I have to thank Eovia for making a demo of Carrara4 pro available. I was able to try it out, and determine that most of the problems I'm having using it in a model-for-Poser workflow are unchanged. UVmapper is not improved; does not remember window scaling, control-Z does not undo, can't drag preview, can't see more than one polymesh at a time; vertice room is basically untouched, except for the "freeze" button for SubD's -- haven't looked to see if that corrupts the UVmap the same way freezing in the Assembly Room did. Material zones are still not exported (unless you create a material for it in the Materials Room, and even then the names are ommitted on export, leaving you with "texture_1, texture_2"... I haven't tested yet to see if it still reverses the normals on duplication, but I am fairly sure this hasn't been addressed either (I think it's a winding order thing). The new sky options are nice, though the clouds still look like windowpane streaking, and the terrain editor is more functional, although arranged oddly (and the "crater" function is just silly -- you get the same result with a brush). And the widget in the Assembly Room is a nice addition (but then, I've been using one already in Hexagon). I'd really like to get this upgrade, and stay on the upgrade path. And I like that Transposer is thrown in with it. But so far I haven't seen anything that improves my current workflow. I'm fighting with Carrara to get Poser-ready models in and out of it, and I am really wondering if my money and time were not better spent elsewhere. A couple of Hexagon's edge tools, a wee bit of work on the UVmapper -- at least so it works the same way as the rest of Carrara's GUI, and better yet, so you can manipulate ALL the mesh you are trying to map...import options that made a wee bit more sense and actually let you Move the Same Damn Model in and out of Carrara without all the internal groupings changing! ....well, some of that would go a long way towards persuading me to go further with this software. I do love it, and still reach for it to make a quick model, and for most of my renders, but the frustration is getting too much to continue.

I hope you've sent this list to Eovia as well. They may be unaware of some of those issues - or unaware that they're annoying to any users. If you want to see them fixed, try sending a really nice set of bug reports. For each item, say: 1. A simple set of instructions for how to make the problem occur. 2. A quick sentence describing what should have happened, and 3. A description of what happened instead. Developers hate vague, unstructured bug reports, so yours will probably get special attention. - Joe

"UVmapper is not improved; does not remember window scaling, control-Z does not undo, can't drag preview, can't see more than one polymesh at a time;"

In the uv mapper Ctrl+z does undo the scaling, moving of selections unless you mean something else. I am thinking this could be a bug or conflict with your system. What is your system specs?

I don't know what you mean by "can't drag preview" , I can resize the uv editor window and resize it to fill the entire screen.

You can get multiple polymeshes in the uv editor at once. Try the following.

1. in the vm create a cube and cylinder
2. give a new shading domain to each.
3. now connect the cube and cylinder with an edge using the G hotkey(link tool icon.)( see image.)
4. Ctrl+shift+L links the vertices too.
5. now go to the uveditor and in the Edit Tab select show all. See image
6. you now have 2 polymeshes in the uv editor.
   You can unlink the 2 polymeshes if you want and still have them show up in the uv editor.

You can also combine vertex objects together to be seen in the vm room as a bunch of polymeshes . Use the copy and paste to bring in new polymeshes to a current vm object.

I don't really use poser that much so I dont know the typical workflow , if this is of no help or I am totally in left field I am sorry.

Mike

Message edited on: 06/22/2005 10:49

That is a nice suggestion. I'll have to try it. I'm often duplicating to expand upon a model; for instance, build a housing, select one face, duplicate it then expand on the duplicate to make a screen or control that fits properly in the gap. It was disheartening that the duplicate didn't share the UVmap window, meaning I'd have to stick it in the upper left corner, then re-arrange the whole thing in UVmapper. I've stopped sending bug reports. Never had a single reply -- not even a "we got your email." I wil sit down and try all the import/export options to see if there is any way to actually get a Poser-ized object with groups and mtls in and selectable and out without corruption. That's been the worst headache. Related to that, just created a model with a lot of duplications; built each basic shape as a vertex object, UVmapped each and assigned materials. Brought them into Assembly, duplicated, grouped, grouped the groups. Set material values in the materials room. Then exported. On export I had...."Texture_01, Texture_02" and up into the hundreds for every one of the three basic materials in every one of the original mesh objects. And the groups had collapsed, leaving me with "stair_1, stair_2, stair_3" and so on. Took thirty minutes to clean everything up. Brought into Poser and every other duplicate had reversed normals. Cleaned those up in Poser. Then discovered the mapping of one part was corrupted. Went back into Carrara to fix it (UVmapper wouldn't touch it), and.....went through the whole damn process again. Anyhow. I'll experiment with the settings and document them. I have figured how to deal with the scaling, at least.

Well, if they're not replying to your bug reports, then yeah, that's dissuasive.

Well, I'm working on another. Good luck on that. I've spend the day checking carefully through the manual and trying various import and export options. I think I have work-arounds for most of the issues I raised above. But some of the work-arounds are, frankly, a lot of work. One is to never intend shading domains for export; to, in fact, carefully never create a material tree for a model I intend to export. That way, I can use named groups of polygons instead (which import and export properly). Domains work fine for temporarily dividing a model for mapping, however. The weld trick works fine, but exporting the model then re-importing also fixes it so instead of multiple polymeshes you have only one. Duplicate with symmetry still reverses normals, but you can fix that before you combine the polymeshes into one. It also appears, due to the above and other issues, that duplication of any kind in the assembly room is not a good idea for a model you mean to export. This does mean, of course, that both the "widget" and the rumored nudge hotkey are not available. I am, however, pleased at how smoothly a Poser scene imports -- the addition of the alpha-map to the transparency makes that finally work properly (besides importing in the first place, which was a problem relying on the Poser mtl file).

Just thought I'd share this for amusement -- and so you guys could point out anything that is a clear PEBCAK error before I email it off again. //// OS 10.2.8, clean install, running on G4 AGP; Carrara4 demo (the majority also present with Carrara3, and with Carrara3 on G3 powerbook, and on above running OS 9.1 and 9.2) Vertex Room, UVeditor: Many of these are ways in which the GUI, particularly the preview window, does not behave the same as the other windows in Carrara. This is a minor caveil but it can throw a wrench into the modelling workflow when the buttons and behaviors change like that. 180' rotate of selected vertices (with shift-constrain) not possible; selection constrains to 90', but will go to 170' or 190' instead of allowing a clean 180'. Without constrain, of course, the resultant rotate is not precise enough. When planar mapping chosen in X or Y plane, the resulting map is oriented 90' to the model's axis. This is easily correctable with a select-and-rotate, but it is needlessly annoying. Control-Z is not undo; acts as Select All instead. When cylinder mapping is applied from within the UV editor, instead of having a seam one row of faces is wrapped around. These must be manually split (or, faster, is to export the model to Steve Cox's UVmapper, apply cylinder map, then re-import to Carrara to adjust the map.) Window has no memory; if window is rescaled, or "show all" or "use no texture map" selected, upon closing and re-opening editor defaults return. (It shares this behavior with many of the "pop-up" windws, at least showing consistency). Space-bar drag does not work in preview window. Camera in preview window rotates around center of box, not about a selection. Vertex Room, general: Duplication with symmetry STILL reverses the normals on the new polymesh. In Carrara4, the display makes it a little more obvious the normals are inverted on the duplicate, making it easier to apply a correction on the spot. Rotation does not constrain; no combination of shift, option, and/or command constrains rotation to a plane or to increments. This makes the rotation tool useless for all but trivial tasks. Crash when naming groups of polygons (unable to reproduce conditions -- suspect it involves naming across different polymeshes). It appears to resolve if "detach polygons" is used several times on the problem selection, with file saves between each. Crash when welding around a fresh polyline. Also unable to reproduce exact occurance. Both of these crashes dump Carrara immediately and completely, exiting to system. This may be happening when a closed polyline has been converted to an open one or vice-versa, and only resolves with deletion of most of the polyline. No way to combine more than one polymesh without exporting object file then re-importing. It is a problem because both duplication and create operations make a new polymesh, and polymeshes without a shared weld can not be edited together in the UVmapper. Vertex Room/Material Room (shading domains: Shading domains are not exported unless a shader tree is created for each one. Shading domains are exported with generic names (texture_1, etc.) rather than the names used inside the program. The only time non-generic names are exported is if no shading domains were created (or no shader tree created for the existing domains; in this case every group is given a usemtl statement with the same name (aka "g lFoot, usemtl lFoot") When object is duplicated in Assembly Room, identical shading domains on both duplicates are assigned new generic names on export. (Aka, if you have three domains on an object, and you make two duplicates, on export you have six different domains with generic names -- makes it very difficult to figure out which is which). The only way to avoid this is to never apply Carrara textures to a model you mean to export. Assembly room: Arrow-key nudge only works in the command-arrow mode -- moving a whole grid space. Otherwise, no nudge occurs (makes it rather useless for, you know, nudging.) No matter how many times the "nudge" key was hit the numeric position display never changed by even a fraction, nor did the object ever visibly move. Replication in assembly room reversed normals on every other duplicate. This occured some two times out of three when using multi-replicate functions, or multiple duplications. Misc.: The "convert to other modeller" pop-up window when you double-click a Poser import has a typo; "you will loose your" instead of "lose."

Hey NOMUSE, I HAVE RESPONDED TO SOME OF YOU COMMENTS,MY COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. Vertex Room, UVeditor: 180' rotate of selected vertices (with shift-constrain) not possible; selection constrains to 90', but will go to 170' or 190' instead of allowing a clean 180'. Without constrain, of course, the resultant rotate is not precise enough. - YES I AM SEEING THIS TOO. When planar mapping chosen in X or Y plane, the resulting map is oriented 90' to the model's axis. This is easily correctable with a select-and-rotate, but it is needlessly annoying. Control-Z is not undo; acts as Select All instead. CONTROL Z WORKS FOR ME LIKE IT SHOULD. Window has no memory; if window is rescaled, or "show all" or "use no texture map" selected, upon closing and re-opening editor defaults return. (It shares this behavior with many of the "pop-up" windws, at least showing consistency).- YES I AM SEEING THIS TOO. Space-bar drag does not work in preview window. Camera in preview window rotates around center of box, not about a selection.- YES I AM SEEING THIS HERE TOO. Vertex Room, general: Duplication with symmetry STILL reverses the normals on the new polymesh. In Carrara4, the display makes it a little more obvious the normals are inverted on the duplicate, making it easier to apply a correction on the spot. -WORKS FINE HERE, ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT AN IMPORTED POSER FIGURE, MAYBE THATS DIFFERENT Rotation does not constrain; no combination of shift, option, and/or command constrains rotation to a plane or to increments. This makes the rotation tool useless for all but trivial tasks. - ARE YOU IN 3D VIEW , TRY WORKING IN TOP,LEFT OR FRONT VIEWS,IN THE PROPERTIES TRAY YOU CAN SET THE ROTATION CONSTRAINT ANGLE TO WHATEVER YOU WANT.IT WORKS WELL WHEN IN AN ISOMETRIC VIEW, IT WOULD BE NICE TO HAVE CONSTRAINTS IN THE 3D VIEW TOO. Crash when naming groups of polygons (unable to reproduce conditions -- suspect it involves naming across different polymeshes). It appears to resolve if "detach polygons" is used several times on the problem selection, with file saves between each.-DOESN'T HAPPEN HERE Crash when welding around a fresh polyline. Also unable to reproduce exact occurance. Both of these crashes dump Carrara immediately and completely, exiting to system. This may be happening when a closed polyline has been converted to an open one or vice-versa, and only resolves with deletion of most of the polyline.- IHAVE HAD SOME PROBLEMS WITH WELDING IN THE PAST BUT IT HAS BEEN PRETTY STABLE IN THE LAST VERSION. No way to combine more than one polymesh without exporting object file then re-importing. It is a problem because both duplication and create operations make a new polymesh, and polymeshes without a shared weld can not be edited together in the UVmapper. MAYBE I AM MISSING WHAT YOU MEAN BUT TRY THIS . 1 GO TO FIRST VERTEX OBJECT, 2.IN THE VERTEX MODELER SELECT ENTIRE OBJECT 3.PRESS CTRL+C(OR THE MAC EQUIVILANT) 4.GO TO ASSEMBLY WINDOW, DOUBLE CLICK YOUR NEXT VERTEX OBJECT. 5. NOW PRESS CTRL+V, YOU SHOULD HAVE YOUR 2 OBJECTS AS ONE VM OBJECT. Assembly room: Arrow-key nudge only works in the command-arrow mode -- moving a whole grid space. Otherwise, no nudge occurs (makes it rather useless for, you know, nudging.) No matter how many times the "nudge" key was hit the numeric position display never changed by even a fraction, nor did the object ever visibly move. -UNDER PREFERENCES/3DVIEW YOU CAN ADJUST THE NUDGE SIZE,ALSO PRESSING SHIFT WHILE NUDGING(CTRL+ARROW) NUDGES THE OBJECT BY A SMALLER AMOUNT. NUDGING WORKS LIKE IT IS SUPPOSED TO HERE,THE NUMERICAL DISPLAY UDPATES CORRECTLY. YOU HAVE TO USE THE CTRL(CMD)+ARROW KEYS FOR NUDGING TO WORK UNLESS THE MAC IS DIFFERENT. Mike

WORKS FINE HERE, ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT AN IMPORTED POSER FIGURE, MAYBE THATS DIFFERENT Sorry...happens regardless of the model source; create prim, create from polyline, etc. ARE YOU IN 3D VIEW , TRY WORKING IN TOP,LEFT OR FRONT VIEWS,IN THE PROPERTIES TRAY YOU CAN SET THE ROTATION CONSTRAINT ANGLE TO WHATEVER YOU WANT.IT WORKS WELL WHEN IN AN ISOMETRIC VIEW, IT WOULD BE NICE TO HAVE CONSTRAINTS IN THE 3D VIEW TOO. Yah; switching camera (or leaving another view open) to ortho view makes it possible to rotate properly. Mostly I rotate in the properties tray instead. 1 GO TO FIRST VERTEX OBJECT, 2.IN THE VERTEX MODELER SELECT ENTIRE OBJECT 3.PRESS CTRL+C(OR THE MAC EQUIVILANT) 4.GO TO ASSEMBLY WINDOW, DOUBLE CLICK YOUR NEXT VERTEX OBJECT. 5. NOW PRESS CTRL+V, YOU SHOULD HAVE YOUR 2 OBJECTS AS ONE VM OBJECT. Sorry, that was the second thing I tried (the first was to select either or both and change the name of the polymesh. Even with identical names I had two polymeshes). Also tried copying and pasting into a new vertice object (same result). Only export collapsed it. -UNDER PREFERENCES/3DVIEW YOU CAN ADJUST THE NUDGE SIZE,ALSO PRESSING SHIFT WHILE NUDGING(CTRL+ARROW) NUDGES THE OBJECT BY A SMALLER AMOUNT. NUDGING WORKS LIKE IT IS SUPPOSED TO HERE,THE NUMERICAL DISPLAY UDPATES CORRECTLY. YOU HAVE TO USE THE CTRL(CMD)+ARROW KEYS FOR NUDGING TO WORK UNLESS THE MAC IS DIFFERENT. Thanks on that one. I'll check the preferences and see if the nudge is so very small it couldn't display. It's a function I've been wanting for a while (could use it in the vertex room too...going across to the properties window is a time-waster). Thanks for the notes. Basically, my attitude towards bugs in Carrara is this -- Eovia is not going to care about the smaller Mac market, not enough to spend effort on them. At most they will tell me to upgrade something -- probably involving more hundreds of dollars on my part. So it isn't worth pursuing that end. I must work around it or chose to work elsewhere. Still...Transposer is almost enough to make me upgrade to 4. The demo had very little else to offer me (I'm glad to say the "freeze" button for subD's doesn't corrupt the UVmap. Means mapping workflow is much streamlined). The way Carrara's pricing structure is going, I'd as soon pay three or four hundred for something that is more than a point upgrade -- I'll be waiting to see what (if anything) is in Carrara5.

Just from personal experience from testing with them in the past. They seem just as adamant about fixing/squashing Mac bugs as they are PC bugs. Sorry you are experiencing so many problems. Brian