Maybe this is just a where are they? When you go into photoshop and open the pictures you wont see the gbuffers. You have to find the pallete that has the layers list on it. I think its on the same palatte as your history brush. I cant remember b/c I have my menu's customized and the layers list is on its own palette now. They are just going to show up as black and white images of your original drawings. I actually never really use them in photoshop but I use them a ton in AE.

Sorry about your problems. You do realize tho that Carrara has been out for more than a year? That means you probably bought RDS after Metacreations already had cancelled it. As for the hundred bucks you wont find a better offer. In fact for you its going to be $150 b/c you arnt upgrading from the correct program. Think of the $150 as dumping RDS and getting an entirely new 3d program + a ton of great plug-inns + a $400 modeler. The fact was that the point release patch for carrara was good enough but free AMAPI and the plug-inns made it almost criminal not to pay the extra $$$ I never used RDS but everyone says that Carrara is a lot better. I guess you can move to another 3d program but where can you go for $150? I suggest you go download the demo for Carrara and see how you like it.

hmm this question is a bit confusing to me. 1) Are you saying that you make a scene in Carrara and save it. Then when you load the scene the models are missing your textures? 2) Or are you saying that after you save the scene and try to bring your models into another scene they dont have the altered texures from your previous scene? If #1 are you saving the file with textures/shaders internal or external? If #2 you need to resave your model individually (export). Am I to basic? Way off?

Attached Link: http://www.eovia.com

I just did an animation in carrara and in the render cue it said the texture size was 72gig..how that happens i have no ideal but the folder that everything was saved in was like 13gig. Oddly enough I think the .car file was only like 100k.

Wouldnt the easiest way be to use a bump map and trop it to negative values?

I have found that DOF settings in Carrara blow chunks. Its not very accurate and looks very very bad in an animation. I wish that they would really improve this feature. I think the option to save a depth greyscale in the G-buffers setting is cool but I cant find a program to use that info..anyone out there know of one?

looks great...not bad for 64 megs of ram :) I know I should be looking at the screen and the computer but for some reason I keep looking at the roof. I really like the architecture..its so big and bright, yet so gloomy all at once. Isnt it weird how you can become fascinated with a part of a picture and not care about the pictures focus?

It looks like I am getting something similar to that..except its from compaq (need the service contracts)and it maxes out at like 2gigs of ram...its going to scream tho.

Attached Link: http://www.eovia.com/index.htm?carrara/prod_features.htm&0

good news...now I can finally enter one of these things.

Well it looks like most of the vendors we can deal with dont have very fast quad systems..they are server systems so they are built for high reliablity rather than speed. I guess if you need to go faster you are supposed to just add more servers...to bad carrara doesnt support network rendering :) So it looks like I am getting a dual p4 based 1.7ghz system with like 2 gigs of ram and 140gigs of HD. Now I just need to find a good video card that supports duel head flat screens :) How come my salary can't be used as a captol investment..silly buisness rules.

I could use more time. I think 2 months would be a bit more realistic for the "offical" carrara contests. Sometimes it takes me 2 or 3 weeks just to plan out the scene. I was looking through the Carrara gallery and saw some of the pics that came in to late for the last contest...they where pretty nice. It can take a lot of time to crank out a good pic. Of course I have an adversion to using things I didnt make. I really want to buy Litst's metal shaders but I cant decide if thats cheating. In my head I know its not but I have this nasty tendency to want everything to be mine. I used a tire from Mark Bremmer in a commercial last year and it killed me to do it....I want it all to be me :)

I just busted out the manual for AE 3.1 and it says the same thing as 5.0 which is what Greg answered. You dont even need to find and open the first frame...you can open any frame and if you select it as a sequence it will open the whole thing up. Go find your boss and beat him until he lets you buy after effects 5.0. You will be amazed at the difference. Its like the jump from photoshop 4.0 to 5.0. Can you remember photoshop w/o the history brush? That sucked! I would however experment...you will probably have to import it premultiplied with color (black) or with an inverted alpha. I wish there was a standard all programs use..avid, carrara, ae...I never remember wich program needs what kind of alpha.

HAHAHA...I was banging my head about this. Last year I just gave up on it. I hate it when simple things hold you back :)