I haven't tried it yet, so not sure if it will work, but have you tried the new plant generator in C8? It would let you add several "leaves" and I think leaves can be any objects, so spheres should work too. And you can shade them differently to create some variety. If I have time, I'll experiment with it myself tonight, but that's the general idea.

You might have some trouble with realistic SSS, though (depending on your light and how close to the grapes is your POV), at least that's what I had most difficulty with last time I was experimenting with grape shaders.

I'm not sure this is really the case with your scene, but I usually have similar problems when my scene scale is not optimized for my character. The best scene scale for V4 (and most human figures) is "medium". You can change the scale in Scene properties (Interface tab).

Also when the camera is clear but is not showing things properly, the problem could be that the distance to near plane is too large. (That is set in the camera's general properties)

You can call their support to be sure, but when I first purchased Carrara, I was able to upgrade from a free magazine version without any problems. So I think it is still fully possible. As long as you have a valid Serial Number (which you get when you register your free copy), it should be fine.

Did you try reseting your preferences to Defaults from within Carrara?

I've heard that it resets all Runtime references (I won't try it for that very same reason).

Quote -  I did the exact same thing my first time through - page 34. I was looking at the pictures instead of the words!

Thank you! Now I see it. I was looking for something Carrara-related :).

Mark, is your article in issue 12? if so, can you point me to a page number, please? I must be having one of those "blind spot" moments.

How much Reserved Memory do you have for Texture Spooling? (Preferences --> Imaging, Scratch Disk) Since Stonemason's textures are on the heavy side, you might want to allocate more memory for texture spooling.

I have no problem rendering multiple Stonemason's sets in a single scene, along with Carrara trees and lots of high definition figures, so this should fixable.

Unless I'm playing it wrong, it's a bit fast, but regardless of that -- very nicely done!

I get that problem on occasion too. Instead of leaving it to sit for 15 minutes, I close Carrara and work on the computer, in about half an hour if I open Carrara it might be back to normal, if not, I restart the computer and then it definitely is back to normal. At least so far rebooting always fixed it. I use XP 64, though.

I also noticed that this phenomenon is more likely to happen when I watch streaming video while Carrara is actively running (doing some computations, or I go back and forth while the streaming is on). But this could just be a coincidence, or it could be the particularity of the problem on my hardware.

Hi :)

It largely depends on the lighting. I usually use a dark burgundy for color, intensity between 50-70%, Diffuse Reflection in the 90's, translucency 30-45%, refraction about 30%, Fresnel -- about 20%

But all that needs tweaking depending on the lighting. I also render SSS in the multi-pass layers, so that I can adjust intensity in postwork, and that takes care of a lot of tweaking.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for doing this! Excellent idea. And it's great to see Carrara get more exposure on a prominent site.

Also, please consider video tutorials. For workflow and modeling they are usually more helpful. There are people who prefer pdf's, though (I'm not one of them, but trying to be fair :)..), so whichever you end up doing will benefit people.

In your other shader packs the previews are labeled, it would be great if the previews for liquids had labels too. I like to see what each shader looks like when I buy. That is the only reason I'm on the fence about this pack.

Quote -  I have my pc and mac networked with ethernet and use  a software called DAVE (by thursby) which makes the computers look at each other's drives just like normal.  ie read write etc with no problems.
You can easily transfer stuff across that way as the computers don't have trouble seeing each others drives at all.
 
Love esther

Thank you. I didn't know about the program.

I think the problem I have might be in the texture files. And saving a complex scene's textures externally is a daunting task. I am also thinking of getting Parallels, in which case, I'll just render stuff inside Windows on the Mac, if it all ends up working, of course :).

Thank you all for your help.

Quote -
oh dear, would you mind then joining Carrara World? it is a very good place where you can upload your art and find some really usefull things.  and the latest shader pack link must work, it must work.

Yes, the link works if one registers AND joins the group. I think you might want to mention it wherever you'll be posting/adding this link.

Quote - As about 80% criteria. Smoothing doesn't add any value unless you use displacement paint to deform the figure. Shaders, it depends on the quality of the result. Bascially we try to avoid DAZ3D gallery look.

DAZ3D gallery is a very strange place. My contests winning images usually don't make it into the Monthly Gallery (although they do get into the Carrara Gallery, for lack of entries, I suppose), yet, what I do often see in the Monthly Gallery offends the eyes and boggles the mind quality-wise! So I really don't know what criteria they use for that.

Quote - We want to encourage people to not only drag and drop generation 4 or 3 or any other figure like V4, drag and drop shaders, and render using highest rendering settings wiht HDRI, GI.
Basically we can say this: don't drag and drop V4 and load texture, make V4 live and look like she isn't V4, or M4 isn't M4, avoid preset poses break the standard of DAZ3D current galeries. Now in DAZ3D galeries we see V4 and M4, C3DE want to see somene else, so people would believe that person in the picture is someone (thsi doesn'tr mean phot real of course). 

So if for example you have incredible pose with amazing shaders that makes you say wow you may not even have to do sometinhg for V4, M4 or other model mesh.

OK, this is very confusing. So, can we look at some examples? Would you consider accepting something like this:
Image #1
or this:
Image #2
Both have detailed credits for what's included content-wise and what's been done to the content. Second image might have difficulties with full view, unfortunately -- some Rendo server bug.

It would really help if you provide the reasoning for whatever answer you give.

I hope this will be useful to others as well, that's why I am not asking this privately, and I hope I am not derailing the thread too much, as it is really mag-related.

Also a question about your submission rules:

Quote - * Can't include DAZ3D content figures unless they are modified 80%

-- What does this mean? Most content needs adjusting pretty much all shaders (changing bump levels, highlight levels, color tints, adding SSS/translucency/reflections/refraction/etc.). Is that sufficient to qualify? Or what exactly does this mean?

How many % of change is each of the following?:
-- If I adjust the shaders.
-- If I apply Carrara geometry smoothing?
-- If Carrara's procedural shaders or hair? What if they aren't created by me, but only edited by me?

P.S About Adobe Reader Bug: I really don't know. I actually use Acrobat, which theoretically should be better than Reader. But as I understand, I'm not the only one with the issue.

But given that I can't access the group either: your latest link tells me that there are "No results found." , I think I should really check myself for being cursed :).