Won't the shockwave exporter work? I thought all flash/shockwave was all pretty much the same thing..??? ____ Nope, not really. That's for Director, which almost nobody uses. To see examples of what I want.... Switft3D http://www.swift3d.com/ and Poser ProPack http://www.curiouslabs.com/products/proPack/html/proPackExamples.html Great examples. cheers

Brent: I tried looking for the post you mention in the archive .But I dind't find It. I remember seen some examples about this discussion but never the blender channel solution. Could you point me in the right directions? Thanks

I agree with all you said. But I would add one more to the list. Antialias. The antaialis in Carrara is really bad (from RayDream renderer...) Infini-d's antialias and alpha channel - mask (when you open it in photoshop) was much better and cleaner. ____ Yes, placing texture maps (jps, gifs) is very very difficult (and when you place a mask it looks pretty bad...) I would say unacceptable

Scott: Great job on the scene. It shows how Carrara can be pushed to its limits and show results that rivals the ones from much more expensive software. Are you use you used Carrara.....? just kidding : ) The lighting in the scene is superb. I remember your previous posts when you were making test renders for the flourescent light. I'll have to dig that one up for reference. In my opinion I like more the other angles for the scence, compared to the final image you subbmited (they show the compexity of the scene much better). Any way, congratulations. And good look with your next project, the Error type 11.

Thanks every body for the answers. I was imagining that I would have to render the scene in different passes to get a good effect. I'm going to try Final Cut pro, I hope it's as easy as Premiere ( I never got the hang of After effects..) The planet textures are jpgs from the sites that I found. I really appreciate the help. Thank you very much

Hello: I did my first experiment over the weekend and this is the result. It kind of turned OK but I'm still having trouble with the planet's glow (atmosphere). I tried using some fog and cloud objects over the planet but as you can see the result doesn't look good. It well, looks like a big cloud instead of a glow... Any recomendations? I wouldn't like to add the glow in postrender 'cause it's going to be animated not a still. I made the starfield texture with a shareware application called Universe: http://www.diardsoftware.com/universe.htm It's PC only but with virtual PC you can make it work on the Mac. And the planet textures I found here: http://www.vterrain.org/Imagery/whole_earth.html There's a bunch of links in that page and some great hi-res textures. A whole weekend of searching and experimenting for a 3 second animation, geez.... : ) Thanks guys

Thanks: Yes. Yesterday I stayed late ant tried exporting to other formats. I exported as a 3D Studio an then sent it to the vertex modeler. From there I changed the mapping mode and got good results. Funny though that I could never make the RayDream Studio format work ; as hard as I tried... that's what got me frustated. well I'm happy there's a work around : )

Thanks to everybody for the advise: I went to Amazon and bought the Lighting book + a texturing book (from the same author) + a character posing and animating book. They look pretty good and I guess I really should read them before I really start my project. Which, if it pays off I'll get a g4 with a bigger monitor, but for now its just an iMac for me : ) The g4 processor and superdrive look pretty good compared to my old computer, anyway... I hope I'll be able to show you the animations later Thanks again. P.D. from reading the other messages I found out what was wrong with my picture...! My shadows were noy working correctly because of the the terrain I was using. Great forum Fernando

The slow down is in the modeling room. When I want to move the camera and all the objects. I work everyting in wireframe (or even boxes) 'cause I know that the live preview is kind of slow with many objects. The rendering process itself is kind of slow. But I expect that beacuse I have a lot of reflections in my scene. I turned the number of reflections to 4 (instead of the default 8) and I think that helps . Does anybody work with a G4? what is your opiniion of Carrara's speed there. Thanks for the tip on the book. I'll check it out in Amazon

Actually Brent's solution is better... That's EXACTLY what I needed. Thanks I just copied the gif.

The answer is what Eric said ( use the same image as an opacity mask (brent beat me to it...) but don't mess with the settings on the rectangular layer, so I get the same coordinates. I''ll have to mess a little with my texture in photoshop (to get the exact size an position for my model) but i think it's doable. Thanks everybody for the help. Great forum!

Thanks every body I tried a combination of the answers you gave me to find an answer. I tried a BMP as Azchip suggested (I can save it in Photoshop) but Carrara won't acept it because I'm in a Mac. I've tried PSDs, Picts anf Gifs (no Jpgs) and I still get the same result (the white halo) because of the antialising. And The solution of rendering to a higher resultion and then resizing is no good because I'm doing an animation... and you know it's going to take forever to process

Thanks Eric: What I'm trying to achieve is a decal in the hull of a spaceship. Since I was having problem with my original object (the hull) I thought of simplifying my problem by trying it first on a simple plane. I don't want the decal to be the the full size of the object. I want it to be small (in a corner) but It's really very difficult to place it correctly, no to mention making the transparency to work... I now there must be an easy way of achieveing this... Here I go again comparing it with Infini-D but I remember that it was as simple as saving the texture as a Pict file with an alpha mask. Infini-D 3.5 automaticaly placed the texture and used the alpha channel as the trasparency, anyone remembers...? They lost the funcionality on 4.5 (don't know why) And now Carrara uses RayDream's texture method... Which I know is great for procedural shaders (much more powerful than Infini-D's ever was) but I rarely use them, I prefer Image maps as textures. They also limit the tile option to about 25 and in Infini-D I could tile an image map indefinitely by typing the infinity sybol (the figure eight lying down) any way just wanted to rant..... Could someone pleae show me a picture of how my shader tree should be?.... I'd really apreciate it. To sum it all up like I said: I'm tring to achieve a decal effect on a spaceship (some numbers and spacehip name) in a corner of the hull. I want this texture to have transparency because I want it to be reflective on the rest of the spacehip Thanks again for your time

Here's another picture. The transparecy map is not aligning. They measure the same. Any help would be appreciated... (Infini-d's textures were a LOT more easier to manage, I don't know why they used Ray-Dream's method) Thanks

Hello: now that we are touching the tiling theme ,I have a question for the forum. I remember that when I was making a new shader in Infini-D (image maps) if you wrote O in the number of tiles you got the infinity symbol ?, meaning that the picture would tile indefinitly in the model (great for infinte planes...) And In Ray Dream and Carrara you can only tile the shader 30 times. Does anybody knows if there's a work around for this? ____ and one more thing... I'm making models in the vertex modeler but I'm getting screwy results with the shading options . What would be the best setting? Cubical, cylindrical, spherical or do I have to go to the UV mapper? I'll post a picture later to show you what I mean... Thanks