Since the commercial world is at least 6 months ahead of the holiday world, winter stuff gets done during the summer. Here's a cover I just popped out for an assignment dealing with Christmas. Recognize the stock Carrara Credenza? :D

 Very nice.  Makes me want to have a hot chocolate for some reason.

 Nice work Mark ... beautiful warm glow and soft shadows on the wall (didn't recognise the credenza, sorry :) )

Y'know, I've never rendered or used any of the stock stuff at all..go figure!

 Nice work! Guess I have to explore the stock stuff more closely...

How did you achieve the glow? Did you use Anything Glows on the snowglobe or did you put a light behind the snowglobe? Or perhaps both?

 The glow is a bulb light with the Light Sphere function enabled and the "realistic" option checked. I excluded the snow globe/manger and all other objects from casting shadows for the "glow" light. This light has a very short lighting distance letting me highlight the top edge of the credenza to define the scene better since the light is coming through the table. But the distance is so short and the Fall-off is set to 100%, that the glow light ceases to illuminate by the time it reaches the bed. 

Additionally, there is another bulb light in the same location to actually handle the close-up scene illumination - it has soft shadows turned on.  The snow globe was again not permitted to cast shadows with that light either but all other objects are. 

Wow, Mark! This is beautiful!

How did you get your shadows to be blue? Negative lights?

 Ha! It's an old illustrator trick going back to the days of Rembrandt. In the painting days, you just cover the entire canvas with blue and then paint in the warm highlights. In this particular 3D piece, I just pointed a blue spot light with the angular falloff set to 100% towards the snow globe. So, every place that the warm light doesn't shine is tinted blue; yet it turns darker the further away from the focus point it gets.

> Quote -  Ha! It's an old illustrator trick going back to the days of Rembrandt. In the painting days, you just cover the entire canvas with blue and then paint in the warm highlights. In this particular 3D piece, I just pointed a blue spot light with the angular falloff set to 100% towards the snow globe. So, every place that the warm light doesn't shine is tinted blue; yet it turns darker the further away from the focus point it gets.

Sorry, I must be extra dumb today, because I don't think I am getting this right. I tried it and I still get black shadows. And I get blue highlights from the spot. I can get rid of them by excluding an object from the spot's influence, but the black shadows are still there... Am I pointing the spot from a wrong angle?

Image attached shows the version with the sphere excluded from the blue light.

:blushing: Sorry, I am extra dumb today!:blushing: Time to go get coffee or something.:blushing: Forgot to say thank you for the tip! :) Hope I can get it right...

 No worries. Nothing in 3D CG makes any sense until you see it in action and think, "Well duh! Of course that's how you do it."

I have an article about lighting with Carrara coming out in next months 3D World Magazine you might want to check out. There is a thread for Stasis Work-in-progress here in the Carrara forum that shows a preview. 

**See the next thread for the downloadable .car file.

 Download the attached file and then change the .txt suffix to .zip and decompress the file. Have fun!

Beautiful scene Mark, and thanks for the scene to study. I'm excited about Carrara, (and you) getting increased exposure in 3D World since it's read by a lot of Pros and I always enjoy the magazine. I'll be sure to grab that issue.

Looks good! Neat to see how well simple stuff works when you know how to use it.

I can also relate to the thread title in a different way, but that's because I replaced the innards on a computer that died. Quad cores really do make a difference, and the prices are reasonable now.

Ah, I'd kill for a quad core!

Yep, the next system I build will be a Quadcore.

Quote -  Download the attached file and then change the .txt suffix to .zip and decompress the file. Have fun!

Thank you, Mark!

I did point it in the wrong direction in my scene and that's why it didn't work. I see in your scene (it did ask for kitchen HDRI when I was loading it, but its lack does not seem to be making a difference) that the true shadows are still black, so it should be a matter of compensating the most shadowed area of interest  with the spot's direction. Is that the right idea?

I look forward to your tutorial in 3D World. I've been following the other thread with your WIP and I'll be very curious to look under the hood of it.

General lighting tricks are useful and important, but since every application has its own quirks and limitations especially where lighting is concerned, Carrara-specific lighting tips are especially valuable to me. So thank you again for the tip and for making the time to make a sample scene and upload it!

 The .hdr request is for one of Carrara's stock HDRI maps; it's just to pop the reflections on the glass orb. It's probably on/in one of your Carrara instal disks. 

Sounds like you've got it. This same trick is also used in outdoor scene renders. While it can be done with Global Illumination, a more render friendly way is to create a blue-light array of Directional Lights to fill in upward facing shadow area surfaces with an sky blue.

Looking forward to seeing what you do with it.