Sorry about that, I posted it quite late at night :) To use morph targets in Carrara you need to buy the Carrara Power Pack, which includes many plug-ins, one of which is 'Morpher' which adds morph target functionality to Carrara. More information is available here http://www.losthorizonsoftware.com/products/cpack.htm Brian P. Retford Carrara Extensions www.losthorizonsoftware.com

There are definetly certain things that cause the errors, but I don't get them that often. As far as booleans go, I would avoid them as much as possible; Carrara actually alters the polygons (as opposed to Bryce, which uses raytracing to define booleans), even the best of algorithms for doing this can have bugs; though I will say I'm certain Carrara's could be much bettter. We should know what Adobe plans to do with Carrara in the next few weeks - hopefully they will put out some patches. Brian P. Retford Carrara Extensions www.losthorizonsoftware.com

What extension was it? Like I said, as far as I know, none of the available extensions use any .dll's that would be put anywhere but in the carrara directory ( a plug-in is really a dll ). At any rate, if you want to know, reinstall the plug-in, and see what files are extracted. I can't imagine any of the extensions having viruses, because viruses can't really attach themselves to an extension like an executable.

What exactly do you mean by extension? Do you mean a plug-in for Carrara, or an OS type thing? None of my extensions touch anything outside of the Carrara folder, and I am very certain none of the other available Carrara extensions do either. Brian P. Retford Carrara Extensions www.losthorizonsoftware.com

Thanks for taking the time to port this over to Carrara Eric, Its one of my favorite extensions! Anything Glows is great also. Brian P. Retford Carrara Extensions www.losthorizonsoftware.com

Aeryk, I've got a few suggestions on the planks. I like how you have the wood grain going opposite the planks direction - its a really good idea. I would add the plank shader to your bump channel, then decrease the width in the color channel. Also, if you used lumber yard for the wood (I can't tell, if you're not, you should try it) if you fill in the plank info on the wood shader, it will seed each plank differently, making them look like they came from different parts of a tree. Also, you might want to add just a tinch of value variation in the wood shader, and a tinch of reflection to the floor, the tree looks great. I think the pot could benefit from some adornment - say metal rings around the protrusions. Try copying your model, editing the copy (make sure you choose 'create new master'). If you pull the ridges out just a little, and sink the valleys in, you should be able to come up with something like that, if you think it'd look good. Brian P. Retford Carrara Extensions www.losthorizonsoftware.com

Awesome, goto www.diralg.com and submit it for the image of the week contest. There is now prize, but its a nice feeling to win. Brian P. Retford Carrara Extensions www.losthorizonsoftware.com

Looks good Dave. A few comments - All the boards look exactly the same, try adding some noise with your texture map, and maybe some noise in the bump channel too. If you scale the noise in the same direction as the grain of the wood, it produces a really great effect. Also, the river is almost dead center in the scene, and the railing cuts the view right in half; I would move the camera up and to the right, then angle back down and to left. Brian Retford Carrara Extensions www.losthorizonsoftware.com

Well, Eric said it 3 times, but he is correct. IK (inverse kinematics) simply refers to the a system of animation in which the chain of movement in a tree is backwards. So called 'Forward Kinematics' means that when you move a root object, all of its children are transformed also, but never the roots parent object. IK simply provides a method by which moving a child object (a hand) moves a parent object (an arm), instead of vice versa. Brian P. Retford Carrara Extensions www.losthorizonsoftware.com

Excellent modelling and rendering work. If you want to use multiple views, use multiple cameras. The only way you could use a Bryce sky would be to do a Bryce render and use it as a backdrop in Carrara. I have done this before with okay results, though it might not work so well with the angles you are using. Brian P. Retford Carrara Extensions www.losthorizonsoftware.com

It's a bug with the volumetric light filter - it doesn't treat edges properly. Brian P. Retford Carrara Extenions www.losthorizonsoftware.com

Yeah, it is for Carrara Images, it looks really good, I just assumed it was from Carrara :)

Here here, Sprites is a great idea, and it will probably prove easy to implement (I'm going to try this weekend), object instancing would require access to the source code of Carrara, or a new, custom particle engine (might not be such a bad thing) I'll keep everyone informed of the sprite thing. Brian Retford Carrara Extensions www.losthorizonsoftware.com

Great! The blood and gunk on the sidewalk is perfect! You should submit it for image of the week at http://www.diralg.com/ Brian P. Retford Carrara Extensions www.losthorizonsoftware.com

Looking great! I could tell it was a mannequin, though the image is still a little bit too dark, I think. Also, the brick wall and the sidewalk slabs, though they do look dilapidated, look very clean. Is this what you intended? I know dirt and grime are hard to add, but it would contribute alot to realism. Also, the poster seems like it is supposed to be a remnant from a long time ago, but it looks like it was put up a couple of days ago? Brian Retford Carrara Extensions www.losthorizonsoftware.com