I have an inkwell that I have modeled and am rendering in a scene where everything comes out exactly how I like it, except for the reflections on the inkwell. They seem choppy and distorted. All of the faces are smooth, and there are no bump maps on the inkwell, so I cannot figure out why it is doing that. Suggestions?

Hi DB, Im suspecting that the ink bottle is a vertex/facet object. For transparent glass type of objects I've had the best luck with spline/freeform objects. The reflections and refractions are cleaner. The other thing that I try to do is have a bigradient as the background (not the backdrop) to give the glass something to reflect. I do have a bump in the glass above just to give it some imperfections. If it would help, I can post the scene above if it would make things clearer. Mark

I actually modeled it in Rhino and imported it as a 3ds file. Perhaps if I tried importing it as a spline object it might come out better.

I'd like to know Rhino/spline export helps out. According to Antoine on the List, no two modeling programs will interpret and import a given format the same way. He even offered that 3D Studio can export to a '3ds' format (not the native creation/modeling format) and will have quirks when it imports the 'saved as' version of a 3ds format right back into the program. I haven't used it so I don't know. I try to stay in the native modeling program when possible so almost all of my work is created in Carrara now. (Except for precision shapes and paths which I create in Adobe Illustrator and import) Mark

I don't yet model in Carrara because I have gotten a bit overly familiar with the interface in Rhino and can't bring myself to try and jump the gap to start modeling in Carrara. Tonight I will try out your tips, and hopefully have the final image to post soon!

Carrara will not import objects into the spline modeler. It will only import paths so you can rebuild your object there. You might try running your rhino export (as an obj) thru Steve's UV Mapper to smooth out the reflections of the Carrara render. good luck (after using rhino I can't bring my self to model anything in C)