Music and Sound – I feel fortunate that I have a musical background amongst my other artistic traits. Having taken a few acting classes seems to help, too. Major Productions will often have an entire team specifically dedicated to sound design, another for music, and someone in there, if not another, will mix everything together in response to the final video footage. While I have aspirations of eventually scoring each of my episodes, I am currently using music loops that came with Sony Movie HD Platinum Suite as well as making my own compilations using MAGIX Music Maker, and a plethora of Full Rights Licenses of Soundpools that I bought from them that meet my tastes. Through a friend I’ve met in the DAZ 3D Carrara forums, I’m now learning how to create my own music loops that I can use for my projects. This can be a huge undertaking in its own right but is incredibly fun to do. Just directing a compilation of premade loops of music can be very rewarding and turn out some excellent results. This all leads to sculpting out scenes closer to their finality, helping to visualize how well I’m doing with everything. Sony also provided me with a decent starting collection of sound effects. The Platinum Suite comes with Sound Forge, with which I intend to further alter some of these sounds into more of what I need. This, too… very fun and eye-opening!

Watching Disc 2 features on movie favorites of mine, like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings for example, really help to flesh out what some of these sound designers and editors do to get the job done. I am rather fortunate, again, in that my singer has a full-featured pro-sound recording studio and several full live on-site sound setups. Of course there’s a cost to this, but at least when the time comes, I have a means to get it done. Things like actually recording the footsteps of the characters with the squeak of leather and clang of weaponry. But I have also found that I can even do this entirely digitally with my new software tools as well. I just happened to like the stuff I read about screen capture in Corel’s VideoStudio Pro, so I bought that on a sale bundle of that with PaintShopPro. Win, win. Eventually a person opens the software and looks around inside and finds that, by having a few apps that attempt to fulfill the same purpose, you actually expand upon the capabilities that you have. And having a very low budget at any given point in time, I have so far had to keep to the lesser expensive tools, Carrara 8.5 Pro being the Grand Daddy of all of my software. Still, I can use all of these tools together to get, what I believe to be, some beautiful results. So far I haven’t completely “finished” any one scene, but in some of my trial run experiments of stitching stuff together, I am pleased with what decent results I can get with very little effort.

Postwork and Final Editing – As I’ve mentioned before, I truly enjoy using PD Pro: Howler as my choice of video enhancement software for my post work. Getting more and more comfortable with knowing what I can do in Dogwaffle saves me a lot of render time in Carrara, since Howler is lightning at applying filters and effects across an entire clip, where the same effect might quadruple or worse the time needed in the original render. There are many tools available for getting the job done. Just get to know what you are capable of in your editing software. It can really help in the long run. As for final cutting, the same applies. Get to know what you have, so you’re prepared as you create your collections of shots. I prefer to have many, many tracks available. Sony Movie HD, I’m assuming is a more “Home-Owner” version of Vegas, has really been fulfilling my needs nicely, while I can see that it does suffer from not having some of the more advanced video editing features. But it is giving me some excellent experience with how Sony video editing software works, which I really like. It’s friendly and easy to understand – like Carrara is. So when the final production comes closer to fruition, I’ll likely make the investment into Vegas Pro. Corel’s Video Studio Pro looks really nice as well – though it is set up differently, so I haven’t actually looked into using it to its fullest yet – and MAGIX is also always tempting me with their pro version tools suites. I may collect things like this when they offer me amazing discounts, if they appear to offer me something new that I can add to my clips or help me in some way. But when it comes to making my final production, the software that wins my support is the one that allows me to just get to work as soon as I open the app. The one that says “Hello” and makes me feel comfortable working within.

Major Production – My Production

So let’s imagine what happens in a major production studio within the realms of CG. They create effects and assets that are missing from the video elements of the final, right? In that I guess my production more resembles Pixar-type films in that they are entirely CG. While I might not have the latest discoveries nor the highest-end, custom hardware or software, I also don’t have a staff. I am me… all by myself. I mention this part because in a big production house, we might only be modeling a single figure or set of figures. Perhaps we’re applying the textures or the lights. Some people just render stuff. This all requires the direction of someone who knows exactly what needs to be done and even that person is often under the direction of someone else, whom may still not be the actual visioneer. Well in my production I remain the head honcho. I make the rules and it’s my dream. This gives me the ability to decide what the overall look is going to be like. If I want people to actually like what I make, I must also try to determine what will be enjoyable to people other than myself. Does this mean that I have to come up with a unique new way of expressing CG on the screen? Not at all – but there’s really nothing stopping me from trying. You either. So in closing of this article I would like to hope that, if you only take one thing away from this message, it is that you should try your hand at everything that Carrara has to offer. Try to ignore statements that tell you to avoid trying this or that. Just because it doesn’t work under one style of workflow doesn’t mean that the feature or function has no merit. When folks are watching your final production it will be how well you’ve told your story that will count most. Sure, there will always be people watching for technical this or that. Critics are good to have. We can either agree with them or discount what they say. To me, I just want people to enjoy the experience of watching my production.

In my ►►►  Carrara Information Manual   ◄◄◄ thread at the DAZ 3D Carrara discussion forum, I have a table of contents filled with various links to articles and other threads that help me to wrap my head around as many ideas for Carrara as I can. I’m really glad that they made it sticky, because I go there all the time to look up different things. Yes, it’s always in need of an overhaul – that will likely never change! But it is a fun resource for exploring what questions others have asked, and the answers that the community has provided. And these threads will continue to grow if you find that the question still remains – for you. Simply respond to that thread, and those that are subscribed to it will see your query and likely answer in some way or another. This whole circle forms a great big production environment for us all. A place where we all help each others projects grow and get better.

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