Try Deselecting interpolation in the render settings. And nice start.

Message edited on: 11/04/2005 04:26

"Problem with that solution is then the light cones become super XRays beams, and will pass through about anything. I didn't even get into photon attenuation. Of couse the problem is that the visible (light cones) are really post rendering effects, not raytraced effects." Agreed. Its something that should be fixed. Perhaps C6. Though I have a extensive list for C6.

"My only complaint (which has been one for some time) is Carrara's poor implementation of visible, volumetric lighting with shadows. They won't stream through glass! The light passes through, but the nice foggy beams stop cold." This is true. The only way around this is to deselect cast shadows on the glass object. Which in many times this will work, but I realize that their are many cases where it won't.

"I already own Vue 5 Infinite, and the "surface replicator" thing looks like a pale imitation of the Vue EcoSystems." From my experimentation with ecosystems I was not that impressed its just a hyped up version of replica (http://www.inagoni.com). I got to thinking the only thing that beats out Carrara's implementation is the ability to say place a rock and have the replication intelligently avoid the rock. This is easy to do using the Proximity shader. http://www.des-web.net/html/proximity.html

"The organization of the new material editor kind of threw me off a bit. Not 'cause it is bad, but because it is quite (organizationally) changed. The functionality seems pretty much the same, however?" Understandable. A much more efficient layout. If you work with complex textures you will see the benefit. Lots of simple changes. Control of the raydepth, etc within each texture. Individual shaders can be dragged and dropped into shading domains (see properties tray in texture room, they also can be dragged and dropped with highlighted selection in the assembly room as well) Copy and paste functionality. Real fresnel effect intergrated in textures. Etc. etc. "the new features are really only existing plug-ins that have been "included" inside the package." I think that comment needs more support to it. "I still dislike the navigation tools." The three mouse button setup? Really I'm not seeing a difference in functionality? Perhaps if you explained more. "Sorry I don't share your blind enthusiasm; as I said several times, I was very disapointed with Carrara 4 and SSS is the only thing of real interest to me in C5." I find that comment a bit rude. We aren't having "blind enthusiasm" we just like the new features that are available. I'd think true fresnel, SSS, (possibly translucency shading), ambient occlusion, true microdisplacment (ie. using 16 bit maps), true ansiotropic lighting, irradiance maps..etc might be of interest to you. But if its all about SSS...um ok. scratches head Odd you are so focused on the one feature. A feature that really isn't all that necessary in most renders. Guess you render a lot of milk and candle scenes.

Agreed. They are not as robust as they could be. Just wanted to clarify that Modo does have some support.

Hey Dot! Its been awhile. Just a quick correction on Modo. They do support spline based geometry. For instance: Spline Patch Polygon Type True spline patch surfaces Command to convert face polygon to spline patch Pen tool creates spline patch polygons Plus the solid sketch functionality that allows for quick "sketching" out of geometry. Similar to zspheres from what I've seen. If I were to switch from Hexagon it would be to Modo. That of course requires money:)

"OpenGL is a lot faster on my system in Carrara Pro 5 Beta than Carrara Pro 4 was. The floating points are still a problem for imported hyper-smoothed objects." What I found incredible is that with OpenGL I can now place a texture that is a video onto an object and then play the animation and see it in near realtime in the 3D view (textured shading). Something that was no where near possible in C4 or earlier. Its also a big plus with animating with bones. As you can see the movement play back smoother and faster.

The key to good realistic plants in C is varied textures, don't just place a flat shade on the leaves or on the trunk. I believe there was a thread somewhere on renderosity showing the texturing of a leaf model and the resulting render (which came out very nice).

Well, I spent some time in there understanding what things are what. Still seemed limited to trees and bushes...that looked better, but needed help and very slow to render. The replicator is definite woohoo. What about translucence...not a biggy. Limited? Isn't it a Plant modeler? Or are you more refering to flowers etc? This can be accomplished by some tweaking. Just change the leaf shape. The reason the render time is so slow is because of the high poly count of the plants. Ways of speeding this up is to lower the generation count, the leaf count and the smooth level. If you replace the leaves with your own leaf model watch the poly count. The the replicator is wonderful:) Translucence? You can somewhat simulate this with subsurface scattering. In the chat event Charles talked about perhaps a fast translucence being added for the final release but thats not guaranteed.

Physics is unchanged at this point. Untrue. Physics have been sped up substantially. At least from my perspective. They also seem more accurate. Plus the fact that particles are using the physic system now and have full collision detection with scene objects. There are so many enhancements and new features its become a joy to use Carrara now. I can check quite a few wants/needs off the list.

Attached Link: http://www.eovia.com/support/bug_report.asp

Nice.

Attached Link: http://www.worldtimeserver.com/time_converter.aspx