Attached Link: http://www.eovia.com/resources/carrara_tutorials/joannes.pdf

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1205242&Start=1&Artist=anastasis20&ByArtist=Yes

Full agreement with Mark, "underwater floating stuff" is all important - that's where most of Pixars effort went in creating convincing scenes for Finding Nemo.

"I don't have experience using alpha mesks, except in photoshop." - that could be what you need. Lots of people create grass and hair on a plane with alpha masks. Create your underwater stuff and masks in Photoshop and put it on a plane in Carrara.

Really?
I've found the volumetric clouds a bit tricky myself - they've shown up black in HDRI rendering the few times I've used them. They work really well with Realistic Sky and Skylight rendering for me. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks

Volumetric clouds - what kind of rendering are you using: Skylight? Indirect Light? HDRI? Neither?
In the cloud modelling room look in the top left part of the screen. You'll see options for what kind of lighting to use, if you aren't using Skylight you might have to switch on Participate in global illumination (something like that) to get the clouds to show up.

What hdr maps are you using? The ones that come with Carrara? I've never heard of hdri messing up transparency on an object.
Have you checked that BOTH light through transparency options in the Render room have been switched on?
Also double check that the transparency files have come over correctly from Poser to Carrara in the Texture room - look in the Transparency or Alpha channels.
Have you got any images you can post to show this problem?

Carrara uses polar hdr maps (AKA panoramic or longitude/latitude according to HDRShop), basically any hdr map fills a rectangular image space. The manual says Carrara hdr files should "completely fill the rectangle of the image", sort of like a photo. So look for that type of hdr file.

Attached Link: http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2648310

For UV mapping have a look here for some useful info:
http://p212.ezboard.com/fnendowingsmiraifrm27.showMessage?topicID=77.topic

Materials (Wings) are created in the Outliner window - select default, duplicate & edit it (colours), apply to selection (face selection on your model)

Hi Fran,
Try using Wings to set up the model as much as you can first. I use the materials in Wings to determine the shading domains in Carrara. The only thing you really need to do is plan your model as much as possible - setting your Wings materials up as boxes, cylinders or flat planes to make life easier when UV mapping. And use different colours for each material - makes life much easier as well. Have you used Wings UV mapping functions before? I use UV Mapper Pro so I won't be much help with Wings or Carrara UV mapping, but it ought to be similar.

When importing into Carrara do the following:

• Import .obj options: Select Vertex Primitives and under Grouping select Create only one object (unless you want each material as a detachable object).
• Select your object and go to the Model room.
• In there you'll see the materials are marked by blue outlines and you'll be able to select them via the Selection menu Select By/Shading Domain...
• You'll need to do the UV mapping to get the textures looking right, otherwise you'll usually get odd overlapping bits on your textures if you leave them as they are.
• In the Texture room you'll find the shading domains on the right of the screen, double click each one to edit them.

Thats odd - Miki & Koji get the transparency maps for their eyelashes and eyes okay - some kind of multi-channel mixer with multiply operators, seems like a strange way to do things. Have a search around here for Transposer issues and over at: www.eovia3D.net  - thats also a useful place.

Mind you, once you've set everything up to your liking click on the shader tab in the Assemble room, click and hold the shader for your character and drag it into the shader browser. Then you can simply drag and drop the shader whenever you bring that character into Carrara (make sure to drag it onto all bodyparts that have a separate shading domain)

How are you bringing the figure into Carrara? Native import or Transposer?
Transposer usually brings something in if transparency maps are in the figure (I don't use native imp, sorry).
If all else fails you'll have to bring them in yourself and try putting them in the Alpha channel, in the texture room - thats just my preference for the alpha channel though - something about polygon edges not showing up in the shadows - there was a thread about it here ages ago.

The background: in the Assemble room click on Scene and see what comes up, above it - it's either a gradient background/drop or the ground from a sky Atmosphere. You can switch either of those off easily enough.

Oh yes, of course - oops
Mind you with the prices the Maya range sell for you can keep them mate :P

Sounds a bit like Cinema4D. I don't mind the modular approach so much, but that's not what Carrara is about (so far).
Also what would the cost be for this kind of approach? Would you be willing to pay Cinema4D prices after getting used to Carrara prices? I don't think Eovia/Daz/whoever would be willing to make such a big change unless the price goes up to cover more programming work (I think).

I'd suggest dumping the standard vs pro thing - upgrade Carrara Basics a bit and make Pro the main version. If the software is good enough you don't need to add the Pro label, theres no Maya Standard or Pro.

Attached Link: http://www.eovia.com/products/carrara5/carrara_pro_vs_std.asp

Dizzi is right, you would be better off in the Carrara forum, but also theres not enough info in your question:

• What prop is it - a standard prop that anyone could load into Poser/Carrara and look at?
• Which version of Carrara are you using?
• Do the transparencies get into Carrara okay? (thats a problem sometimes)
• Have you tried copying the Colour channel (in Carrara) into the Glow channel? I don't know enough about the Poser texture system to know what makes the effects you are missing, but it could be that. You'll need to use Indirect Lighting in Carrara to get most out of the glow channel. If it doesn't show up apply a Multiply operator to the glow channel and put a Value (0 - 10000) in the Right Shader slot & experiment with various values.
• Applying Environment lighting (Edit menu) or Anything Glows (lighting button - last option) to the object might give you what you are after. Environment lighting can be quite slow, but Anything Glows isn't too bad, with lots of options for deciding what causes the object to light up (colour, glow or actual light) casting shadows and light range falloff.

Thats an odd request - isn't Shade the same kind of mid-level, all in one app as Carrara?
I've only ever used Shade 7LE and I didn't think very much of it, so I don't know what v8 has.

Anyway you'll have to export your models out of Shade as .obj, .3ds, .dxf, .lwo to name a few, obj files are probably your best bet - they seem to be the most used 3D file format out there. I haven't seen any options for bringing actual Shade scenes into Carrara. If Shade 8 has the ability to bake/convert any procedural textures you've created to bitmaps that will also speed up the process of bringing stuff over.

Hope thats useful.

Hi Richard,
I have to agree with Ren and Patrick on this one.
I'm surprised that you prefer rendering in Poser - your gallery shows you've put some time and effort into Cararra Studio, lots of cool sci-fi stuff in there.
Have you seen Shonner's skin tutorial: http://www.shonner.com/drafts/carrara_skin_tutorial_a.htm
Its good stuff, and Carrara 5 should come with a sample skin/SSS shader to mess around with. The Operator functions (add, multiply, overlay, mixer & subtract) in the texture room are what you need to start mixing and matching stuff.

And if you are a bit stuck with lighting(?) - put your scenes into one of the pre built scenes that comes with Cararra (remove the original models & textures) and see how that comes out. Theres a lot of useful lighting rigs and environments that are included to get people started.

Personally, I've always thought Poser plays poorly with other software - Poser (5 & 6) has a great texture room, but you can't bake the textures you create and then export them in to other software. So for me there's just no point in learning it or using any textures unless they are bitmap files that I can mess around with in Photoshop. Just my 0.02 on the issue.
I think I've said more than enough, its someone elses turn now ;)