This is gonna drive me crazy; I could've swore that there's some plug-in that alters shaders based on light and object proximity.

Mark-

Didn't you make a Carrara video of one sphere "burning" its way through another sphere? (I could just be losing my mind)

And Shaders Plus is worth its weight in gold. Selective Lighting and Lighting Control are 2 things I can't live without!

JT

Antaran,

I actually don't own Carrara ERC; I just read up on it over at the DAZ forums. It was 1/2 off the other day, but I missed the dang sale!

Another really easy solution is to use Carrara's Multichannel Mixer.

If you're using a texture map in the Glow channel for the planet's city lights, simply use that shader tree as the first source in the mixer. (The whole tree) Copy the first source into the second source and get rid of the lights. For the blender, choose "Value 1-100"

Once everything's set up, you'll be able to animate the blender's slider to transition between the two different shaders. (One with the lights on and one with 'em off)

After that, it's just a matter of playing around with the keyframes to make the transition coincide with whatever lights you're using. 

The most important thing to remember is that there's NO CHEATING in 3D!!!

JT

I don't think that's something that Carrara can do out of the box; however there are a few plugins that will (more or less) help you get the effect.

"Shaders Plus" from Digital Carvers Guild allows you to control how each light in your scene affects each shading domain of an object. For example, you can add a light that only casts specular light on a characters eye surface while completely ignoring the rest of the character.

"Carrara ERC" available at DAZ allows you to use attributes of nearly anything in your scene to control attributes of pretty much any other thing in your scene; if that makes any sense...

I'm almost positive that there's a plugin out there that does exactly what you're asking; maybe "Shader Ops" from DCG or one of Inagoni's add-ons.

Mark will probably know!

It's hard to say...

I ordered an i7 machine last year through an eBay store and it came with a dirt-cheap ATI X1600 card. I still haven't gotten around to upgrading it because honestly, I've never had any issues. (I mainly use Carrara, 3DS Max, Photoshop CS4 and After Effects)

The Quadro series has its obvious advantages, but there's a few things you should look in to. How do they preform with GPU-accelerated engines like Lux and Octane? Do you plan on doing any serious video editing?

For me, I think I'll opt for an NVidia gaming card for versatility.

For my workflow, I'm better off having 2 or 3 machines that cost $800 each, rather than having one workstation that clocks in at $2500. Although a nice dual-Xenon setup would be kinda awesome...

Thanks for the link, Mark! Makes me wish I could draw...

It's surprising how many of the concepts didn't make it into the film.

The BladeRunner Blu-ray set is a must-own if you don't have it; it has an amazing making-of documentary and five different versions of the film!

Carrara won't create the layer because the light cone isn't a post effect. It should still show up in your beauty pass at least. (All the passes together)

If it's not, we may be looking at a bug.

One option is to render the light by itself with the alpha channel enabled and the backdrop set to pure black. That would put the cone effect on it's own layer for compositing, but you may have to mask off any objects that appear in front of the cone.

JT

If you're talking about the standard cone effect on a spotlight; Carrara doesn't consider it a post-effect. It's rendered in real-time, so it won't show up in it's own pass.

If you're trying to render a relatively tight shot of the riverbed; I'd recommend using the surface replicator. In a nutshell; model the rocks and boulders first; then create a terrain in the basic shape you're after. Use the surface replicator to disperse the rocks on the terrain, all nice and random.

Carrara's terrain editor won't give you that much detail up close. If you're new to Carrara; Mark Bremmer's tutorials cover the process and are well worth picking up :)

If you have some pictures of what you're after; you could also convert them to grey-scale and make displacement maps as an alternative. (You may have to actually model the terrain in that case)

JT

Hi Mark;

I was thinking more of a specific mood, rather than a complete story when I was putting this together. (It was very late)

My goal was to give the feeling that she's psyching herself up; mustering the courage to walk through the gate. She's armed to the teeth, implying that something sinister is on the other side. In my head it all makes sense :)

I wanted to show off some of Carrara's cool features like lens flares, aura, glare, dynamic hair, shaders, etc.

Tag! You're it!

(I rendered a much bigger version, but R'osity won't let me attach it!)

Here's some more food for thought, Lyne:

Sometimes with AA, it's better to go with a low-quality setting and render your image at twice your intended size. When you re-size it in an image editor after the fact, the AA will automatically look nice and pretty. Obviously this may not work with the HF scene because of its size, but it's a nice trick to know and can actually give you better results in less time in some instances.

Now that you've switched to Carrara, you'll need to start thinking like a professional. (Poser and DS are more for the hobbyists) One big rookie mistake that we've all made is to create scenes that are beyond what our hardware can handle. Pros from ILM to Pixar almost always break larger scenes up into smaller, more manageable pieces and composite everything together in post. For example, the atmosphere, the terrain, the vegetation, and the character(s) could all be separate layers. Going this route gives you the option of using lower-quality render settings on the background layers where the viewer won't notice the difference, and cranking up the quality for the characters where you may want lots of detail. This requires a lot of planning in terms of establishing a working pipeline, but once you get the hang of it, there won't be anything you can't handle!

JT

I'm pretty sure the problem is with our Internet service. Comcast is sending a tech out tomorrow; hopefully everything will be taken care of then. The issue's definitely on my end, so we can call this case closed :) Thanks, JT

Alright, I re-downloaded a few products from previous purchases and I'm getting the same error from them too. Everything I've downloaded from Renderosity prior to today works just fine. I have no idea what the issue is; is there some kind of technical support on your end I could talk to?
JT

I'll give it a try Stacey, but this is happening with all three products I just purchased.

JT

Well it sounds like the plug-in has been given the green light :)
It probably won't be available until Fall, from the sound of it. Awesome news!