I am having trouble exporting trees as 3ds from Carrara 3.03. The export finishes, but there seem to a whole bunch of useless black jpgs and the import process back into C. 2.1, 3.03 or Vue 4.51 Professional is bad. No leaves seem to come back at all. I did get the palm tree to work, but it has a much smaller polygon count, with fewer elements. I am using Win XP 512 megs Ram and a PIII 1 GHz JWB

JWB, I have never tried exporting trees, but did you play with the "mesh settings" in the tree modeller dialouge window. Mike

Two things to look at: 1. Make sure the "Full Detail Mesh" option is checked or the leaves will not export. 2. Try this with the "obj" format. If you are using 3ds format it has a limit as to how many faces it can contain in one object. A bunch of leaves can easily pass that limit and instead of getting an export error message from Carrara you get an messy 3ds file with parts missing. mdc

I have a question. When exporting OBJ files from Carrara 3.0.3, what should I look for so that my objects aren't all gray colored when imported into other programs?

Using .obj export did give me the leaves, although Vue sometimes chokes. I still don't know why I get several uselessblack jpegs along with the useable textures. For Shonner: Be sure to check "convert procedural textures to texture maps" on the export dialog (if you're using 3ds, obj or 3dmf file types)

I've tried that. But my imported object is still all gray. Should I be looking for texture maps as individual jpegs in a folder somewhere? Or is the object supposed to have its texture maps included in it's file? www.shonner.com

When I export an object I export the object to a new folder. That way the maps and everything are in one place. I have no idea why your models import gray. But you can find the maps if you place everything together in one spot. The export should include the maps and the object, and most likely a materials file.

Tonight I'll see if Bryce 5 can make heads or tails out of my Carrara 3 exports.