I've discovered I can also reassign the materials for each strip in UVMapper Pro. That still leaves me with the problem of having to remap each individual strip, though. In Carrara, when I assign a material to the parts of my hair models, I specifiy how I want the material to be mapped - cylindrical, planar, parametric, spherical, etc. If I'm using strips of polygons for the hair, I set the mapping to planar. Now, depending on whether I used the spline modeller or the vertex modeller, I get very different results when I export the hair model as an obj and take it into UVMapper. The spline modellers keep their mapping, and the UV map lays out in a nice neat grid. But the vertex model map comes out all twisted and I have to go back and remap each individual piece. I've noticed that even in Carrara, I'm having problems with the mapping. I tried making hair with cylinders. I made my cylinders in the vertex modeller by creating an oval shape and sweep it along a path. As long as my cylinder is straight up and down, the map follows the cylinder with no problem. Once I start curving and bending the cylinder, the map quits following the cylinder and gets warped. I'll try rendering an example of what I'm talking about tonight and post it here. Maybe that will help explain the problems I'm having.

That's what it looks like to me too, but the texture map isn't set to tile, either horizontally or vertically! For some reason, it just seems to want to start in the middle of the object, run to the end, and wrap back around to the middle again. Agh!

Okay, the first few times I tried to realign the texture map to the Z axis, I had no luck. I've been doing so much poking around, though, that I somehow accidentally got the map straightened out for the hair strands not in the ponytail. Now I've got to fix the others. I did notice that when I am in the vertex modeller, if I select the cross section, I get an option in the properties tray for mapping (spherical, cylidrical, box, custom - also asks for which axis). I've noticed that changing these options changes how the texture map works on the vertex object, so I'm still digging around there. As for reducing the surface fidelity of the spline model, I tried that and got a mess. I don't have to reduce it by much to get a significant reduction in the polygon count, but it looks ugly! I have one other idea I'm going to try. Will let you know if that works.

And here's the vertex-based model. I've circled a couple of the spots where you can see the misplaced texture map and transparenc map.

Here's the spline based hair model...

Here's the hair texture...

Attached Link: http://www.pixelarcana.com/Galleries/Carrara/seascorpian01.htm

Hey, I found that page a couple of weeks ago! A lot of these tutorials are very good. I'm such a novice with Carrara, but after going through one or two tutorials, I learned enough to know my way around now. The sea scorpian tutorial is really great! Here's a link to my final result, if anyone wants to know how the tutorial worked out.

I have a copy of Amapi, but have had little success figuring out how to work it. I've come across some of the tutorials available online, but can't make heads or tails of a lot of what I've seen. I suppose I could try again, use Amapi for modelling and Carrara for rendering. Are there any good beginner's tutorials available for Amapi?

I'm working with Windows 2000 and Windows 98, and can't get the hot key for move to work in either OS. It's a big pain too, because that's the command I'm most likely to use in the vertex modeller. As for importing vector paths, I know I can do it in the spline modeller, but there are times when I want to import a vector path into the vertex modeller instead, and I can't make that happen. I'll try Brian's suggestion and see if I can get it from the spline modeller to the vertex modeller, but to me that seems like going around my armpit to get to my rearend. Thanks for your help guys! Helen

Thanks guys! I went ahead and bought Carrara 2.0 today. I'm looking forward to working with it!

BT, if I ever get the money scraped together, I might buy the CD. Unfortunately, I can barely afford to upgrade Carrara, let alone get any of the extras that would be nice to have. Still, I'll keep it in mind. Give the resources people listed here in the thread and some digging I've done, I may finally have the info I need to go from just using Carrara as a modeller to using it for full blown scenes. It would be nice to be able to make full use of the software for once! Thanks for everybody's help. I really appreciate it! Helen

Thanks! I've been poking around in Carrara on my own ever since I got it last year. I was hoping the manual would be more helpful, but that hasn't been the case since the RayDream 4 manual. The spaceship tutorials look like they'll provide good info on scene building and creating skies. Appreciate the help! Helen

Thanks for the info! I'm considering buying it, and will probably play with the free download version tomorrow. One of the other problems I have though with Carrara is the lack of documentation and tutorials on it. In my opinion, the manual for 1.5 is terrible, and Amapi didn't even come with a manual, so I've never been able to figure that program out. To this day, I'm still pulling out my old Ray Dream manuals to figure out how to model something. I've done some searching on the internet for tutorials, but haven't found much (unlike with Bryce, Poser, and ZBrush, for which I can find tons of tutorials). Mostly a few things on how to do some modeling. Nothing that covers the process of creating a scene from beginning to end (thus the reason why I'm only using Carrara to create models for use in other programs). So, does anyone know any good books on Carrara and Amapi, or know a place where I can find a lot of tutorials? I learn best with tutorials.

BTW, for some reason, I'm not having any problems at all around the ankles. That area lines up just fine with no stretching.

Honestly, I don't think the vertices on the seams are that close together. I went all around the edge of the boot, selecting the vertices on the outermost edge. I pulled them out a good distance, and still got the same effect. In a few spots, I found places where I had to blow up the vertices five or six times to see that what I thought was one vertice was really two, but I fixed those prior to posting this thread. I keep going back to the seams, blowing up the vertices to see if I'm missing something, but nothing is showing up. I took my texture map that I had so far and added a little color to it to see what might be happening. This is what I got.