I am working on an image, sorry I don't have it available now to post, and I am trying to resolve one issue at the moment. I have a window with a spotlight outside of it and curtains over part of the window. The curtains have about a 30% transparency. I have the render set at light through transparency hoping that the light passing through the curtain would lighten up more than the part of the curtain covering the wall. This hasn't happened. I could easily fix this in Photoshop but would like to know if Carrara is capable of this effect and I am just missing something. I'll try to post an image an image later if my explanation above doesn't make any sense! Thanks in advance for any input. memaci

What you are describing is translucency which is different than transparency. Carrara unfortunately does not have the ability to make objects translucent.

Could you fake this by adding additional lights (i.e., shining from the curtain into the room)?

If you have Litst's metal textures, you might try using wire fence and cranking the tiling all the way up. You can also adjust the transparency of the transmap. This creates a material that is basically a fine mesh so that the light can pass thru, yet still looks solid.

Thanks all. The translucency channel - that would be great. Maybe C3. Adding an additional light could do the trick but it may be difficult for it to fall into a specific rectangular area. I do have litst's real world metals (they're great - I would recommend them to anyone, hope you like the plug litst) but light passing though isn't the real problem, I am looking for the area I circled to be softer and brighter than the area covered by the wall. I will try the metal test though, maybe the holes will catch highlights as the light passes through. thanks all memaci

if you want that portion of the curtain to be illuminated by the light from outside, you could always use a t-map that has some glow properties in the area that would be affected. if you're animating, you could use a movie for the t-map.

Hi Memaci, I can't tell from the posts whether this is the look that you have in mind? It's set up with a spot and a bulb. You can do something similar with the Global Illumination option but it has a tendancy to drag a bit when there is transparency involved. Mark

Wow! ...Mark that is exactly the kind of look I am going for. Where are the positions of the spot and the bulb (I assume the spot is outside the window)? This might have been what hartcons recommended I just didn't picture it right. I don't have C2 yet so Global Illumination is not an option anyway. I also like the life you gave the curtain with the wind blown look I may borrow that idea for my image if you don't mind too much. memaci

It's really simple. (which is the only reason I'm qualified to talk about it!) The above shows the location of the two lights as well as the "stupid shader tricks" used to create the luminous drapery. The bulb on the floor serves to imitate the bounced light in the room. It's distance has be set to 20 with the fall off set to 100%. It also serves to create the diffused light on the bottom of the drapery. Without it, all you see is the illuminated folds from the spot light and the rest looks as if it is in shadow. Hope this helps. Mark www.markbremmer.com

Thanks much everyone - this should do the trick! memaci

Hey Mark, Your stuff isn't really all that simple, it's really smart! -Kix