PS - Look into 3D World mag, and if you can't find a source for it down under, let me know. I'd be happy to mail you my coverdisk, since I don't need it myself... (PPS - I'm sure someone will now tell me something I don't want to know about the legality of passing on coverdisks for free!)

Well if Zenstar don't get back to you with a satisfactory answer on this, I suggest that we should e-mail Eovia directly asking that they remove their details from the "Third Party Add-ons" section of the site, and seeing if they can do anything else to sanction them... Not that I want to prejudge a (lack of) reply, but if they're literally taking the money and running, then I really think that would be unacceptable behaviour and detrimental to the Carrara brand itself...

None of these replies get to the bottom of what the min. requirements for Tree Druid are, and I can't see the details on their website. If I were you, I'd demand a refund on the grounds that they mis-sold it to you (if they really don't put min. requirements on the site), and plough the money into getting C5 Pro. BUT if budgets are tight and Zenstar will confirm that it works with C2, then it might be worth you knowing that C2 is being given away on the coverdisk of the current 3D World - Issue 77 (May 2006), UK RRP 6.00 (Obviously don't know if it's sold in Australia, but you may be able to source it somehow... (There's also a discounted upgrade offer in the mag).

Hi fuzzoom -

Sorry to hear your mixed reactions. Not wanting to mindlessly cheerlead for the new version, but hopefully the interface stuff will grow on you - anything like that is a matter of personal preference, but the majority of people seem to think it now looks more like a professional app...

One important point (main reason I'm posting a reply) is that the windows can be undocked - Ctrl-leftclick and drag from inside the window frame - there's a thread on this a couple down from yours, and I just discovered it myself (I swear the browser tray was locked in the beta, and I whinged about it then...).

OTOH, I know what you mean about the new shader tree - everyone else seems wild about it, but I find it tricksy compared to the old version - guess you and I are in a minority here.

As for the modeller, I can't really comment, as I'm a Hexagon convert and am unlikely to go back to the Carrara Vertex room unless they integrated all the Hex functionality, which is pretty unlikely now...

Oh, and Gweb, I can understand that the slowdown when rotating objects is annoying, but it seems to make perfect sense to me - when you move the camera all the other co-ordinates in the scene stay the same, and so the program just has to work out how the scene looks from your new point of view. But when you rotate an object, the program has to transform all of that object's vertex points as well as working out how your view of it has changed...

Message edited on: 01/11/2006 02:50

If you select a "flat" particle - a billboard - it keeps them all aligned so that they show their flat faces towards your camera. This kind of particle is often known as a "sprite", and can be very handy - if you're not changing the camera angle radically during an animation, you can use a picture of an object as a texture on the particles, and it'll look like the emitter is producing those objects, but use far less computing power (some things work better than others, obviously). Another thing you can do is texture them with an animated texture and matching alpha for transparency (such as the ones you can make with ParticleIllusion SE from Wondertouch), to turn each particle into a fully-fledged particle animation in its own right, again with almost no computing overhead. This can produce some very sophisticated effects.

I've managed to get everything downloaded now, by dint of being an early riser in Europe... The app download is actually 250MB+, not 40MB as Mark suggests above, and I think this is because most of the wizards and the huge number of models are bundled into the main install, so you can just open them straight from the browser. Not sure whether any of the models are new, but the presets are very nice and a great starting point. However it seems that most of the new content has ended up in the main install rather than on the Content CD... I'd still try to grab both files, though...

Actually, as an aside, I have just found one use for P6, since my copies seem happy to co-exist on my PC (though Transposer only plays with P5 files in my experience). There's a new P6 plugin called PoserPhysics which allows you to do ragdoll physics on Poser figures - rather natty and one of the few things still obviously missing from Carrara... It only runs on P6, but someone pointed out to me that I can export the animation data in .bvh format, recreate the setup in P5 to add cloth and hair dynamics, and then export it to Transposer...

At the risk of repeating myself (but hey, I don't want to see anyone else stung...), you can still pick up P5 for a fraction of the cost of P6 from purplus.com (and no, I don't have shares or anything!)

Nice renders Ringo! Word of warning to bluetone and anyone here thinking of picking up Poser purely to work with Carrara. Save yourself some money by getting Poser 5 (It's available on Purplus.com, for example), rather than 6. Carrara's Transposer 2 plugin won't work with P6 (E-frontier seem to be unwilling to let Eovia have the SDK to update it), so the best option for dynamic cloth and hair is a Carrara/TP2/Poser 5 combo. I pre-ordered P6 before I knew this would be a problem, and it's largely sat unused on my PC. In some cases I've heard of people having problems getting P5 files into Carrara after installing P6. (Fortunately I've just found a use for P6 - the rather wonderful PoserPhysics ragdoll plugin - but I still have to go round the houses to get my stuff into Carrara). Of course if you don't need dynamic cloth or hair, then C5 now has native poser figure import so you can buy your figures separately and not worry about Poser at all!

face_off - no sweat. Thanks for the clarification, I just wanted to know. The work you've done on this seems awesome, and I can quite understand the problems in developing it for the older version. My gripe over the whole situation is at E-frontier for not helping Eovia update their plugin. Having said that... Dale_B - thanks for the advice and what sounds like a great idea for a workaround. I'm going to do a few tests taking BVHs from P6 back to P5 and out to Carrara when I get a moment, and if all goes smoothly, I'll probably take the plunge after all (never can resist a cool new toy!)

Hi guys, Does this work/has anyone tried it with Poser 5? The CP newsletter I got clearly states "For Poser 6 or Poser 5" but everywhere else I hear just P6 SR2... I've got both versions, but I do my rendering in Carrara, and e-frontier won't release the SDK for Eovia to update the Transposer plugin, so P6 has turned out to be a complete waste of money for me, and a P6-only plugin would just be more money down the drain when I can't import the dynamic hair and cloth to match... So can anyone tell me? Should I get excited, or forget about it?

Good news everybody! Pascal who's created the new Particle Engine has been keeping an eye on the Yahoo list, and I mentioned the issues with volumetrics and lights as particles while asking another question. Apparently, volumetrics as particles should make the final release (though he suspects that they won't work as well as we'd hope, due to appearance issues where volumetric clouds overlap). And the inability to use lights as particles is a bug, which he's now looking into. Just thought I'd relay the info. However, bear in mind all the usual cautions regarding development schedules - it'll be lovely if these features do make the release, but I won't be holding it against Eovia if they don't...

If you're thinking of rotoscoping a 2D image, then I can heartily recommend ParticleIllusion from Wondertouch - it's a brilliant way of simulating 3D particle effects using 2D sprite images. Not sure what demos/special editions are available at the moment, but I believe they've got a Max OSX SE out... www.wondertouch.com

Oh, and judicious use of the lens flare effects helps as well, though be aware that Carrara's lens flares are treated (correctly) as camera artifacts and will therefore overlay your entire image (they won't, for example, silhouette other objects). Now THAT would be a very funky addition to C5 (as would the ability to make particles act as lights for this purpose) - you still listening Charles?

A couple of suggestions: 1) Most of the fragmenting modifiers tend to give rather ordered results, but you can make things a bit more interesting and chaotic by applying two or more modifiers to the same object and some clever keyframing. 2) Stick a bulb in the middle of your exploding object and use the light sphere (on the bulb's effects tab). You can keyframe this to get a nice explosion effect, and also keyframe the light's colour so it falls off over time from white heat through yellow and orange to red. There are several other light effects on the same tab that you might find useful. Hope that helps!