That is an amazing scene.  I was thinking about buying it too.  How long did the render take on your computer?

On my system, for a 2400 by 1350 image , around 25 minutes (if i remember correctly, i was reading paper during rendering) But the details are very nice It can be compared to a very good one with ecosystem on VUE 6 infinite

Like MOST of the stuff one can do similarly in Carrara!

http://tutengraphics.com/tblib.php?lib=Computer%20Artwork/Carrara%205%20Pro%20Images

I just purchased this scene as well - rendered with default settings it took 24 minutes 26 secs.
Very nice work :)

Why not MAKE those scenes in Carrara---thats what and why Carrara is big steps above say Poser.

The things you buy may have been made in Carrara! originally
You are missing out on the real fun of 3D!

Plus you could animate such a scene(at smaller dimensions for video, of course) with the tree wind animation, particles for blowing leaves, and moving clouds. I plan to purchase this scene as well, and I'm not usually a "content" buyer. I usually like to build everything in my scenes, but I might learn a lot by "backward engineering" such a scene. Trouble is, I have to upgrade to ver.6.  to use it , haha, but I just needed a good excuse. Howie Farkes, Patrick Tuten and other Carrara artists are putting out scenes that compare very well with the best stuff coming out of Vue.

 It proves, again, that it's not the tools that are most important, but the artist using them.

Though it would be hard to pull something like this out of Poser or Daz Studio ofcourse. I do think scenes like this could be made faster in Vue, but I don;t think I am going to try that. I am used to Carrara, and should spend way much more time in it.

I would just love to know how he got that much detail into the render without Carrara going psycho and crashing...  Has anyone seen any tutorials on doing nature scenes with this much detail?

 I agree that the tools are secondary to the talent, but achieving astounding results in Carrara is very deficit and time consuming. I am day by day more disappointed with Carrara. Crashing on critical renders, the end result is good, but not astounding.

Maybe using plugins makes up the deference. But out of the box I am not to pleased or impressed with Carrara anymore. Some renders take way to much time, even on an 8 core MacPro. I thought Carrara had a very fast rendering engine, but now I realize that it really is not that fast compared to other packages.

Overall it being tied to DAZ and it's content disillusioned me further. Not that they didn't add cool features on this last version, but it seems that a lot more time was spent DAZ-ing it then making it stable. I know that all 3D applications crash on occasion, but I had already rendered this seen before. When the replication feature is used with transparent reflective objects is not very stable at all. Two deferent projects hampered by this short coming. I know if I reduce the number of instances inside the replicator, things work better, but at least it should have a warning about exceeding it's limits. I will report this as a bug. The curl thing about all this is that it crashes at 80% of completing the render.

My problem was repositioning the camera and having more of the replicator object show, then it crashes. Very disappointing.

I agree with you on the instability.  I have had old files crash on 6.2 as well.  I don't think I have ever used the replicator tool, but my bane seems to be refractive and reflective semi transparent objects like some kinds of glass and crystal.  I am really amazed that the ocean water shaders don't crash it.  Usually removing and recreating some objects allow it to render properly but it is very hit or miss.  I am completely self taught on Carrara, beginning with the old Ray Dream program.  I don't have the cash to outlay for another 3D application so Carrara is it for me.  I also am getting a bit too old to start from scratch, learning another more complex package.  I am disabled now so my only means of income is going to be the models I can do and sell in the marketplace.  I have only gotten good enough to produce commercial quality models in the last few months so again, spending years learning a new package is out.  You know what they say about the devil you know...  I can usually get Carrara to do what I want, even if it takes a few stressful hours to do so.  I am lousy with the vertex modeler so I stick to spline models.  You would be amazed what you can do in there. :)  Maybe one day DAZ will correct the memory leak, and all the other little annoyances that hamper the creative process.  Amazingly the model lighthouse I have in the marketplace here is probably the most complex model I have done to date, and it is one of the few that rendered flawlessly and relatively quickly on the first try, without a lot of hassles.  I guess that C6 is finally starting to like me :).

I haven't seen any tutorials yet on how to go about constructing scenes of such detail in Carrara, but having this actual scene file would be most instructive in itself. I would be able to analyze the scene size he starts with (small, medium, large), lighting, terrain base shaders and textures, plant editor settings for those amazing trees, replicator settings and maps, lighting set-up, etc.

Patrick has very kindly made his default tree shaders with translucency available at digitalpainters,net as well as a very nice tut on building your own plants in Carrara using an actual photograph at polyloop.net. HowieFarkes has some great ferns and other plants he generously made available as a freebie D/L at digitalpainters.net. These may not be the tutorial for the grand scene we are hoping for, but they do provide some of the building blocks.

Quote - I would just love to know how he got that much detail into the render without Carrara going psycho and crashing...  Has anyone seen any tutorials on doing nature scenes with this much detail?

It's mostly to do with render settings. I've converted the ReadMe file that I wrote for this scene and put it into the Artzone Wiki so anyone can have a look.

http://artzone.daz3d.com/wiki/doku.php/azproduct/7048

You are a true professional Howie. I'm going to buy this scene tomorrow and take a closer look.  Thanks for all your hard work.

It's worth searching to add this 1,191kb pdf tute to your Tute Files also

Carrara4
Landscape Tutorial
by Johannes Rosenberg/cajomi
Brian

Quote - It's worth searching to add this 1,191kb pdf tute to your Tute Files also

Carrara4
Landscape Tutorial
by Johannes Rosenberg/cajomi
Brian

I remember that tutorial by Cajomi. I highly recommend it if you can find it.

I'll definitely be looking for the tutorial.  thanks for the info.

Attached Link: Carrara 4 Landscape Tutorial PDF by Johannes Rosenberg / cajomi

http://www.cajomi.de/Download/tutorial1a.pdf

Quote - > Quote - It's worth searching to add this 1,191kb pdf tute to your Tute Files also

Carrara4
Landscape Tutorial
by Johannes Rosenberg/cajomi
Brian

I remember that tutorial by Cajomi. I highly recommend it if you can find it.

Is this the same Cajomi that have created Geocontrol??
I have also noted that when you add some Poser caracters in the country lane scene the render time will be much slower

Here is a render I just did - added "Condemned" building, volumetric clouds, and the Wildenlander outfit with textures (I haven't C6 optimized them yet) and the Andre skin texture for M3.

It only added 3 minutes to render time :)  

Total render time: 27 minutes

That's the poser characters.  Adding poser content into almost all scenes ups the render time considerably.  It just seems to be the nature of the poser character beasts.

Quote - Is this the same Cajomi that have created Geocontrol??
I have also noted that when you add some Poser caracters in the country lane scene the render time will be much slower

Looks nice, but the building is way out of scale in proportion to the road.

Quote - Here is a render I just did - added "Condemned" building, volumetric clouds, and the Wildenlander outfit with textures (I haven't C6 optimized them yet) and the Andre skin texture for M3.

It only added 3 minutes to render time :)  

Total render time: 27 minutes

I was just adding content - not trying to scale everything :) Just wanted to test render times and see if my system would handle the extra content.

Quote - I have also noted that when you add some Poser caracters in the country lane scene the render time will be much slower

That's because when a Poser character is added, "Light through transparency" is turned on (whether you want it or not) so that the eyes and stuff render properly. However this does increase render times by a factor of 3 or more. So unless you really need "Light through transparency" on, I'd suggest ticking it "off" before you render.

Thanks for suggestion

Cajomi is the Geocontrol designer.
Brian

Glad I bought this.    Just an amazing scene and the read me helped a lot.  I notice CountryLane is a first in a series......   Can't wait for more!!!

Cheers

hope for expansions. Onces that connect to each other to help build one huge scene.

Help, I've bought and downloaded this scene, installed it as per the readme instructions but I cannot load the scene.
When selecting the scene from open preset, it reaches 25 % then gives an error "An error occured while executing open" I've uninstalled and re-installed but same thing.

Carrara 6.2 pro in Vista SP1.

Could you tell us what your hardware is?  A lot of times certain directX drivers or components seem to do that on my old system.  Could also be memory or swap file issues.  I don't have this scene so I can only provide very basic suggestions, sorry.

Quote - Help, I've bought and downloaded this scene, installed it as per the readme instructions but I cannot load the scene.
When selecting the scene from open preset, it reaches 25 % then gives an error "An error occured while executing open" I've uninstalled and re-installed but same thing.

Carrara 6.2 pro in Vista SP1.

I'm sorry you're having troubles with this scene. Have you tried contacting Daz Support? Their details will be at the bottom of the ReadMe file.

I haven't contacted support yet, I will try uninstalling and re-installing Carrarra completely (it's a fresh install on a new machine anyway) and then contact them if that doesn't work.

My system is a Q6600 Quad core 2.4 Ghz on an Asus P5K motherboard with 4GB of DDRII 800 RAM with a Saphire Radeon HD3850 with the latest Catalyst drivers (8.5)

Ok.  You have almost the same video card I do.  I haven't heard of any issues with that board on my techie sites.  How much swap file space do you have allocated and how much video RAM do you have on the ATI card?  I ask because a 32Bit system can only address a maximum of 4GB of RAM including what is on the video card and/or HDD Cache RAM etc.  So if you have a 512MB card, your system will only use 3.5GB of the normal RAM minus what you may have for HDD cache RAM.  This conceivably could influence any large scenes you may try to render but it shouldn't cause it not to load at all.  I doubt it is a Vista issue since I run Vista Ultimate SP1 on my AMD Quad core box and don't normally have any issues.  Like I said, I don't have the scene to do any extensive trouble shooting on so all I can do is provide general suggestions.  Does it have any problems opening other scenes or starting one from scratch?  You might also have gotten a bad DL of the scene when you bought it.  Try re-downloading it and see if that helps.  Wish I could help more.  Good luck.

Rich

I have also had No Problems opening it with a 3.2 GHz DualCore or 3GHz Core2Extreme E8400. My render times are different then your alls times as I put some of Forester's Old Wood Pines in the scene with extra flowers and cranked Everything up to Excellent, 4, or 100 percent Quality and you think the scene looks goods at it's default, WOW, it is many times better at higher settings and I don't mind waiting for the extra quality.

It seems to be that Carrara isn't picking up the new elements for some reason. Even though I have double checked that the elements are being installed into the correct directories as defined in the read-me file - for some reason Carrara can't see these items.

I had been trying to open the scene directly but when I look for the scene in the presets it isn't there, on checking the other elements, such as the leaves, they also aren't there, so the scene is probably failing to load because it can't see the required elements. Why, I have no idea.

I have submitted a support question and will wait and see.

Suspect it is something to do with Vista and where Cararra is expecting to see things.

Have you tried manually pointing the program to the scene file from the open file box?  Right now I am going nuts trying to get Carrara to stop creating a completely new set of shaders when I duplicate a group of objects.  I have like 300 instances of a Brass Shader and it is slowing the system down to a point where I can barely work.

Yes, which is when it reaches 25% and then fails to open, presumably because it can't find some of the scene elements. I am fairly sure it is something to do with Vista file permissions, although the installer is putting the files into the correct directories, I don't think it is able to then change the appropriate files to tell Carrara that the files are there.

Try this it is the best way to run Vue in Vista and may work for Carrara, provided you are not doing it already. Right click your desltop icon for Carrara and "RUN AS  ADMIN" and see if it works!!! Hope so, that's my only suggestion!!!!

Quote - Try this it is the best way to run Vue in Vista and may work for Carrara, provided you are not doing it already. Right click your desltop icon for Carrara and "RUN AS  ADMIN" and see if it works!!! Hope so, that's my only suggestion!!!!

If this works, let us all know and I'll also update the wiki entry for Carrara lane incase anyone else comes across the same problem.

I feel such a complete Numpty, it wasn't anything to do with Vista or permissions, simply I didn't have the latest 6.2.1 update installed - once that was installed and Country Lane re-installed - all working fine - Thanks everyone for your help even though it turned out it was just me being stupid :-))

That's weird cause I first opened it with only 6.1.1 and had no problem.