Hi, I bought carrara just a couple of weeks ago and I really like it, BUT I have a problem. I've been looking in the help for an answer but I can't find it maybe I'm blind (?). I would like to model something to a posermodel, such as shoes, clothes etc. But is there a way to do that with for ie the p4 nude male as "background"? I import it to carrara but then what? If I'm trying spline then I get a new window without the p4-obj...... Hope you guys can help me... Thanks Milaja

Good Luck with Carrara. I personally hate that program and I think that you will find yourself more frustrated as you use it. -Many of the key features in Carrara simply don't work. -It crashes alot when you try to perform specific boolean operations. -It crashes for no known reason at all many times. -The IK system does not use an object skeleton which is unheard of because that means that you cannot animate a solid mesh using IK. -Welding vertices sometime causes it to crash. -After the program has been running for about an hour, it runs like shit, and crashes again. -Support for Carrara is non-existant so you are left in the wind. -If it has not crashed or pissed you off to no end yet, it will, and then it will crash again. -The rendering engine straight sucks -The threads are crap! You could say that I need to check my machine but later I found that many others were having the same hangups. The problem with this program is that it was abandoned by Metacreations before it was complete so many of the features that would otherwise "make sense!" are not implemented. Why they even released it is beyond me other than to rake in every dollar they could get from the poor souls whom bought it. There are some very clever people whom has learned to work around all of its short-comings had have done some very good work with it. I think that the things that they have to work around are things that should have been addressed prior to release. I STRONGLY urge you to return this title and get something else because Carrara was thrown together at the end, lacks support and has a very uncertain future.

Carrara sometimes crashes on my set-up also & there are some shortcommings but it is workable. First export your foot (not the whole figure) as a wavefront object. Import into Carrara and then enlarge 1000%. The create a spline object to form around the foot. Or, use the mesh from the foot & modify it in the mesh modeler (add thikness, build new polys, etc) to crete the shoe.

hmmm... I haven't had any problems with crashes yet... lucky me :) I think that I didn't described my problem clear enough. The thing is that when I imported the obj to Carrara and then choose to for ie make an spline object around the foot. Then I get a new window with just the new spline object, the foot doesn't show. I would like to have it as a "background" or in a layer or something so I can model around it to get my stuff so exact as possible..... Milaja

I have'nt had Any of the mentioned problems. Even the famous "Boolean Subtraction" problem that has been brought up before.Must just be lucky too.(and on a Mac) (;> Spanfarkle

System stablity is also governed by hardware and software in the equation. I havent had any of the above mentioned problems. Win98SE, ASUS P2B Motherboard, Hercules TNT1 16mb video, 256mb PC-100 RAM, PII 400Mhz processor etc... I've seen programs crash all over the place on bad hardware and also systems that are not kept up. Tephladon, Im not saying you have a nasty system but there might be some specific things on your system (HW or SW) thats causing the problems you mentioned. Even programs running in the background can raise hell on software that taxes the system really hard like Carrara. I like it and it seems to be a decent program for the money. Clint

Carrara is also reasonnably stable on my system:Win 98se ,PIII 256 ram ,3dlabs VX1 video card ,BE6 motherboard and i like it.But making a Poser character in Crrara is an aventure not for me for now.Good luck,Milaja

BTW, I am on a 233MHZ iMac w/160 real Ram and 240 Virtual memory (Ram Doubler).Definitely more bang for the buck with Carrara.

I think I understand your problem. You want to bring a Poser .Obj model into the spline modeler. Well... You can't do that. An .Obj file is a vertex model and it is completely different from a spline model. Carrara will convert a spline model into a vertex model but not the other way around. I don't think there is any way to convert a vertex model into a spline model. So If you want to model around a .obj file you will have to use the vertex modeler. Although the spline modeler is easier to use, the vertex modeler is much more flexible allowing you to do things that can't be done in the spline modeler. I found it well worth the time it takes to learn. I do all my modelling now in the vertex modeler. Hope this helps. Keith

You are absolutely right Clint, and I have addressed many of those issues. My system complete config is as follows: Dual PII 400 256 mb ram Oxygen VX1 vid card Asus P2B-D mobo WiNT 4.0 (SP6) I generally try to commit all of my resources to the task at hand so I do turn off all background programs prior to running my 3D apps as 3D apps are taxing on the system. I bought Lightwave just over a year ago today and I have not had a single hang-up or let-down since I had and tell it has pushed my machine and both of its processors to the limits and has not crashed yet. Poser also run without a hitch. The level of stability that I get from Poser and Lightwave; I feel that Carrara should be equally stable. I don't get that stability and functionality and that frustrates me because I don't like work-arounds personally. I want the app to do what I paid it to do. Lastly I found that Carrara cannot handle the workload that I request from it. I am high poly-count modeller so I expect alot from my 3D app. If I offended anyone here, I am apologizing in advanced. I noticed that people a these forums get flamed alot for having a different opinion. I have not seen it in this forum yet but in others however, oh yeah, all stops were pulled. I am voicing my opinion on what I think is a bad app. If Carrara had a support system to address all of the problems that exist, It would probably be more forgiving but it seems that part of the support infrastructure stage of the program release was ignored and that is bad on the end-user.

:) Excellent...No problems here at all, everyone has thier opinions. I do agree that for complex stuff Carrara is hurting. Im not sure if it the way the code is written or not. I had major stability problems with RDS 5.5. I saved every 10 min just to make sure I dont loose to much work. Im just curious if maybe it has something to do with NT4 sp6? Not sure. I havent gotten brave enough to load NT at home... I have it on 40+ servers at the office.. (grin) But I havent introduced it into the house yet.. Kinda funny I think. Oh well, Tephladon I really hate to hear that you are having problems with it. There are a few problems I have found also. Work arounds do suck. BTW - Sweet system !! ;) To be 100% honest - I still like RDS 5.5 a little better than Carrara... (shrug) Im still not 100% comfortable with the modelers in Carrara..I can use the Mesh Form in RDS like a mad man...but Carrara ... I cant get it to do some things that RDS could do. Maybe bugs...Simple stuff like detach Polygons... LOL! Anyway - All opinions are welcome in this forum. We are a pretty tame bunch. Have a great evening. Clint

Milaja, Sounds like your 3D preview window isn't displayed while you are in the Spline modeler room. You would be able to see both the shoe mesh object as well as the spline object within that preview window. That way any action you create to the spline oject would be immediatly previewed around that shoe. (It is much easier to do in RDS 5.5 as you can have the scene, spline window and mesh modeler all displayed at the same time.)

Thanks Clint. I got turned on to NT about 4 years ago and never looked back. I am not a big gamer and if I buy a game, it will have to work in NT or it is no dice. I just love the stability that I get with the OS even though it has it share of bugs as well, most of them have been addressed with the service packs. NT is a workhorse but these are things that I am sure you already know. Now that I am moving up in the world, I am looking at IRIX 6.5 I hear that is an awesome OS for graphics and soon I will have upgraded to Lightwave 6. I have been doing a lot of reading at SGI's website on 6.5 and many professionals swear by it. Maybe next year I'll be able to afford the OS but right now, I am thinking about upgrading to either a dual Xeon or waiting until the P4 Willamat(sp?) is released. I really want to be a professional artist and I will do anything that gives me even a slight edge over my competition.

Here Here!!!! I love this stuff also. :) Good luck! Clint

Well, I just can't pass by a good Carrara rant when I see one, and this one has generated a good deal of response, even though Milaja was asking an innocent enough question which Willf's response should help with. I'm afraid I share most of Tephladon's opinions about Carrara and I'm on a Mac. I've been supporting, repairing, upgrading and creating with Macs for over 15 years and am quite familiar with problem software and hardware that the Mac faces. The constant Type 2 & Type 3 errors are all coding issues in Carrara. I've been a faithful user of Metacreations/then-Fractal Design products for 8 years; the reason being they always worked and I NEVER had a problem with them - especially RDS (sorry Clint). RDS chugged along since version 1 without a hitch no matter how complex a scene I created, except for over-taxing the amount of installed memory. I expected the same from Carrara and have been very disappointed. I've learned a few workarounds to keep it going, but that isn't what I paid for and isn't how I need to spend my Oh-So-Scarce creative free time. I'm using RDS more and more again because it does the things I want it to without complaining and crashing my machines. I wish I could discover exactly what the problem is but it is so different in everyone's experience. I support two other designers who use Carrara and 1 has no problems and the other has threatened to quit if they have to use it. Since there are two of us with the problems, we're looking into other software. I'll keep experimenting with Carrara and what it can and can't do, but most of my work is getting done in RDS until Carrara is fixed or I find a killer new program or RDS won't funtion any more.

thanks for answering! Milaja