That's great to know. I've sent an email to their tech support. Hopefully Monday I will get a reply.

Thanks!

~jr

Hey Gary,

Awesome tutorials. I have looked all over the internet for tutorials on Hexagon and all I could find were silent tutorials where the instructor is actually using keyboard shortcuts (that you can't see) and stuff is magically appearing on the screen and it is absolutely impossible for a beginner to follow.

Your tutorials are excellent! I also like the fact that you discus what didn't work (like using Thickness in the book tut) so that we learn why some approaches that seem obvious really aren't the way to go.

I just bought the DVD. Hope some of the cash flows back to you. Keep up the good work! GeekAtPlay Rocks!

~jr

Quote - Thanks. Vladimir's tutes are fantastic, and he's very generous making professional tutes available for free.

Well... they don't have to be free... you can always say "thanks" by buying them. ;-) I've purchased all of their DVD's thus far simply because they deserve to get paid for the quality they put out. They really are a bargain when you think about it.

~jr

No I would not pay. I use to use Cinema 4D v7 and when it came time to upgrade I could not afford the new version so I bought Carrara because it was more affordable and easy to use. If you make Carrara more expensive and harder to use, then I'd have to find another 3D application that was more affordable and easier to use.

~jr

Quote - In many ways purchasing 2 19" is smarter than, say, one 30" or even one 27"

Can you give us a short paragraph how calibrating with a Spyder 3 Elite takes place?

::::: Opera :::::

Sure, the Spyder 3 is a device that plugs into a USB port and gets attached to the front of your display so that it can read the pixels. There is software that comes with it and the software generates colors / luminance, etc that the Spyder 3 device optically reads. Since it knows the color that is being generated, it can determine how different the color is that it is seeing and creates a color profile that produces the correct colors. You then use this color profile with your display and you will get true colors. The Spyder 3 also has the ability to sense ambient room light and tell you if the lighing has changed enough to require re-calibration. It's a clever little device.

I assume other calibrators like the GretagMacbeth Eye-One and Pantone Huey, etc. work in a similar fashion. It really helps to make sure that your getting consistent colors in your art work.

~jr

Quote -
I am just being absurd...but we can dream, can't we?........

http://digitaltigers.com/zenview_us1-24inch1.shtml?gclid=COy35fSX4ZACFR5biAodhUduPQ

Well... Actually that's how I decided on my current monitors. In the 3 monitor configuration they use the Samsung SyncMaster 215TW's so I bought two of them and they are extremely color accurate. I used a Spyder 3 Elite to calibrate them but they were really close to begin with.

~jr

I started with Vue 5 Esprit and slowly added the other modules to make it into Pro Studio. Then I finally made the jump to Infinite because I needed ecosystems. Since you can now get the old ecosystems as a module for Vue 6 Esprit, I would start there and see what else you need. The beautiful thing about e-on is that your investment is preserved. They give you very competitive upgrade prices so you can scale up gradually and not spend any more that if you had bought the whole thing at once.

~jr

Thanks so much Bernie for an awesome present. They look great! Merry Christmas to you and you family.

~jr

Quote - I got a nvidia geforce 6600 videocard 256mb and my carrara works fine and smooth for me.

Your video card is not used during rendering so it doesn't matter what card you have.

Quote - i got 1gb ram DDR1 dual channel and everything works fin

How fast is your CPU because this is what's doing the rendering.

Quote - But when i go to render a picture or a movie, it does it slow, i mean like 1 day for a video of 25 sec. Pictures renders fine. but the videos renders slow. what can be the problem then???????

If by 1 day you really mean 24 hrs, then you are rendering about 1 second of video per hour. If your video is set to 30 frames per second you are rendering at a speed of 2 minutes per frame. That's not too bad depending on how complex the image is.

There are only two ways to speed up rendering. 1) Reduce Complexity. 2) Faster/More CPU

~jr

I just purchased GridModeler and I've got to say, not only is it a fantastic tool, but I always learn more about using Vue from reading Chipp's documentation. I have never used Repeat Operation Subdivide before... what a neat little feature.

You did it again Chipp. Excellent and deep tool that will take some time to explore all the possibilities. Bravo!

~jr

Brycetech, These two episodes are great! I actually like this one a little better than the first because it really felt like the characters were in the scene and the camera switches were very realistic. It is also incredibly funny to those of us who use these tools. ;-)

Keep up the good work.

~jr

Looks awesome Chipp. I can't wait to buy it.

~jr

Dex,

That was a great behind-the-scenes look right there. I appreciate your replying with such detail. There are so many overlapping ways to achieve the same thing in several tools it's good to understand which tool people are using. Thanks and I look forward to the real behind-the-scenes section on your web site. Keep up the good work.

~jr

Excellent! Bravo!

Could you tell us what software is used for each part? For example did you use Talk Designer for the lip sync? How about the explosion? Particle effects in Carrara or composited in After Effects? I'm always interested in why people use each application. Thanks for sharing.

~jr

I look at it this way... $20 won't even buy a tank of gas these days and that's gone in a week. Carrara Express will last a lot longer. ;-)

Seriously, there is a huge investment in learning the concepts of 3D modeling and learning any particular applications interface. The nice thing about starting with Carrara Express is that everything you learn is directly transferable to the Standard and Pro versions. So that $20 is a future investment in your learning. That is a huge savings in your time when you upgrade later.

I just purchased Carrara 6 Pro last month. I had been using an old copy of Cinema 4D XL7 and couldn't afford to upgrade to a newer version. I am now constantly transferring in my head what I use to do in C4D to what I now have to do with Carrara Pro. So there is a lot of value in having a consistent interface as you progress and upgrade to more power versions of software.

I also use Vue Infinite and I started with the Vue Easel and then bought Vue Espirit and eventually got up to the Infinite version but it's the same concept. Everything I learned in Vue was directly transferable to the other versions.

It's great when companies offer their products at different price points to allow you to get in the game with an investment that you can afford. I got the email for Carrara Express and thought it was a good value for the money for someone just starting out.

~jr