last time I had to bend things it bent where the hot points where...did you try and move your hotpoint??

When you make a complex obj like this do you put it together in the assemble room or in the modeler room? I havnt much success modeling in Carrara but I am working on it. One of my biggest problems is how to deal with multiple objects. In nendo (my modeler of choice now) its very easy, but in the C vertex modeler I find myself having lots of problems (pressing ctr+z after every selection moving the mesh is one of them). Right now I keep trying to put multiple shapes in the same modeler but I was thinking it might be better to make multiple shapes and assemble them in the assemble room. Of course the biggest problem with that is you cant see the other objects to make sure everythings in proportion..... -brent

Bilagaana...that aircraft is great!! I am almost impressed enough to download real player but then I remembered that I hate real player more than any other company on the web right now. Anyway that is one sweet model..almost makes me want to take a swing at it :)

Well I dont use poser but it looks like I have the answer I needed. If I have a complex model I should just go into the VM select and detach the models into groups and name them. When I do this will they pop up in the sequencer then so I can texture and animate them? Ill have to give all that stuff a try later on this week. -brent

wow...people managed to download and look at it :) Thanks for the complements. I was rather shocked it when I was told about the deadline..thank goodness the stupid texture maps sort of worked (and lucky for me I had some stuff ready to go). I am sort of shocked I made something like that...I thought the clouds where awesome at the beginning. Anyway thanks for the feedback..makes me feel good. I'll try and get the semi posted up latter this week. BTW: did anyone notice that after the camera swung by the sign @ the building there where 2 chrome doors there? Anyway the doors where reflecting everything upside down...thought it was a bit odd...

Wow Scott...Im sold!!! j/k I already am using an AMD processor. Another interesting fact. I read that gateway beat out intel for building the navy's new nuclear testing computer. Gateway's (whos computers I hate btw) press release said that the computer will be over 10,000 AMD athlons running in parallel in a building thats bigger than a football field. The truth in terms of performance between the 2 chips is minimual. 10 hours to 3 hours? please. When I build computers for friends I only use amd...why? b/c w/o amd we would be using p2 processors in the 300mhz range right now. Do you honestly believe that intel would still be pushing the envelope in chip development without the amd pressure? Everytime they make a new set of chips they are always trying to class them so that consumers can't have the latest and greatest. They desperatly want a chipset that is only for pros (that cost buko bucks) and a set for consumers (cheap to make...high profits..no development). Besides tell me what is wrong with this computer history.... microsoft + intel -----> corporate lovers microsoft quote "we accidently have been putting id's on all your documents sorry. Unfortunalty we dont plan on fixing this and we are pissed off anyone even found out." intel quote "We dont find it odd that microsoft is tagging your docs. Infact we are helping them by putting a coding system so you cant dupe microsofts tagging. You think you can turn it off but you cant" Consumer quote "intel is the best..they told me that the p3 will make my internet experience faster. If I can get a p3 than I can be L33t..AMD is Souxours" I think anyone who loves intel should thank all us amd supporters for making it possible for you to actually have a faster processor. Ok Im done ranting. (I think) -brent

Hey it looks good. I like all the extra dials in the back..it makes the scene look bigger. I'm still digging the spider web and I love that wheel :)

hahaha...it had to be my favorite plug-in that was messing things up :)

I saw mark put up a similar question on the elist...antoine had a few suggestions also. Heres the quote: ---------------------- Have you tried to uncheck "Light smart sampling" ? Light smart sampling accelerates the rendering of images but can introduce inaccuracies. As a general advice to the Dreamers: it is always a good idea to uncheck the two smart sampling options when doing a final render. --------------------- For the last few nights I have been trying to get carrara to render its alpha's to my likeing. Once I get that down I'll start on your suggestions.

--------------------- The hybrid seems to have some attributes similar to compression, and if each frame is "compressed" or hybridized individually, there may well be some problems with dancing pixels growing in importance. --------------------- I think this is what the problem is. DOF is a post effect. I think b/c it applies to each frame individually rather than as a group, things get messed up. I also like your ideal of two renders..which sucks of course, but I will try and set one up tonight..that way I can blur stuff in AE. It will not be as nice b/c carrara takes the foreground object pixels into account, but carrara is so sloppy at it, it could be worth it. I think I need to start thinking of Carrara as a 3d after effects, and that may help me integrate my ideals better. Now hopefully I can make the alpha's work :) btw: Now that I think of alpha's...b/c I will be turning off the ground and sky, wont all the shadows disappear off the truck and other objects?

Anyone going to take a stab at this? :)

Thanks for the tips Mark. I have tried to apply depth of field earlier for the last few months but it always looks weird..Does the Carrara bible talk about doing this? I think I read on the egroups list that Carrara accidently had its depth of field settings backwards...I'll have to do some test renders. Hopefully by the end of the day I'll have some time to post up that open animation..its 20 secs of cheese but there will be a couple secs of it that may find its way into my resume :) -remember...as long as your project has about 3 secs that can look good on your resume then its a successful project!

Is that spider web any different? It looks a lot different to me..maybe just the lighting tho. But I totally dig the spider web this time around..for some reason the other one looked really boxy..must be b/c the light changed. Anyway I like the picture a lot better..I really really like the web :) oh yeah..my eye seems to rest on the gauge..but I still dig the wheel so I keep going back :)

I could be wrong but from what I found with IK you want your main motion piece to be last on the chain....Ie on an arm model you want the hand last on the chain..that way when you move the hand everything else moves with it. If you just move the shoulder everything else will still move but it wont move properly. So for an engine I would think you would want the chain to be piston > Rod > Crank. That way when you move the crank everything else should move. What I am curious about is how other objects can interact...IE can you hollow out a tube for the pistion and have the tube be solid enough to constrain the piston? This could be useful for my truck animation..right now I am just spinning the wheels myself. In the Carrara bible it showed how to use force to do it, but it still didnt do things properly from what I saw.

I've been under the impression that anything other than NT should be considered unrealible. The thing that sucks about window NT with 2 monitors is that all your boxes show up inbetween the two monitors...the mac see 2 monitors as 2 monitors...NT sees 2 monitors as 1 monitor (makes it hard to find a background :)