I downloaded the latest -- 1.01 for PC.

This is an impressive program. How does Carrara handle the dysplacement maps? Did you use just the normal map for your image?

Also, I don't see the free part. I see the option to buy a licence starting at 49 for the academic licence. the file available for downloading on the forum is a demo version. Did I miss something there?

Quote - Antaran-
There may already be a feature request about this over at DAZ. There was some debate in the DAZ forums a few months back; strangely there didn't seem to be much interest in specular lights; everybody was blabbering on about cloth simulators and fluids solvers when it came to "must-have" features :)
If you open up a request let me know; I'm part of quite a few Carrara groups and I'll definitely spread the word!

I found this feature request and have already added my support to it: https://bugs.daz3d.com/view.php?id=36350

The more supporting issue notes there are on the feature request, the greater the chance that DAZ will pay atterntion and start working on it. So please add your supportive comments and spread the word to get better promotion for this request.

While I see the resons for people wanting to have cloth syms and fluid syms rigth there in Carrara (animations mostly), I think this issue is of equal importance: being able to animate requires the ability to animate faster and specular-only diffuse-only lights are an essential part of that optimization. I think this should be made clear both to DAZ and to Carrara users.

I also have a bug report about GI ignoring don't-cast-shadow settins, so please add your support to it as well, if you believe it should be fixed:

https://bugs.daz3d.com/view.php?id=39886

I think indirect GI can be used for different types of highlights in many scenarios. The lights with different specular and diffuse settings are usually used to simmulate indirect lighting/bounce lights, so they are used to avoid the render time expense of the indirect lighting calculations.

But I think your method is wonderful for what I've been describing above -- about the modeled sky dome. I just tested it and it gives very good results: I can set the same map to the glow channel, as I do to the sky dome color, I can use the ShaderPlus plug in to set the sky dome's shader not to receive any lighting or shadowing itself (and thus cut down the render time a bit) and I can render with indirect lighting only (no need for sky lighting) in the GI section upped to about 250% for a very realistic effect of the sky light emmited by my skydome. (No need to increase the glow value in the shader even, just an incrased indirect lighting effect). On pretty decent quality settings the render time is a bit expensive -- 1:15 minutes for my very simple scene (1 sphere, 1 plane, 1 sky dome hemisphere, no other lights whatsoever), but it does give a nice result, where something like this is needed.

Quote - It's something I've considered and I have on my list of things to investigate.

I am very happy to hear this! I hope it turns out doable and worth your time.

I agree. If you open a feature request overr at DAZ, please post it here, so we all could add our voices to it. I can do it if you don't want to, but you seem to know more about his issue than I do. Just let me know either way.

Eric, is there any chance that you would consider expanding the functionality of the plug-in to have a sort of a master preset. Right now if another light is added, or if there are a lot of objects in the scene with a lot of shaders, the task of managing it all becomes quite laboreous and full of many tedious repetitions. Setting up a master preset that could be edited for all the shaders it covers and adding shaders to it in groups (we can select multiple shaders in the shader room) would be a huge improvement.

And if more of batch setups were included, it could be something like a Shaders Plus 2, which would be a new plugin with the new price tag on it.

Thank you for the GI clarification. Let's hope that DAZ gets around to fixing that onw on their own.

Oh, and another question for Eric: with the Lighting Control, I would have to set it for every shader of every object on which I'd want differential treatment from different light sources. Is this correct? There is no way for me to select a bunch of shaders and apply this to all of them at once, or to set this globally if I need the highlight from different sources treated differentially, but in the same fashion throughout the scene?

To answer the questions: I do want both lights to illuminate my object, I just don't wish to see the highlights from both.

Eric, thank you! I have Shader Plus, and I never looked at the Lighting Control before (how stupid of me!). I have a question about it thougth:

There is a known issue with Carrara, and that is that when you are using proper GI (light Sky light) and you have a Sky Dome (and actual model of it) in the scene, even when your Sky Dome is set NOT to cast shadows, the GI will not penetrate it, and will be obscured by it completely.

Is there a way to counter this problem with the Lighting control somehow? I notice it has GI settings, although I don't exactly understand what that means. Or maybe it can be done with some other plug-in from your shop?

Wow! If those are parts (as opposed to transparency and alpha maps), this is one huge and complex model. I wonder what the poly count looks like :) Regardless of whether the parts are modeled or textured, it looks absolutely amazing already, which is the thing that really counts. Great job!

On the bottom of the interface there is a section with 2 vertical tabs: Timeline and Browser.

When you go to the Browser, the last horisontal tab inside it is Content (by the way, make sure you check out all the other tabs and load stuff in and look at how the scenes/shaders/lights are set up -- great educational experience). In the content you should have some runtime that has installed with your Carrara content.  In the top right corner od this little Browser section there is a "file menu" icon, looks like a piece of paper with folded corner. When you are in the Content tab, click on this icon and go down to "Add Runtime" then open your Poser Runtime and it will become accessible through Carrara. You can add multiple Runtimes this way.

Welcome to Carrara! :) It's fun! And Happy New Year!

Wow, excellent details!

Thank you so much for shring your work. Happy New Year!

I think what he meant was that he did not spend money on this project in particular. They used the reasources already available to them. He clearly already had all the software, and probably most of the hardware, and could borrow what he didn't have from friends.

I recently participated in a video project which also was done mostly with the stuff that was already available to the participants and participants' friends. As a person who was doing art direction for it, I had to buy some props and materials, but it was peanuts comared to what the project would've cost if we had to buy all of the stuff we used.

Edit: Oh, amazing short! Thank you for posting it here! (I thought I already said it, so didn't add it in the original response)

Thank you for the lightprobe link -- very useful resource

Another question I have: when using Carrara's DOF, do you find it better/more realistic than adding it in postwork? And what are the conditions in which you would deem it much more preferable than postwork even with the additional render time?

Gorgeous renders! And very nice lighting. I'm amazed it was done with only 2 lights! What's the HDRI? Is it your own or is it available somewhere?