Hi All, I'm a complete newcomer to Carrara. I do have lots of 3D experience, however, so some things already seem sensible to me. I just a week ago bought Carrara 5 Pro in the hopes of escaping from Poser's serious rendering shortcomings. So far, it looks like that's going to be a good decision. C5 does stuff that I've been WISHING Lightwave did for the last ten years. What I'm wondering is - what do I need to know about bringing Poser scenes and object into Carrara, and using them. I notice that the native Poser import drops all scene lights, skin textures need some kind of repair, and the hair renders kink of funky. It seems like maybe TransPoser would be a better way to go? I dunno. Any tips would surely be appreciated!!!! Thanks, Gordon

Transposer is generally better for scenes that contain either magnets, dynamic hair/clothes. But native importer allows you to pose inside Carrara, no need for Poser anymore. If the hair renders funky that might be because you didn't set raytracing to pass through transparencies... (Or whatever that setting is ;-))

Oh, you're probably right about the raytracing. Thanks! And I can probably fix the skin textures with C5's new SSS function, once I figure out how to use it. Does TransPoser bring in entire scenes like the native importer, or does it treat them as an outside entity that you can't easily modify? Sorry for my ignorance. I couldn't find anything about the plugin in the C5 manual.

Transporter can import virtually all the stuff in a Poser scene -- including lights.

Once in C5Pro, you can adjust the Poser model textures. You can maintain a "connection" to the Poser object, so any changes made back in Poser will be updated automatically when re-opening the scene in C5Pro (watch out for tex. changes you made in C5Pro though -- they will go away if you do). You can also convert Poser objects to a mesh. I don't do much Poser manipulation in C5Pro, so others in this forum likely will have more accurate info on this than me.

My understanding of transposer (I'm using C5 standard) is you can pose in poser and then update in carrara if you check the box that allows this. Hopefully someone with transposer can help you. I came from using poser as well... and I'm loving the render engine (the main reason I bought carrara) as well as everything else. I also love what I can do to add to the skin textures. You can check out one of my C5 images with sss... if you want... @ http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1134475&Start=1&Artist=enigmaticredfrog&ByArtist=Yes Best of luck! Christina

see somebody with transposer was posting at the same time I was... you gotta love this forum!

Definitely! I see that SSS certainly does improve skin textures. That's good. I looks like there's advantages to both ways of getting Poser data into C5. I'll have to tinker with them. I do use Poser's dynamic cloth function now and then. I think I screwed up when I was installing C5. I put the "render node" software on the main computer. Now, when I render, it shows TWO nodes working. (It's a 3.6 Ghz, single core cpu.) So, before setting up any ACTUAL render nodes, I probably need to uninstall that from the main box?

Yeah render node does not go on main pc, altho I suppose it could if you had dual processors.

Gordon_S,

What you are seeing is Hyperthreading. Carrara sees Hyperthreaded CPUs as essentially 2 CPUs. This gives you ~20-25% increase in rendering speed over the same processor with Hyperthreading turned off. If you had a PC with Intels Extreme 840 (3.2 GHz) dual core with Hyperthreading, you would see 4 render patches during a render on one PC.

The P4s deep predictive branch pipeline is normally a liability for rendering, which is why Intel came up with Hyperthreading. The single core becomes a virtual 2 core processor. Carrara sees this (as most modern 3D software does) and thinks it is running on a dual processor PC or at least multithreaded, which in the past was multi-processor.

Intel had JUST introduced the first dual core cpu when I bought this machine, and there was some talk of poor floating point operations with it. So, I went with the 3.6 Ghz single core chip instead. In retrospect, that was probably a mistake. Oh, well! I understand you have to get an extra node license if you're running dual-core cpu's with C5 Pro?? Hmmm... I'm not sure you're really getting TWICE the performance with dual-core. I seem to recall hearing 30-50% increases were about average with multi-threaded code. What do extra node licenses for C5 Pro cost??

Attached Link: http://tinyurl.com/c57gj

There is no extra cost to run a dual core CPU with CS, just as there is no extra cost to run a Dual CPU computer. I don't know if the extra CPU (dual processor or dual core) will count as 2 render nodes, but you don't need to purchase an additional license (node or otherwise) to run CS on a dual core CPU. I do know that a dual CPU machine will show up as 2 "gray boxes" on the host if the dual cpu machine is set up as a node.

For more information on the speed of a dual core vs a dual cpu machine refer to the post by charlesb in the attached link.

I think Eovias network rendering is based on Nodes, not numbers of cpu cores. This must be so, because I've rendered with 4 PCs, 2 of them dual core, and not a problem. I think some of the big-bloated guns, like Maya, actually count cores -- as if you don't pay enough already! I hope small company like Eovia can drive those big bully boys down in price where they belong.

Ok, you got me wondering.Gordon said he put a render node on at install, which you can do tho it says not to. Carrara has hyper threading support as an option. Are you saying to put a node and carrara on a hyperthread pc to improve rendering?(I am assuming this is your only pc w/ this) Generally, they say carrara then nodes on other cpus/pc's.(You get 5 nodes with pro, I thought).

It was a screwup on my part. I'll try uninstalling it and see what it does then.

Well...I am sure lots of people install it when they get the program. I am just wondering if they misunderstood what you said or there is something of which I am unaware.