Okay, here's the story. I'm an art director (designer/web developer/Flash programmer/etc.) at a manufacturer. I've been tasked with a long term project: to be able to model our product (refrigerated display cases) and (1) composite the render with actual photos of customer environments and (2) animate figures to illustrate human interaction with the products.

I've been a long-time Carrara user, and have dabbled with Poser. But I need to make major strides in my skills.

Could anyone recommend any books and resources? Obviously Poser modeling but also Carrara lighting, animation, and compositing with Photoshop.

Thanks in advance!

Managment may not know what they're asking for here. ;-)

I don't think you'll need to use Poser on this one since you can do all of the animation in Carrara. Iactually  do a ton of that kind of work myself but I haven't come across any specific tutorials (or made any) that specifically covers all of the recommendations. Integrating Carrara with still photographs is no problem and quite fun actually. I posted an example here awhile back. It's really just a matter of using a photo for a background, setting up your scene, eliminating the background from Carrara, rendering and then compositing within Photoshop.

Animating within live footage of a client environment is very possible but it might be a little out of your hardware and software capabilities unless the company wants to trick-out your workstation. It would be easier to create an environment and animate within it instead. 

If you need to animate within live footage, just post back and i'll rough out what you need.

In the DAZ carrara forum, a user has posted a thread titled "intermediate tips, tricks and tuts" with all the tutorials she could find. This list includes some of what you will need for your project.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~njfinlay/tutorials has a tutorial on "rendering a poser figure against a backdrop" which walks you through setting up a scene and getting the lights and angles right (very easy by the way) to match the backdrop. The tutorial is for a still, but you could take it to an animation very quickly.

my vote would be to get as many bvh files as possible, and use 'em in carrara.
yer boss is gonna hafta specify what the figures look like, what they're wearing.
the default poser figures may suffice in that regard IMVHO, e.g. dork and posette.
totally 90s, but the focus may be the equipment and not the figures.  at least
the poser figures come with some clothing and joints useable in carrara, which
is a big time saver.

Thanks for the responses. This is going to be a long-term process. I know Strata has a plug-in that allows you to bring Strata models into the perspective filter/window in Photoshop. I get the impression that 3D bridge from Daz might do the same thing?

Mark, I'm not planning to animate the figures within live-action footage. Animation would be 100% modeled. (But I just got a pretty tricked out Mac Pro last week...)

Also, one of the biggest hurdles I've faced is lighting. The environments I'm creating are grocery stores. I cannot find any sort of tutes that deal with lighting such environments. All I find are three-point lighting tutes - which is great for vases and portraits, not so great for large rooms.  :P

Miss Nancy, all those specs are up to me,  :) While it would be nice to have figures better than the defaults, they aren't my main concern. That will come with time.

Thanks again!  :)

Also a resent freebe is !00 lights---someone will recall the download site for you I hope.

@Sueposer: It seems that the link should be
http://members.iinet.net.au/~njfinlay/Tutorials/CarraraTutorials.html

I hope this isn't a dumb question but is it possible to do figure animation with rotoscoping in Carrara? I'm thinking if yes than graylensman can make a video of someone interacting with his product and somehow in Carrara sync the live-action video reference to a 3d figure. does this make any sense? info on rotoscoping: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscope

Attached Link: O2IM with cheese

Here's a recent example of a project. A thousand words and all that.

hey! they got one of those at the local safeway.  they also pile stuff on the top shelf.
but that girl is too ugly/scary for promos IMVHO unless ya make her head less alien
and her face prettier.

Miss Nancy, that's the kind of thing the company I work for manufactures. I don't think Safeway is one of our customers, though.  :)

Yeah, ol' Jessie Carrara is a bit on the mean side. She needs a bit of taming. That's one of the things I need to learn.

For lighting you might consider seeing if you can find an HDRI (HDR) for lighting of a store or see if they will support you getting the equipment to make one for yourself. 

I know you don't need to do live video and 3d objects but if you ever do try the free voodoo or commercial syntheyes. 

Here is a discussion on HDRI in carrara http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=66675
and this is one using HDRI as a plugin for DS but this is to a specific post to see the lighting done with an with and without HDR  http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=1207038#1207038

That being said I haven't learned yet to do the HDR stuff myself yet.

Here are some store Interiors - Its a commercial link http://www.doschdesign.com/products/hdri/Shop_Interiors.html

How do you get the BVH applied to a figure in C6? Thanks.

 Just import the BVH file. There is a modal dialog box that will ask you what you want to do with it - attach it to an existing skeleton or create a new skeleton.

Xerxes, thanks for the links. I took a glance at the Interiors product and that might just be the thing. I'll know more about HDRI once I get to that point with Mark's tutorials (which just showed up in the mail!).

Weird my reply vanished, so if I end up replying twice sorry about that.

Your welcome! Hope it helps.

Right now my connection isn't so good except late at night when I am too tired to learn, so saving up my nickels to get the disc version myself.