ren_mem - One other issue about Mil People I did not mention- which is a problem- is that their heads are much higher resolution (mesh-wise) than their bodies. This causes the brushes to look out of scale as they go from the head to the body. This might be fixable if the vertix transformation makes the Mil-Mesh one single scale- but I haven't tried that yet.

What I'm looking at, which would apply to Architectural projects as well, is probably trying to use the older P4 characters- since their lower mesh detail might actually be an advantage with NPR brush EFX. This is something I will be experimenting with and will post some tests in the future...

dbigers- glad to hear you are interested in the Architectural uses for Carrara. While I have been a long-time Vue user and it makes great realistic plants and ecosystems- the NPR EFX actually work better, I've found, on more simple plant meshs- so Carrara actually makes a great software platform for doing NPR Illustrations. I'm not knocking Carrara's realism- but I just haven't spent any time at all exploring it yet as I am so completely overwhelmed with Carrara's NPR EFX at this time. It is EXACTLY what I've been looking for- a really good and easy to use NPR-Illustration platform.

And like you said- you can also so very realistic global illumination and ambient occlusion rendering with Carrara- so that also lends itself to very nice merge-blends in Photoshop- with each effect filling out an area in a project illustration. I'm doing experiements now in Photoshop and you get the best of both worlds in a finished render.

As far as a tutorial- I will try to put something together in the near future. The MAIN PROBLEM I've found with saving my brush settings is that they often do NOT transfer over to another scene that well. The reason is that mesh scales, lighting and even the camera lense- seems to greatly affect the way the brushes look. The brushes need to be re-scaled for nearly every new scene I make. I have discovered. It will be hard to make a single brush setting that someone can load- and have it render the same way on someone else's computer- unless they are working on the same scene.

Plus- people need to get some experience using the NPR brushes themselves before anyone can send them a brush setting. But- having said that- there are some nice brushes in the stock Carrara 5 set. Really very good, in fact. Whoever designed this for Eovia really did an excellent job and certainly understood how art is created. I would really love to speak with that person if they are still around at Eovia...

Resources to get started with Carrara NPR- besure to read the Carrara NPR section starting on page 562 of the Carrara 5 manual!  This section actually covers the brush controls really well. But it will not make as much sense until you have played around with them first. Then when you re-read it - it will all start to make more sense. Also- check in the Carrara 5 "Misc" files - in the C5 browser- there is a couple of sample NPR scenes that you can load and play around with...

Also- Davide Tosches, from Rome, Italy has sent me some of his brushes- and he said that he would make them available again- either in some Free Stuff area at Renderosity or over at DAZ. Hopefully this will be happening very soon- and I will post about this when he makes these available.

Here's some other brush info:

Brushes can be any size, even gray-scale, but keeping them a uniform size- like the original Carrara brushes, has advantages when you want to scale them at exactly 100%- which can look nice for artistic control...

I've taken brushes from my Photoshop Impressionist filter set and also from Piranesi, a high-end 3D paint software I own. Any brush can be CAPTURED from Photoshop or Painter by making the brush impression and then saving it as a square JPG (but they don't HAVE to be square...)

You can even use bump maps from your 3D software programs and very bizarre geometric designs- and they will all work as brushes as long as you save them as JPG's...

Here's an example of how to set up new brush directories in Carrara:

You can add your own brush libraries by editing the "Wizard.txt" file in the brush strokes directory-- as:

{
fold "DataStrokesDrawing"
fold "DataStrokesGeometric"
fold "DataStrokesPaint"
fold "DataStrokesToxeDigitals"
fold "DataStrokesToxeFurs"
fold "DataStrokesToxeGeometrics"
fold "DataStrokesToxeNaturals"
}

The bottom four are Davide Tosches that he sent me via email. What I did is just copy his four directories in with the others- edited the Wizard.txt- CAREFULLY copying EXACTLY how the original directories looked syntax-wise...

That's all for now. I'll post some more stuff about this and further experiements in the near future...