Also, when importing an object to alter it or make morph targets, you don't need to have the Autoposition box checked. Carrara will place the objects center where the object's center was originally modeled (most likely at 0,0,0 anyway.

Yes, Carrara Studio 2 and 3 have what I like to call Vertex Float problems. You place a vertex right where you want it (ex: 1.00,2.05,1.00), and frequently Carrara decides it wants the vertex somewhere else (ex: 1.00,1.04,0.99). I have not done any modeling in Carrara 4 yet, so the problem may still be there...or not.

When exporting to OBJ, and you need the object to remain the same size as you imported it as, you should check the "Export Objects In Local Coordinates" is checked inthe options dialog. The object should export as its original size even if you had elected to have Carrara resize it on import.

So does rendering the whole scene light by light actually come out to be quicker in the end than rendering once with all lights? My 20MHz 386 (okay, it only feels that way when rendering anything) when rendering anything of some complexity or a scene with multiple lights.

IF the interface is unchanged, the least they could do would be to raise its resolution. I find it extremely annoying to have to squint an inch from the monitor to click on a three-pixel wide triangle to access submenus!

OpenGL is short for Open Graphics Library and is a rendering engine like Microsoft's DirectX components. SDK is short for Software Development Kit and is a set of tools and information enabling 3rd parties to augment whatever software the SDKs are for. With Carrara's SDK for instance, you can create plugins. Lammoth

I am pretty sure P5 has at least as many bugs as CS2 had. At least as many. P5 is on it's third service patch already (SR2beta2) and that one's a beta. Speaking personally, I've never had any problems with either program, even unpatched. Must have a magic system.

I used to fire those off in my Boy Scout days. :) The troop would buy them, we'd assemble them and hope no stabalizers fell off on "landing." Lammoth

This is interesting, but confuses my eye. Something in the real world cannot be perfectly reflective and yet be semitransparent. I think the transparancy and reflectivity must add up to 100% or less for a realistic effect. For the sum to be above 100 would defy physics. :p Lammoth

I grabbed the full patch after my third attempt. Nothing short of a miracle. Took nine hours total (33kbps). To keep my ISP from disconnecting me, I would periodically refresh a simple webpage (a tiny plain page I put up on my own webspace for this purpose) to let my ISP know I was still an 'active' connection. Biggest file my modem has ever downloaded in one gulp. It boggles my mind when poeple complain of sometimes getting "only" 15KBps off the CL server when the highest speed I have ever recorded was 4.4KBps. I can't fathom moving at 15KB let alone 150KB+ others are throwing around! Lammoth

Carrara 2 is a wonderful modelling program. With enough patience, you could model a human figure and animate it using bones for good mesh deformation (ie. the skin of the person would bend instead of having sharp joints like a robot). Poser 4 or 5 is a program made specifically for dealing with human models. Poser is not a modeller, but it has robust tools for modifying the human models it comes with (male, female, children, a few animals). Poser 5 is very new and has many bugs. A service release patch is out for it, and it should be incorporated into any new Poser 5 discs coming off the press. Poser models can be importing into Carrara as OBJ files for further work. Models can also be imported into Poser from Carrara. Depending on your budget, getting both programs would be useful. If you can afford one, then Carrara is the more versatile due to it being a real modeller. Poser comes with a heck of a lot of "people goodies" though (clothes, textures). Poser (http://www.curiouslabs.com/) Lammoth

If you're thinking of 3rd party download managers like GetRight, they don't work. The CL server does not support resumed downloads. Even though it's futile, I'm trying to get the patch for the third time. Never can get more than 11MB before either the server or my ISP times me out. :(

You can send the file to my Yahoo email account at: alduin@yahoo.com I have Carrara 2.0.21b and am running on Windows 98SE, so the problem may or may not manifest on my system. I'm willing to give it a shot though. Lammoth

Litst has a few tutorials on his website for Carrara. The link below is a link to his label tutorial. He shows how to make a texture and its mask work correctly. http://www.chez.com/litst/eng/tut-label/tut-label.htm

This is just a wild guess, not having had this problem myself with any 3D program, but perhaps there is a corrupted model in your scene? You could try removing the Poser figure and save the scene under a different name and close the program. Then try firing up Carrara and see if the Poser-less scene opens fast. If not, then it might be another model that's being mean. Otherwise, it sounds like some kind of big memory leak. Memory leaks were rampant under Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Windows 98 was much better. I wouldn't have thought Windows XP would suffer from that. Lammoth