Cool... The main thing I would say, is that the mushrooms don't look wet enough, and the skin on the top might want to look like it's peeled some. They also may want to look a bit more dirty. EMC

In the metaball modeler go to: Geometry -> Surface Fidelity And the same in the spline modeler. The higher the fidelity setting, the more polygons it uses. EMC

Is the mirror a single plane, or does it have three dimensions (i.e. depth). I have had stuff like this happen with single planes. EMC

If your talking game programing, I played around with DarkBasic a while ago. Did some OK stuff in it... It is pretty bloody simple, and does most the hard work for you. They have a "pro" version that I have never used, but that looks like its good. http://www.darkbasic.com/ Blender (which I belive is a freeware 3d modeling / rendering / game creation program) does some game stuff (though I've never used the program, and don't know just what type of stuff it does). http://www.blender3d.org/

The TIE looks nice, but I have one comment on the texturing. The wing has a different sort of texture, as I recall, the bump lines want to be a little thinner, and come in perpendicular from the edge of the wing, for each section. Supposedly the wings are solar arrays or something of the sort. (Can you tell who's childhood was, for a period, disturbingly imposed upon by SW) EMC

I haven't played that much with bones, but it might help if you set the mapping mode in the vertex modeler to cylindrical, and change the shader to the standard Multi Channel or Parametric. If the mapping mode is set in the shader it is going to ignore the changes in geometry of the object, and still try to map it in a cylindrical aligned with whatever axis, instead of a bent cylindrical. Setting the mapping mode in the VM doesn't work as well if it is a low poly model. The other possibility is to make a UV map with the UVMapper (that comes with the CD), which takes a little playing with, but has great results.

I has taken me a while to get use to the changes in the shader from RDS 5.5 to Carrara 2 (the jump I made). Looking at it, I'de say you want a value in the highlight (none doesn't mean there is no highlight). Insert a value slider set to zero, and see if that makes it look somewhat right. Then you can incorporate the transparency map (adjusting the brightness, or using it as a mixer for two values), so that the hair will have some highlight, but the part that is transparent won't. EMC

I can't quite make it out from the picture, since you don't have the group selected in either one, but I would say your problem stems from where the hot point is. You have a propeller with three blades, which means that when you group all your objects together, the hot point will be at the center of the group, but not necessarily the center of the propeller. A good way to fix this is to center the entire group on the origin of the scene (ctrl+shift+o), and then to jump into the group, and find where the propeller head is located. Memorize or (like I do) write down the x y and z locations of it, and then jump back out of the group and in the properties tray under motion/transform tab uncheck "Lock Center and Hot Point". Enter the x y and z into the hot point for the object, and then check "Lock Center and Hot Point". It should work fine then. EMC

I agree with you on the shadow cast by the inner part of the bottle being too crisp. I might not be the entirely wrong look, but the difference seems to thick (i.e. the glass may be too thick, which makes that seem unsightly). Besides that, all the wine glasses I drink out of are clear, and don't really have any color what so ever. I did a scene with your average wine glass and bottle in Raydream St. 5.5 a while ago, and it can really be a pain to get right. EMC

The arrow usually fits on a rest above the hand (though in older bows, there was no rest sometimes). In this case you should probably choose whichever of the rests looks better (the top one looks as if it would have some adverse effects on the arrows flight, though). Also the fletching maybe wrong, it should look something like this (from the shooters view):

-- /
O

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(Sorry if it looks a bit wobbly, but you should get the idea)

With the odd fletching out (the odd fletching is usually now a different color from the other two (though it probably doesn't matter for this setting)). The arrow head also wants to be vertical I belive.

With the stucco, I think it may just need to be more dense, and not necessarily have a higher bump value, though using a terrain would be even better (or anything grooves).

Hope I haven't ranted on too long.

EMC

I am pretty sure the arrow should be on the other side of the bow (at least all the recurves I have used (for right handed persons such as myself) have had the arrow rest on that side (if your using your left hand to hold the bow, drawing with your right, you always rotate it slightly clockwise (you can't really turn your left wrist counter clockwise and be comfortable). This also keeps you from skinning your left fore arm when you fire)). The two other things that I really notice are the flatness of the wall behind her (a more aggressive stucco bump map maybe), and the flatness of the roof above persons about to depart this life (perhaps model a Spanish tile roof (from one tile you can easily make a course and duplicate the course until it covers the roof)). A nice composition. Sorry if I got lost in parentheses, that happens with me.

I've noticed this problem too, but I have not had any trouble with it since I started to rename all the master objects as I make them. Carrara's very fussy about master (objects and shaders). The times I have had this problem there have been two masters with the same name, and, I presume, one gets overwritten. Howsomever, I try to avoid boolean's (though sometimes they're necessary), as they are currently not very good in Carrara, and need quite a bit of cleanup.

I can't stress enough how useful the vertex modeler is. I initially came from Raydream 3d (much like Carrara 3d Basics), and in it I hadn't the use of the vertex modeler. The thing is really bloody useful, it changed my life... Er modeling life that is. What you've been wanting is, probably, what every Carrara user wants, NURBS. But even if we don't have that, the vertex modeler is extremely powerful next of the spline, and I hardly ever use the spline unless I need a complex extrusion path. The addition of subdivision modeling has made the vertex modeler all the more powerful. So while we are all waiting for Carrara 3, try to remedy yourself with it, its worth the headache and time. EMC

Here is an image (in about a minute) of what I mean (I think we got crossed up (I was saying you'd make one finished object in the vertex modeler)). I think it is pretty self explanatory, and pretty odd looking. I made the odd spline horn in the spline modeler, and then converted it to a vertex object (model room->edit->convert to..). I then lofted from the terrible vertex whatnot to make one mesh (vertex) object. I then used one shader with a texture map over the entire object (you'd have to do something with uvmapper to make a smooth transition in coloring between skin and snake). Don't get me wrong, we do NEED better modelers (i.e. NURBS please), but for now we must make do. Bye-the-by, sorry if I've gotten the wrong end of the stick again. EMC

In the mesh room you can set how many displays there are by the little buttons on the right top side, but I've found four to be very useful. Why not make one snake in the spline modeler, make a head in the mesh modeler, convert/ copy the snake into the mesh modeler, and link it to the head model (i.e. empty a polygon where you want the base of the snake, and attach the snake to it). (You could then bone the snakes so you can animate)