Neato, great stuff Shonner. Is this Huey, Looey of Dooey? Cann't remember their names from Running Silent. I did not realise the actual models were that detailed. Sorry, for the other collapsed shader branch I just used one of Litst' Aluminum Shaders. Just copy one of the metallic ones from C4. Thanks for the response Eric. WooHoo, much to look forward to. Andrew.

Here we go, help if I could spell: Gouraud is the standard lighting model. Need something more advanced: oren-nayar blinn. Thanks, Andrew

Holly, here's a screen grab of the shader. The RGB of the green is shown and is based on actual CARC paint scans and samples. Army green is really flat, so I have added a bit of highlight just to accentuate the edges. Cinema4D has a shading model more advanced than Gauroud that is better for these type of surfaces but I have found C4Pro far easier to use and setup. If I can remember what Cinema4D calls the shader type than maybe Eric can add this to his Shaders Plus. My initial enthusiasm for Wireframe Pro has been tempered some what by models that have lots of fins and edges that just bogged down the shader room to the extent that I could not use wireframe pro with them. I'll try again with the Workstation I have at work. I would post more but the products I do are in development. I need more time at home to do more creative stuff. Thanks, Andrew

There are some HDRI on the content CD. I use the auditory_mono.hdr quite for a neutral white light. Also you can download some free HDR images from http://www.lightworks-user.com/hdri_starter_collection.htm which should give you enough images to get started with. Andrew

Ken, You might want to crank up the interpolation precision a bit. I've not had problems quite this bad but similiar. I have found that the filter sharpness and interpolation precision can have a big impact. You might want to also up you photon count a bit. As for the previous post, I have found that full raytracing is in fact NOT required if you're doing HDRI only and there are no lights! I'm finding myself becoming very lazy in my lighting because HDRI can produce some very nice reflection and lighting effects. As most of my images have been boring green product shots I do a quick low res render to check the ligting intensity and then leaving it rendering over night with all the settings high. There are some nice HDRIs on the C3 disk 2 that work well. I'm hoping to have time over Xmas to learn how to create my own HDRIs which at this time of year in Calgary will have a lot of snow in them. Andrew *<:=

Hoooraahhh! Such a simple solution! It's interesting 'cos I always centre the cross section first before I start the path. Thanks Mark.

Thanks to all, I'll give the rubbing alcohol a miss as I know it's a solvent. I'll head into a Photo shop and see what's available. thsmaks for the tips, Andrew

We just received DELL laptops: Precision M50 (2GHz Mobile P4, 512 MB RAM, Quadro4 500 GoGL, 1600x1200 display, windows 2000 professional) at work. I just brought it home to demo a remote connection. I am amazed. I have a Mac g4 867 MHz, 768 Mb RAM, ATI 8500. I installed Carrara 2.1 just to see how it compared on a number of models. The renders were twice as quick with the DELL and the OpenGL responsiveness was quite amazing. I am now totally smitten. I want one. To top it off, I have a Linksys router connected to my cable modem. Plugged in the laptop, the network settings were already set to "Obtain an IP address automatically" so I was on the net straight away. Shared a disk on the laptop and I was able to mount it from my Mac straight away with out any trouble and copied files across. So, i learned that the underlying PC hardware is quite amazing (and would love to hear from someone who is using a new Mac Laptop) and could quite easily replace my PC workstation at work. I also learned the the MACOS 10.2.4 has come a long way when I can effortly mount a PC disk. The laptop cost about CA$5000, which was about the same I bought my MAC for less than 2 years ago. I love the portability, my next computer will probably be a laptop. I choose the PC workstations at work and am looking to replace our ageing ones. DELL does have some very good deals and are backed up with very good support, which I always stress when I recommend co-workers buy there own (make sure you can take it back and get a full refund if you don't like it!). I've never really stressed Carrara to push it to the limits interms of polygons. Most of the CAD models I've imported have not totalled to much more than 250,000 polygons when all is modelled. It would be nice to get some feedback from people who have done models with 1,000,000+ polygons to see if the hardware is stressed and to see how well Carrara copes. I don't think you'll be disappointed with whatever PC you buy. Just make sure you get a full refund if you don't like it (and have it in writing). A

Thanks Kixum, Excellent write up on soft shadows. Reducing the bias to 0 improved the floating shadows a little bit. It will have to do for now - hopefully only I will know the shadows aren't too accurate, but if I can see then someone else might - it's only for a low res presentation anyway. Hopefully this will be fixed in future releases. I don't have time to play with GI because it's one of those "you want a picture? when? tomorrow???? No problem" Thanks, A

I agree with you on the soft shadows. Quite disappointing. I'm building some product shots and the soft shadows cast from spline shapes are not very good. GI lighting takes too long to render. It would be very nice, though, to turn off glows on a part basis when in GI, I also have not found that yet. One thing I found about GI, If I have a background of a bright sunny day - the sky is blue. The blue sky dominates the colouring of the rendering, when really I want a bright white light for the sun and a blue colour to the shadows. I guess I could use lights and hybrid render instead of GI, but those soft shadows .... With regards to your ATAT, there is a page in the manual that talks about that problem (some where in the p500's towards the back of the manual) and is a common problem for all GI rendering software from what I have seen. Andrew

Thanks ppowellaa, this did not work so I just ended up remodelling the part anyway! Andrew