oh yeah..its only 1.4megs and I tested it this time to make sure it downloads :)

I don't have time to check for sure but I think your problem is going to be that .gif's don't support transparency. I am assuming that you are trying to use G-Buffers to preserve the transparency? The best formats for preserving transpancy are 32-bit formats like .pict, .bmp, .tiff and .psd.

Speaking of quicktime..did anyone else but me feel ripped off when you read on the carrara site that you can export quicktime movies and then find out that you had to actually go buy quicktime seperately? I work with a lot of video software and I have never installed it and found out I needed to give quicktime more money....grrrr

that is one depressing link..I read it to be "Carrara users blow." Hopefuly they will have a reasonable upgrade price but I am assuming that they are just using the base code as a starting point for there own brand new program.

I have yet to do this but it looks simple enough. In your render options you shold see something for G-Buffers. If you choose .tiff for pc or .pict for mac (or photoshop I assume) you should be able to select an alpha matte preservation option. I don't understand what an alpha matte has to do with G-Buffers, but whatever :)

why dont you upload a picture (from a camera) of what you are looking for? Are these diapers really specail? just like the ones off the store shelf? The more detail you can give the happier you will be with your end product.

-stacy: Remember to look at stuff honestly, if you always believe what people say you cant improve :) As for modeling consider maybe trying other programs. I model 90% of my stuff in Nendo b/c it is just so much easier. I am scared b/c I will need to use splines to model the rig, but I will always use nendo as a base for my vertex models. No one program does it all, the best. Download here :) http://brenthomer.tripod.com/trailer.mpeg for somereason tripod just started demanding the whole .mpeg suffix.

Well that didnt work so hot...heres the url: http://brenthomer.tripod.com/trailer.mpg

Actually After Effects 4.0 did require you to manually save to disk. 4.1 fixed this (and later a patch to 4.0)but if you watch your ram as it renders it fills up every single spec of ram you allocated before it starts writting to your file. I am totally excited that we are switching to NT this summer as most graphics programs just dont deal with ram the way I want them to on a mac.

hehe..glad to see I am not the only one who has this problem :) Actually from what I can see of this effect I wouldnt even use it. Its a post render effect, so I cant see how it can even work as it only works to a finished pic. I recommend you slam your pic into photoshop and just slap on a radial blur..from what I can see Carrara is doing exactly that :(

what kind of limits are on it?

hehe, you should find out if they do any television advertising and then upsell them on an animation...just make the earth rotate and use some sort of offset move on the text in the background and on the ground...no one ever got hurt with a little upsell :) My fav part of your pic is that it's so clean looking...makes it look modern and studly...I hate lots of "crap" in pics...

What it does is streak out picture in a VERY convicing manor...its adjustible and it vibrates a bit so everything blends together very cool. Imagine star wars hyperspace jump sequence on video. You can adjust the length of the cast so you can control the look. Let me look at work today for a spot I did last summer with it...Ill try and post it up. I dont know whats up with tripod tho. Last night about 5 people downloaded it fine...keep trying :)

Can the software deliver what I need and can it handle the workload!? Thats what it all comes down to. When somebody come's in here and ask's should I get lightwave or carrara it comes down to the above question. Yes lightwave can do a lot that carrara cant, but carrara can do something lightwave cant. Carrara can make 3d accessible to newbies. And if your showing up to a forum and asking questions like that then lightwave probably isnt for you. Theres a reason one program is 2k+ and the other is 400. The simple fact is that when the video toaster came out, if I learned how to fully use lightwave then I would be a die hard lightwave fan now. The problem is I never took the time to take advantage of 3d until recently. Carrara is letting me create now. I sat down with lightwave and some vhs tutorials (which is way more help then I had with carrara) and I found the program to be totally cumbersome and counterproductive to the way I work. The last thing I want to do Is worry about animating null objects. Yes lightwave does some KICK @ss IK. I found using its bone system was very cool. It was nice the way it handled the camera's and lights. It was horrible when it came to applying properties to items like skins, reflection etc. And its modeling program was the biggest pile of poo I ever worked with. I mean in Carrara If I want to spell out my name I click on the text ICON and away I go...whats with lightwave making even text a pain in the butt? double sided polygons? Might be nice when I'm mr. 3d model man but for simple creations I dont want to mess around with that sort of thing. So what it comes down to is the above quote. And to me I just dont see lightwave meeting the above criteria to all people. If it is what you need you have looked on web sites and read reviews and you know that it's what you need. If your asking around here your PROBABLY (hey there's always exceptions) looking for something accessible now. Someone below posted that just b/c you know C++ doesnt make you a good programmer...it takes years to fully understand it. This is a great example: Carrara = Basic, lightwave = C. Yes technically lightwave is more powerful, but most people will do just fine with carrara and for many lightwave will just be a stumbling block for them. Man I have to quit posting right before bedtime..this is one crappy unspellchecked rant.... off to bed....

oh yeah...I only have access to lightwave 5.5 so I have no ideal whats up with 6.0, but I will say this, out of all the people I know who use it (not many) none use it to model in. They all use 3rd party modelers and then import to lightwave to do animations and render. I have heard tho that 6.0 finally handles UV maps so that may make it a lot more popular as that was always the biggest complaint that artists would cry about to me.