look happy/sad – move the slider to the left or right, its as simple as that as a basic use for this software.

I use poser for nearly all of my human models and import them into Carrara, once I have the pose or expression I like. Poser is a very complex and powerful animation tool, including a walk designer which automatically animates a walk cycle.

At the moment I do not use Poser for animation unless I have a cloth to drape over an object or unless I am specifically using it to create a scene involving human figures, dogs or horses.

Pixologic Scuptris

Pixologic Sculptris is free digital sculpting software based off of a high end product called Zbrush. Using a sphere of virtual clay, the software allows the editing of the mesh geometry in three dimensions to create highly detailed 3D sculptures which i can them import into Carrara 8 Pro.

Scuptris uses a different approach to that which I use most often in that its tools are based on digital sculpting and painting. Sculptris provides me with a very intuitive way of creating faces that perhaps do not look entirely human or for creating wrinkled flesh. This is one of the best tools I have for adding detail and for symmetrical modelling at speed.

Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.

Photoshop is used for making direct adjustments to a rendered image either in terms of cleaning up small areas of an image that I don’t like or, for increasing colour saturation, hue changes, or levels adjustment. I have future plans to create a very complex and detailed image using Photoshop layers with associated alpha channels which will completely overcome the limitations imposed by lack of physical memory which is used up in Carrara 8 as my scenes become more complex. Photoshop is my main post-render tool and with Illustrator it serves as a texture editor and an aid to creating complex spline based objects.

SmithMicro Manga Studio 5