You can also adjust the window size in the 'render room' by adjusting pixel width and then moving the camera closer or farther away from your subject. Mark

I wouldn't use the flip ups because they 'ruin' the lines of the car. Parking lights are always enough. Mark

Tidy work man! Nice mixture of mapped textures and modeling. I'm a sucker for detailed wheel rims so if the world was run by me, I'd push them a little further. For that extra sex appeal you can always turn the lights on. (a zillion detroit car brouchures can't be wrong)

Carrara has been REALLY stable on my Mac OS. If poly counts go above 3 million it starts to protest though. (gotta do the high res for print work) I've got some plug-ins that I adore in RD 5.5 so I still bounce back in occasionally for something special. However, 95% of my work is done in Carrara now. Mark

This is the Sinead O'Conner exhibit? Once again, fun stuff! I think that you're going to like the added modeling and render control you get in C. Mark

The final render quality seems to be the same. There is a difference in speed; especially if there is a mixture of non-reflective or transparent objects combined with nonreflective. Thy Hybrid is faster. Mark

You berry smart fella Clint. Yep, actually created the insert in illustrator (so the diecut would match the product) and created a tiff of the illustrator artwork to map to the 3D insert itself.

I suppose it's better than being pinned to a butterfly speciman board! Fun stuff. Mark

There are two ways to 'blend' them better. The first: create a volumetric sphere for the atmosphere larger than the planet around the planet that is 'fuzzy' in the materials selection option. The second: add a light with the color selected to a blue that is almost black shining on the dark side of the planet to enhance the shadow area. Ideally, that dark sides should almost disappear unless, because of the planet, they are receiving a colored reflection that is similar to the planet itself. Hope this helps. Mark

Carrara handles transparency different that it's predecessor. If an object is going to be transparent it CAN'T have a color in the color channel. (Yes I've had to retool any RD 5.5 image pulled into Carrara too) Adjust colors in the Highlight and Shininess channel. The best way to see how to set them up is to look at the stock shaders the the Carrara browser. Using transparency maps in a complex multichannel is now a gotta do. However, by using a complex multichannel with multiple transparecny maps you can now create some really rich and cool shaders that were impossible to make in RD. Mark

All 3D applications have there various pathologies. Carrara is no exception. I use it because, for the money, it's a really, really robust application. Carrara does so much so well that I have a hard time legitimetly saying much wrong against it. Terrains, multi-res meshes, spline modeling, cool light effects and enhanced shaders over RayDream make this a gotta have tool in my arsenal of 3D. Like the Adobe suite of products, the controls from Bryce, Poser and now Carrara all function pretty similarly so blending the uses of the programs is relatively easy. Hope you make the choice that's right for you. Mark

Lookn' good. On your Rooks you could create the 'profile' for the torus with multiple cross sections. As you go around the full circle you can alternately delete rectangles of the profile. The results will be your crenelations at the top of the Rooks without having to do a Boolean. Of course if that's not what you wanted in the first place, you can completely ignore this!! :) Mark

I kinda resented having to learn a new interface to a familiar program. However, now that I'm used to it, I'm loving it. There's a couple of quirks but (at least on my system) stable and fast. Much better assembly and modeling capabilites. Great enhancements in shader control and transparency (once you get used to the new schematic)

Wow, I hate to hear that too! I'm running a MAC g3 and Carrara with very few bug issues. Make sure that your system isn't looking for ATI and Open GL 3D extensions at the same time. Also, If you're using ATI products check to see if you are using the latest extensions offered by ATI at ATI.com Hope that you get it to work. It's an outstanding 1.0 release. Mark

I've been a hard core Studio 5.5 user and squealed like a stuck pig with the new Carrara interface. However, the interface is very similar to Bryce and Poser so the learning curve to use it was small. After forcing myself to learn the new 'rooms' in Carrara I can now model faster and more efficiently than in RD 5.5., especially with the shaders. There ar also some undocumented features that are nice as well as some vertex enhancements that I could have used many times in RD 5.5 Couple all of that with the faster rendering engine and it's worth the bucks Mark