I'm making a car in Carrara, and the glass shaders aren't looking right at all. Whats the secret to making real looking glass textures? The presets don't seem to look real. by the way has anyone noticed that the transparency slider in the materials lab is the opposite of what it says? If you give 100% transparency it gives you 0%. Just another bug? Please help me get some good looking glass.

I've never tried it but here's a direct quote from the Carrara 1 Bible (pg 508): "To create a realistic glass shader, choose jet black for the color channel. Adjust the Highlight and Shininess channel settings to 100. Glass is highly reflective. For the Reflection channel, choose a setting between 45 and 55. Refraction settings will vary depending on the type of glass you're creating. Start with a setting of about 15, but keep it below 20. Keep the Transparency setting at a high value. Start with a value of 80 and work up from there. If you're simulating colored glass, apply the Color component in the Transparency channel instead of a Value slider and then choose the desired color. The interaction of scene lighting with the glass surface will go a long way towards convincing the viewer they're looking at a photograph of a glass object and not a 3D rendering. Experiment with different light and ambient settings. Use multiple lights to highlight the reflective properties of the glass. Give your glass object something to reflect and something to reflect in." END OF QUOTE Good luck.

Thanks, I'll go read my bible pg.508, I havn't tried those techniques either, but hopfully they will work for what Inees. Thnks for the help.

One more tip, Carrara's transparancy works a little different than Ray Dream's did so if your Transparancy + Relection + Color > 100 your objects will appear to glow. Here's is an indepth description of how the shaders work from Antoine. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Carrara/files/AntoinesCarraraHOTTips/AntoineShadersTech.txt Good Luck, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

I'm not a Carrera user, but I do alot of glass- the interior is important, with a fairly high IOR and caustics. I've found colors are more effective at medium to low intensity- greyed down. I tend to keep the reflection fairly low, and rely more on interior refraction- it's glass, not a mirror! ;)