Try... www.digitalcarversguild.com or www.afx.com Does anyone know of others? Jim Z. a.k.a. Julian Boolean

Did someone mention my name? I haven't posted anything lately, but I do check the forum most days to see what's going on. I was so impressed by WillF's plant models in last month's contest that I decided to try it myself (with the help of WillF's tutorial, of course). **Pitiful *hyoooomans* - I feed on your brains!** Above is a work in progress which may end up as part of my entry for this month's contest. Regarding the jump to Carrara, I'll probably take the plunge early next year after I replace my system (The old P150 just isn't fast enough for Carrara). I think what I'm looking forward to the most is the ability to create curved motion paths easily. Now back to the landscaping... Jim Z. a.k.a. Julian Boolean

I don't know if this will help since I'm a Ray Dream Studio user (PC version). When importing into the RDS spline modeler, the import dialogue box has a drop down menu at the bottom labeled "Files of type:". The default is Illustrator, but the other types can be selected. I seem to recall reading in another thread that the Carrara spline modeler can only import Illustrator files. If that's the case, then you've found an error in the manual. Jim Z. a.k.a. Julian Boolean

Try the knob on your monitor labeled "brightness". Yours might work, but mine didn't do me no good. Jim Z. a.k.a. Julian Boolean

Way to go WillF! (Jim tips his hat) Excellent shaders and models. By the way, your plants are great; may I ask which modeler you used for them? Congratulations on winning a very challenging contest. I'm already looking forward to the next one. Jim Zipperer a.k.a. Julian Boolean - from Florida

In looking at the motorcycle you indicated, I would suspect that the artist (Slouchcorp) used a type of wireframe render which in not available in RDS/Carrara. In RDS, and probably in Carrara, objects are transparent when rendered in wireframe. This allows the mesh on the reverse side of the object to show through (very confusing to the eye). You could probably approximate Slouchcorp's results by applying a texturemap composed of black lines on a white background and then inverting the color of the rendered image. This would produce a black object with white lines and white shadows. Good luck, Jim Zipperer a.k.a. Julian Boolean

Attached Link: http://www.dram.org/rd/rds5/bb/index.html

Found a tutorial for Bone Bender which includes a short demo movie of a walk cycle. Seems pretty easy to use and would probably be a tremendous help in animating, but I would need to see more examples of what it can do. Jim Z. a.k.a. Julian Boolean

First let me say that I'm still using RDS, so these improvements may have already been made in Carrara. If so, you may pat me on the head and send me away. But... I think the vertex modeler would be MUCH easier to use if there was a fly-out menu of vertex selection tools including a square/rectangle, a circle/oval, and a freehand "paintbrush" with adjustable diameter. Currently, if I want to select vertices which form an irregular shape, I must pick them one by one - very tedious and time consuming. There's my opinon. Who's next? Jim Z. a.k.a. Julian Boolean

Wow! Superior work Litst! My hat is off to you for your grasp of the vertex modeler (we call it the mesh form modeler in RDS). That's the one tool that has totally escaped me. I always thought it was alien technology intended to identify the geniuses of earth so that the invaders could take them up to the mother ship and... Well, never mind that. I'm sure you'll be fine. Are you going to do a body or is that a project for another time? Again, great work. Jim Z. a.k.a. Julian Boolean

You'll probably want to convert the object to a mesh (if it isn't already) by selecting the object and choosing edit/jump in another modeler. Once there you can select all of the vertices and use the subdivide command. This will smooth the object, but will also increase your file size. Also, it doesn't work very well on objects that are very small in one of their dimensions (like a dinner plate or most similarly flat objects). Hope that helps, Jim Z. a.k.a. Julian Boolean

I can certainly sympathize with anyone who is frustrated with buggy software (Windows ME anyone?) but I've found RDS and it's ancestors Ray Dream 3D & Corel Dream to be fairly stable and reliable on a Pentium 150 under Windows 95A with 64 megs of ram. I didn't say they were quick, but my most common error is "memory suballocation error 4" which I believe is caused by my own impatience - not allowing the sreen time to refresh, etc. Having said that, I will gladly agree that Metacreations burned every bridge in their marketing of RDS 5.5 and in selling their beta version of Carrara as a finished product. I believe they knew they were going out of business and were scraping for every dollar with no thought for their customers. Now it's up to Eovia to rebuild those bridges. The free bug fix is a good start, as is their bargain-basement upgrade price. The opinions expressed in this forum on the bug fix and upgrade are encouraging so far, but as a user who is very pleased and comfortable with RDS, I think I'll wait a bit longer before upgrading - but that's mostly because I'll need a system upgrade to run Carrara. That's my two cents Jim Z. a.k.a. Julian Boolean

I visited the AFX site, but it does a poor job of marketing Bone Bender. There were no examples of what the product actually does. I would be very hesitant to lay down $89 without seeing what I'm getting. I think I'll save up for Carrara Studio instead.

Hang in there, Kaom. The hours you've put into this are really paying off. The results so far are great. And if I had a car like that, you can bet it would be polished to a mirror finish! Are you going to go for the fat chrome sidepipes, or something more subtle? How about a vanity plate? With a virtual car like that you'll have the poser babes crawling all over you ;) Jim Z. a.k.a. Julian Boolean

Thanks for the compliments. The fables were a lot of fun to make and I've got a few other fables I intend to add - but they're much easier to write than they are to render. I would LOVE to see Scooby Doo in French. In the English version, the girl who wears glasses is named Velma - and whenever she finds a clue she says "jinkies!" which is a made-up word that would mean "aha!" or "eureka!". What does she say in French? And AzChip, I'm not familiar with bone-bender. What does it do, and is it still available for RDS?

You're right, RLG 1034, the vertex modeler is the mesh form modeler. If you jump into the object in the mesh form modeler, and select all vertices (either with the marquee tool or with the edit/select all command), you can then use the polymesh/subdivide command to create more vertices. The upside is that your boolean operations should work more smoothly, but the downside is that your file size will balloon pretty quickly. Also, converting an object to mesh often makes it difficult to paint with the 3D tools. The shaders should still work fine, but 3D brush strokes will behave strangely. By the way, all objects in RDS are hollow. You can verify this by enlarging an object and then placing your camera inside. This can be used to create some pretty strange effects. I hope that helped. Jim Z. a.k.a. Julian Boolean