Hi all!

I was hoping NOT to be posting a dumb question THIS soon...

I am doing just a basic landscape scene.  From the object browser I dragged a tree to a point in my scene.  I cannot see the tree.  I have done a number of spot renders from different views and it doesn't show up.  I am just assuming I'm missing something so very basic.  This is Carrara 8.

Thanks for your patience...

Kevin

Sometime I get a problem like this if I drop a tree and Carrara decides to plop it down somewhere like 1000 feet from the modeling grid.  Highlight the object in the browser and set it's position to like 0 0 0.  Also make sure Carrara didn't make it too small to see.

What am I missing?

Depending on the scale of your scene, you might have to make the tree much bigger.

Also, look at the HP(hot point) location vs. object location. You can click HP->Obj in the Motion tab to bring hot point to the object if it got separated from the tree itself at some point.

 If you are using the stock scenes by dragging them into your assembly room from the browser, then the scene scale is automatically set to Large which means the means the landscape is more than a half mile wide - the tree is very small but realistically proportioned. 

To get a better handle on the scale, create a new scene at medium scale, and the insert a terrain in the scene from the insert tab. This will force the scene into the medium scale. You can then choose the same preset (load preset button in the terrain model window) but it will respect the medium scale and show the trees at a more believable size. 

Scene scale effects both lighting effects and DAZ content that is more recent and is developed at certain scale sizes and with instructions to match scale. However, older DAZ and Poser content, including characters developed by third parties, do not always abide by the scene scale. Content used in other formats like .obj, .3ds etc. will not respect the scale conventions. 

Greenhawke:

When you can't find something, highlight it in the instance panel and use 'edit>send to origin' to move the highlighted object to the origin of your current instance.  this is frequently helpful if you drop something into a scene and then can't see it.

Also, you can simply hit the number 0 key to move your camera directly to your selected object.

This has helped me find something many a time with a large scene.

Klebnor

 Thanks again to all!

I see I have a nice learning curve ahead.  I'm used to just "diving in" to a program and being able to get some functionality easily and quickly.  While Carrara IS intuitive, etc., it sure kicks my but!  :-)  It's humbling...

I will be working on just getting some basic scenes together with equal scaling...

Thanks again!

Kevin

 I SO hope some of you are still watching this thread!

OKay...  Once I have placed an object in a scene (i.e., a tree).  How would I change the size relative to the rest of the scene?  I can always find things now, just can't figure how to size them effectively...

Thanks again...  I really do appreciate your time...

Kevin

With plants there are 2 ways:

You can either change the height of the plant in the plant editor (select the plant you placed in the scene, click on the wrench in the top right corner and it will take to the plant editor, where you can change "Tree Size" in the "General" section) or you can scale the plant (and most other objects) using the Motion Tab in the assembly room -- that the default room (hand symbol) where you add and pose your objects (select the object you wish to scale, and click on the Motion Tab in the properties panel where you see "General:Motion:Modifiers:Shading:Effects" tabs; Transforms section of the Motion tab has 3 sections: Position in scene space, Rotation around Hot Point and Scale -- you can alter the size in the scale section).

The same scaling can also be done using either the universal manipulator -- looks like a little Saturn in the left hand side vertical tool bar, or the Scaling tool -- looks like 2 arrow-heads pointing in opposite directions, same tool bar. Since this is essentially same as the Motion tab scaling, I am not listing it as a separate way to change the size.

 Thanks, Antaran.  Appreciate the info...

Kevin