SWEET!!!! I dont know why I am still obsessed with looking at spacehip pictures. I love this one too! It looks like everything was designed for a purpose...VERY COOL!!!!

I use Carrara mostly for television work. You are not going to find a better program for this for under $1,000 bucks. I have looked long and hard but when it comes to integrating with after effects & Avid Carrara does what you will need. the field render works and Carrara does a GREAT job with the Alphas on animations. I looked around @ truespace & Animation Master and both have siginificant problems (from what I have read) generating alpha's. And I would bet that would be close to the top of your list for functionality. HOWEVER...if you are looking for character animation go elsewhere :( BUT for broadcast work (logos, text, basic animation) Carrara rules. + it's easy :)

I'm all excited..Im scared tho. I am in a big project so Im not going to apply the patch for a bit. I would cry if the patch started corrupting my current animation. Everyone post up if you start getting big errors.

Very nice. Its sort of fun just playing with carrara like that. I have lots of wierd little trippy peices like that. I usually end up takeing them into photoshop and going crazy. btw: I like how you stayed with the whole blue thing..gives it a nice sense of uniformity.

Thanks. I have a few things I can try yet. I just found out how to change my memory swap on NT 4.0 to another drive so hopefully that will help clear it up. Its not due until the end of the month so maybe I can also try to wait for the patch.

Well when this happens I will be happy. Granted I am still dissapointed b/c there is no bones but that is my fault for not knowing the differnece between IK and bones when I bought the package. I do have to laugh tho..for a while I was receiving emails from evoia...and now..nothing. Suppose I need to reregister AGAIN (this will be no. 3 for registering with them). Also from looking at the posts here so far I have determined that there are going to be lots of people unhappy at even this patch. For goodness sakes I was thrilled when I saw amapi 5 was bundled and included..THAT IS SO COOL...then I see..."if we want the extra goodies it will co$t" ?? COME ON!!!! Your crying b/c you want a box and a few crappy textures and meshes???? geesh..

well I have determined that I am just going to go for it as is. The test render I did was with the hybrid at a real low resolution. The final will be raytraced. When I would try to find the frames with the dropout and do test renders I used the raytracer so maybe thats why I couldnt find the dropped poly's?

I have 3 cameras all ready...it all looks good. There are no holes in the objects and the cameras not hitting or pokeing thru...it has to be some type of render error.

Well its wierd..its just like 5 frames or so @ random intervals. The poly's are dropping that are at the edge of the camera field. This is a common occurance in video games (clipping) but a 3d program shouldnt have the same problem. Its not dropping a shape or a primitive its actually dropping a polygon thats is non existant..almost like a direct x error or something. Worst case I bring them into photoshop and hand correct them with the pixels from the previous frame (I love photoshop and AE) Im not using distance fog tho so it shouldnt be that. I'll post this thing up when its done. The current problem is that its going to take about 3 weeks to render on this machine. I am thinking I will bring my machine from home and network it here. I think that will drop the render time to 7-10 days. Anyone have a renderfarm set up yet?

maybe change your price? There are legitimate copies of carrara on ebay for under $100

HAHA! 3d aura....why cant I think of that stuff? Probably b/c I dont play around enough...stupid work :) You gotta like this forum, there's always a lot of solutions! Thanks for all the tips!

Wow! You guys have given me some serious options to try out..complete with illustrations :) I am going to have to play around with some of this stuff but its the exact type of info I am looking for. Its going to be for some internet company up here and the producer was insistant on an effect like this. Bunch of premadonnas :) This is going to be my biggest animation yet so everyone keep your eyes out for a server farm that takes Carrara...I dont want to lose my computer for a long time again :)

Well the only still lifes I EVER do are for the 15 min challange. I pretty much animate 90% of everthing I do in carrara. I'll try to participate but its very time consuming...its easy to get things messed up. The other problem of course is how can people see the results? I dont have a web host that will let any amount of data be downloaded off of it. The best way would be to have a small pre built scene that is quick and easy to download and then everyone animate the same scene? Still would have the hosting problem tho. Figure that stuff out and let me know :-)

I am impressed with the level of integration you have now :0 The reflections work well. The one thing I think you could do is to cheat the perspective. I feel that the edge on the left side of the pic is wrong. It puts my eye in the wrong direction. Maybe scale the cups depth a bit also. Sometimes I have found in my video work that whats correct is not always what you want to see. Also, shouldnt I be able to see the top of the glass? (I dont know for sure tho). Anyway it looks good...I think you did a great job with the lighting.