Hell, my monthly cable bill is more than the 8.5 upgrade!

When I first bought Carrara 5 from Eovia, it was $550 and I thought it was an absolute steal considering everything the app is capable of. I agree that DAZ's efforts with 8.5 would've been better spent on features other than Genesis support, but that's just me.

I wholeheartedly agree that the constant negativity from the Carrara community isn't helping anybody. I think our goal should be getting more people using Carrara!

Hi GK,

Yeah, I can't get V4 to work either; just renders plain white.

I'm not sure if I'm just missing a step or two, or maybe there is an issue with UV export. (At least concerning Poser content)

Is anybody having an issue with LUX not accepting UV coordinates out of Carrara?

I rebuilt each shader tree before exporting to Lux; went with the Lux Matte material with the corresponding texture map plugged into the color channel, but something's obviously off.

I shut Lux off after 2 hours; the Carrara render took one minute forty-three seconds. (In case anybody's wondering!)

Carrara gives you all the tools you'll need to render great-looking skin. Yes, SSS needs a mapping function, but there's quite a few solutions to achieve the effect. If I think SSS will make an actual difference to any particular image I'm working on, I'll either use Carrara's multi-channel mixer along with an image map to dictate where the SSS shows up on a model, or I'll just shut of SSS entirely and use the translucency channel to create the effect. (It's faster and still gives the illusion of in-scattering)

Like Mark pointed out, different lighting rigs will require different shader set-ups. Global Illumination, Ambient Occlusion, image-based lighting, or just plain old scene lights play an enormous role in the final product!

You're right, Paolo-the camera was in too close!

Didn't see any clipping parameters in the camera properties, so I had ruled it out.

Thanks a million!

Here's a dumb question:

I've been trying to render a few Poser sets and I keep getting a blank gray ground in Lux. (The floor geometry of the sets aren't showing up, but they're fine in Poser)

Is this Poser's default ground plane showing up? (I hid it in Poser)

I haven't touched Poser in years, so I have no clue what I'm doing wrong!

• Source 1 is a standard V4 setup with no SSS or Translucency
• Source 2 is a copy of the first tree with SSS and Translucency turned on
• For the blender map, I started with a standard V4 diffuse map and painted pure white layers over any areas I wanted thee SSS effect to show through. When I was done with the white, I just filled the image background pure black. (This is an area that could be improved by a more talented artist!)
• For the SSS channel in the second source, I went with a dark red color and turned the diffuse reflection up pretty high.
• In the Translucency channel, I used Ringo's Reby Sky shaders from DAZ.
• Rendering time was much, much faster than with uniform SSS
• I was also able to light the character any way I wanted to without running into the problems that SSS and Translucency usually cause. (Blotches, artifacts, etc.)

Again, I'm sure there's better ways to do this, but it works for me!

Basically I used a standard V4 shader tree in the first channel, and the same tree in the second, only with SSS and translucency turned on. For the blender, I made a gray-scale map to dictate where the second channel showed through. (Ears, nose, cheeks, etc.)

I don't think I even spent 20 minutes working on the setup, so I'd imagine things could be fine-tuned for much better results. Still, I like this a lot more than the wax-figure stuff I see coming out of Poser 9 :)

I searched through my archives and found a simple sitting room set that I'm "Poserizing" as we speak. It doesn't scream MUST BUY PRODUCT so I'm alright with putting it out for free.

It's always a little unnerving to set aside the paying work for a riskier venture, but such is the life of a freelancer!

Once she's ready, I'll start a new thread here because in addition to needing feedback, I'm sure I'll have loads of questions about what everybody's looking for in their set pieces. Poser's rendering capabilities sure have skyrocketed since Poser 7...

I spent some time perusing the Poser galleries here today; it sure doesn't look like anybody's using Poser's IDL features. That's yet another thing I'll need to think about because it affects the design of the sets. My head feels numb :)

Thanks for the quick responses!

I'm not denying that the economy has taken a bite out of everything, but it's been in the toilet for the past decade while the downturn in the 3D hobbyist market seems to have suddenly come on. Sometimes I wonder if Poser and Daz  Studio have become too complicated for their own good...

Another thing that's been holding me back is that I haven't touched Poser in years. Converting models made in Max to something that's Poser-friendly is turning out to be quite a bit more work than I anticipated. I did put a post in the Jobs Forum, asking for a potential partner to handle the Poser side of things, but I only received one response and that was over a month ago.

On the positive side, I am seeing an opening here for architectural models; most of the really, really good stuff seems to be over at DAZ. (Stonemason, Ness, etc.)

I'm seriously considering putting out my first release as a freebie, just to get some feedback as to what everybody's looking for in detailed set-pieces. Do you guys think that's a wise idea, or should I just send it out to a few select friends for review?

Although I haven't used it personally, Terrain Tools from Digital Carvers Guild seems to be the go-to plugin for more advanced terrain creation.

I have quite a few of their plugins and they're all first-rate!

The point of clay renders is to either check your model for flaws, or show off it's awesome flawlessness! Flat, even lighting is the key :)

Ha! I knew that question was too easy!

I guess I'd have to see exactly what you're doing, but this may do the trick:

After you're done translating, scaling, and rotating your object, go Edit > Promote to Master; that should reset all of the translation values to zero without doing anything to your model.

Let me know if that helps!

JT

Just zero out everything under the Motion tab. An actual "Restore" button would be nice though :)