(I didn't realize there was such a short time limit on editing posts. A few more thoughts:) A few lessons learned: When using the Alpha channel, less is more. Use as few particles as possible to acheive the desired effect. Rendering the Alpha channel is S-L-O-W. And if you use too many partciles, they end up casting shadows on each other and looking bad. The "size of particle over life" control is very useful. Use it. The shader preview doesn't render the alpha channel when using the Flat Preview. Try using the color White as your base Alpha value and do your mixing and experimenting in the Color channel. Then move the subshader to the Alpha channel when you have things right. A question: In the particle emitter, is there a way to make the particles shoot out to the side rather than straight up? With the smoke I did, I rolled the object over on its side in the assembly room. Then the Z gravity in the emitter affected the particles in the scene's Z axis, not the emitter's local Z. This meant that in the particle emitter I'd have to put the gravity in the Y axis when tweaking values and then move it to the Z axis to see it in the scene. (I hope that makes sense.) If anyone is interested in the shader recipe. I can post it somewhere. - Jasen.

BAH! That's just a poor imitation of my ship.

B^)

• Jasen.

FYI, the C5 website mentions Edge tools and "Advanced surface tools" are NEW in C5 Std and C5 Pro. In the chat, Charles said, "the surface and edge tools are only in the Pro version". So you might want to hold off ordering an upgrade till Eovia gets the site all worked out as to what is and isn't included in the two versions. - Jasen.

I'm assuming the "Send camera to..." function is not adequate? I sometimes sprinkle several cameras around in a scene, each one looking at a particular feature or view I'll want to return to. Usually I have: 1) A render cam. 2) One or more "modeling" cams. 3) The director's camera which gets twisted every which way and periodically sent to one of my modeling cam views. - Jasen.

Yeah. It'd be nice if there was some sort of "global space" for some of the tiling textures. - Jasen.

Have you looked at what happens with a layers list, parametrically mapping seperate shader domains for each face?

Yes, they scale to fit the faces. So if for example you have a shader that repeats 20 times, the shader in the domains will repeat 20 times and look good on a long flat face, but squish up and repeat 20 times on a thin face. - Jasen.

the proceedural seems to be scaled down to fit on a face-by-face basis anyhow.

I'm going through the same thing with the "brick" operator. I have a number of walls of different sizes. The bricks scale to fit the object rather than being in some global size space. I've partially solved this by using a reference shader for the color channel and individual brick shaders for the objects. But it is a pain and there are other problems with this solution (the bump channel to be specific). I may have to hunt down a texture map to solve the problem or find a plug-in.

• Jasen.

Now that I reread my response, I see it may be a bit confusing. The paragraph starting with "Also" is a different way to do things. You can either create a new texture map at the right dimensions and tile it the same as the other, OR tile your existing texture twice as many in one dimension vs the other. Both techniques use parametric mapping to put the different shaders on the correct sides. - Jasen.

Message edited on: 10/06/2004 14:04

Use parametric mapping to put the texture map on the right sides (See the drop down menu of shader types at the top of the shader window). You'll need to create a new shader for the side that is not square that is also not square in the same proportions. e.g. One set of sides on your cube is 5x10, you'll have to create a texture that is twice as wide as it is tall.

Also, if you're tiling the texture, use parametric mapping and set the tiling for the "long" side to be twice as many tiles in one dimension as the other.

Essentially, you need to tell Carrara to put a different shader on the square sides as on the non-square sides.

Does that point you in the right direction?

• Jasen.

Message edited on: 10/06/2004 13:09

Yes, I saw ArchiTools in the latest 3DXtract. It looks very useful if you're doing "generic" houses, but I'm modeling an existing structure. It wasn't readily apparent if ArchiTools allowed enough freedom to handle the anomalies of a real house. Plus, I need the practice. B^) - Jasen.

I agree that filling out the form EVERY time is annoying. I just enter garbage values; they don't seem to error check any of the fields. - Jasen.

Cool. This is exactly what I thought the NPR was lacking. One of these days I'm going to break down and buy some of your stuff, Eric. I don't know whether to hope Eovia hires you and pays you lots of $$$ to integrate your tools into Carrara or that you keep creating killer little plug ins to show off the potential of this great app. - Jasen.

Attached Link: http://www.eovia.com/carrara/whats_new_car3.jsp